Lindsey Tait-Bailey, 47, saw her divorce, after 15 years of marriage, as the perfect opportunity to move to the country: “I wanted to leave Cheltenham, go somewhere fresh and start again.

“After a divorce, people start thinking ‘let’s go somewhere that feels calmer, a new sweep with a new broom’.”

Mrs Tait-Bailey, 47, moved to Charlton Kings, on the outskirts of Cheltenham, where she lives with her second husband, Norman, and her 14-year-old twins from her first marriage, Eliza and Jacob.

“Cheltenham’s a lovely town, but it can feel quite big. Here, five minutes in one direction, you’re at the bus stop, five minutes in the other, you’re in the depths of the countryside.

“The house backs on to a stream, there’s a patio, a play area for the kids, an area with trees and ferns.

“We get trout in the summer, we’ve had kingfishers and voles, it’s beautiful. I wanted to move to Stroud, a much smaller town, but there was this niggling thing about how much harder it would have been for the children. I wanted to make the changes as small as possible.”

Nine years after their parents split up, her children have the best of both worlds: “[Dad] lives barely a five, ten-minute walk away,” says Eliza.

“We pop round whenever we need to pick something up, or on our way home from school. Cheltenham’s really nice, you have all you need, but here in Charlton Kings you feel like you’re in the countryside.”

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