The Exmoor Files

This is a book about columnist Liz Jones' new life in a broken-down old farmhouse in the heart of Exmoor in Somerset with an expanding menagerie of rescued farm animals and horses, leaving behind not only her immaculate townhouse in Islington but also a husband. Liz's Exmoor farmhouse was once a six-bedroom Victorian country house with original stable block, barn and 46 acres of pasture, woodland, an orchard that has seen better days and two lakes, in the heart of Exmoor National Park. But the house is a wreck, and needs total renovation. The stables, though, are ready to move into, with the addition of rubber flooring, organic bedding and hay bars. Liz plans to start work on the stables, barn and fields first (they need new gates, fences, general tidying), prepare a large vegetable garden, and then over the winter start work on the interior of the house. 'The Exmoor Files' is a funny, honest, often brutal account of what it is like to start over again, on your own, in a completely different environment.