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Matthew, a very good summary.

I too started the summer home route in a certain -ahem - European country, but the difficulty was securing the first stage. The plan was to prefabricate almost everything off-site (but locally) and assemble a secure envelope over the course of one summer holiday.

Having let the 'enabling works' (an electricity cable and duct from the nearest road and a temporary meter on the site) to a local electrician, I returned to discover that everything had been expertly removed between one visit and the next. Wind duly removed from sails.

That was then years ago and I now own a quarter of a hectare of wonderfully remote mixed woodland with a thriving population of mosquitoes and space for a tent.

The dream lives on, pending retirement or redundancy.