Not great to be honest, the other half doesn't like it here, being out in the sticks a couple of miles from the nearest village shop is boring her shitless, she's a townie and being this far out is peeing her off.
It's bloody expensive over here, food costs a lot more than in the UK, especially local village shop which you have to use quite a lot, tried to get tesco.ie to deliver shopping to us as nearest Tesco is an hours drive away and we don't have transport apart from my mum who takes us as and when.
Registered on the Tesco site, address comes up in registration process, but site doesn't work after that, so emailed Tesco and they say they don't deliver to where we are, even been on to tesco in the UK who confirm they don't deliver to our area, this is despite the other half contacting the actual manager at the Tesco store here in Ireland and him saying yes, we deliver everywhere.
Have seen a van going down the lane a couple of times, and the other half said is that a Tesco delivery van, certainly looked like it, bu no writing on the side, so it went past a couple of days ago, so the mrs went outside and waited for it to come back, flagged the driver down and yes, it's Teco delivery van, she asks if he is delivering here, he says yes, she explains Tesco say they don't delvier here, he shows her the invoices for the 3 deliveries he has just dropped off further along our lane

, sent Tesco another email telling them we just spoke to their driver and that YES you Do deliver here, no reply yet.
Heating is another expense, we have 3 storage radiators which I leave on full boost from 11:00pm - 7:00am each night, dreading the electric bill as someone said theirs was €500 for 2 months. Then there's gas bottles for cooking, €80 a time and they last 5-6 weeks, then theres coal and wood blocks for the wood burner for heating, coal is €17 for a 40 kilo sack which when it's cold lasts 4 days, blocks are €3 a sack and they burn away very quickly, then theres the €600 a month rent, shopping about €600 a month, not including village shop purchases, internet (up to 3MB)/phone was €130 on the first bill last week for 2 months usage
(billing here is 2 monthly on everything), compared to £125 average per quarter in the UK, really cheap living here, NOT. But at least there are no water charges as water comes from the borehole well outside and no poll tax here at the moment, but on the horizon they are talking about introducing for both of those services in the very near future.
Apart from that, I love it here in the middle on nowhere

, even though the mrs doesn't like it much

, might even go back to the UK before the end of the year before she completely loses her will to live lol, then either stay in the UK for a month or so to sort passport out, then go and rent in France as a base to look round for property to buy over there.
Then again, something else I wouldn't mind trying is buying a narrowboat, always fancied living on one of those and have done a lot of research in to the subject even before I got my narrowboats domain, I quite like the idea of just continually cruising the length and breadth of the countries waterways, something new to see each day.
It's cheaper to continually cruise as well, as then you have no extortionate mooring fees and can stay in any spot on the waterways for a maximum of 14 days, you could actually live in the middle of London on a narrowboat and stay 14 days in Camden, then move to Islington for 14 days, then another London canal network and back to the start again, I'm mulling things over in my mind,