Londoners Bash and Paulette Robinson found their perfect lifestyle in a villa near Marbella.

It’s a Friday afternoon in January, and having flown into Malaga on the first BA flight out of Heathrow, Bash Robinson has just got back from a walk on the beach with his wife Paulette, children Oscar, Evie, Lochie and Maddie, and their two dogs, Joey and Flo.  Flushed from the sea air, which today has a mild bite to it, he settles down in the spacious garden of his recently acquired five-bedroom home and starts talking about the family’s move to Spain.

It was back in 2003 that Bash, 43, started mulling over the idea of shifting his lucrative career in advertising from London to Spain. With good professional contacts in southern Spain from organizing countless commercial shoots, he and a business partner formed Bubble, a company to service the production of commercials. Before he knew it, the idea had taken off, and he and the family were shipping out of London to start a new life on the Costa del Sol.

“My father used to own a place in Mojacar, when it was a hotbed of artists and Bohemians, and I had often taken off around Spain on my motorbike – and always loved being here,” he says. But those early Spanish adventures were quite a different matter to uprooting his wife and four kids and actually making the move, and the Robinsons found they had some readjusting to do.

“As the family grew, it became increasingly stressful handling the needs of the children in London, and we felt ready for a change of scene. We considered moving to the country, but for Paulette, that idea was definitely out. Then a holiday to Mallorca made us realize that Spain had the kind of relaxed vibe that we craved, along with the amazing weather and an international mix of people.”

The transition was not as easy as they had envisaged, however. “We found a fantastic house to rent by the beach just west of Marbella, we soon got the kids into great international schools, but I found that life was one big party with long lunches, fiestas and distracting offices by the sea. I found it hard to get into the work mindset, and it took me about a year to really handle the new way of life,” recalls Bash.