The thought of emigrating had never seriously crossed Mike and Annemarie Shaw Roberts’ minds, until they saw a Spanish business advertised for sale in The Sunday Times one dull winter morning.

 “We are very impulsive people, we often do things on a whim,” explains Mike, of the Shaw Roberts’ sudden decision to leave the UK. “We had never thought of moving to Spain until we saw an ad for a business in Spain. But it was a very dreary February day and we started thinking what are we doing in this country? Look what we can get for our money over there.”

The ad was for a horse-riding business and ranch in Andalucia. Without doing any research into the region or the local amenities, a week or two later the couple went out to visit the property. “We came and had a look at it, liked what we saw and decided what the hell, let’s go for it,” said Mike.

The logistics of running a running a ranch and holiday business in a foreign country didn’t trouble Mike and Annemarie too much as they’d both had experience of different aspects of the work involved.
“I was bought up in Peru,” said Mike, “so I am bilingual in Spanish and we’d both worked in the travel industry previously. Annemarie has always had or been around horses and she was also running a catering company. So it combined all our skills.”

The couple’s three children, Jessica, who was 11 at the time; Toby who was then ten and Harriet, eight, quickly got caught up in the excitement. “We’d always wanted our children to have the opportunity to learn another language and experience a different culture,” said Mike, “and we saw it as a family adventure.”

The quest began six years ago now and the Shaw Roberts have no plans to turn back. “We saw the ad in February 2001 and we arrived in July with the three kids and two dogs and all our possessions. The only thing we did in making the move that wasn’t rash, was we didn’t sell our UK home. We had a beautiful house near Arundel that we rented out for the first two years, so that we had somewhere to go back to if things didn’t work out, but two years later we did sell it and we are still here.

Full story available in our January 2008 issue:  click here to subscribe