25th January 25

Today started from the Travelodge in Taunton where a good night's sleep was had. Travelodge hotels are getting better slowly the beds are normally always clean and fresh and more importantly, comfortable. The only thing is the lack of breakfast. Which isn't a problem if close to somewhere you can get something decent. This one is only fairly close to a Maccy D's or a Sainsbury's. So no breakfast and a quick Uber to Taunton station for a train to Yeovil to collect a Volvo V60 which is being delivered to a retail customer in a place called Farnham NR Swindon.

The train took us via Castle Cary on the London train. Castle Cary is obviously a country retreat kind of area for well off Londoners to have that thing I'm finding more and more hateful as I learnt about it. It's called second and multiple home ownership.

So rant for today is about this greedy practice of owning more property than you can actually live in. It started in the 80's for the masses and various home owning and modernising TV shows later and now far too many people have taken this as an opportunity to go into business buying developing and either flipping or renting out multiple homes. It unfortunately has scaled up so big that now property prices are way above what the young people who need them, can no longer afford. This has created a have and have not gap widening so much that the majority cannot buy.. therefore have to rent. So that market being so large that rents are going up and normal people cannot afford a decent home. Case in point 1.

I recI recently saw a new development of three and four bedroom house's for sale in Aylesbury Buckinghamshire. Not the nicest place to live. For nearly half a million pounds. Yes a three bedroom house for half a million. A normal looking estate house semi detached amongst a few hundred others that look identical for £450,000. The housing market is broken. Simple. Our Government has just announced when elected. That they are going to build a million new houses. FOR WHO???

More on the housing market later my next property rant will look at the short term rental market...

Anyway train stopped at Castle Cary and there is a kind of restaurant, come food store at the station. Where it looks like they make cheese too. Very nice, very well done building and a what looks like a good selection of food to buy. Albeit for the people I mentioned earlier. Not for the normal train travellers. We were quite hungry due to the lack of breakfast. So looked at the restaurant menu. No prices! Walked down to see availability and were faced with some very well dressed waiting staff in the obligatory long to the floor grey aprons, they seem to think fashionable for this type of restaurant. A rather prickly person quickly barked at us to see if we had a reservation. Obviously not I said. This is a railway station restaurant. I added, meaning it should be for travellers. Oh good god no. You need a reservation. He actually said, next month perhaps?? No thanks. See you.

Got the train to Yeovil and arriving at Volvo Yeovil who had the car ready and after the usual checks and appraisal we drove to the customer in the middle of nowhere and he seemed delighted to receive his new car. Another Uber to Swindon station and multiple trains back to Aylesbury. Again on a Saturday via Bicester Village 😳🤯