“It’s great but I need a warm pair of slippers!”
The Reverend Ken Gabbadon from Wetherby in Yorkshire has been planning to move to Cyprus for a while. Now he’s retired from his job as a prison chaplain he’s ready to enjoy a new life in the sun. He took his friend Katie out to film in November 2021 looking for a three-bedroom property with a budget of £80,000 in the Larnaca area with Jasmine. Viewers will have seen Ken accept a counter offer of just over £80k on property three…
We happen to catch up with Rev Ken the week he has made the move to Cyprus – into property three, in the Royal Gardens complex in Tersefanou. He has spent most of the day on his sunny balcony – something that wouldn’t have been possible in his former home in West Yorkshire. “But the winter nights get surprisingly cold here. I was glad that I came out in December for a trip so I knew to bring some slippers and a warm dressing gown!” says Ken, 69.
Ken is adjusting to living in a two-bedroom apartment after a ’10 room’ vicarage in the village of Clifford, where his church was. “I have a 40-foot container of furniture and also my car arriving at the end of February so am certain there will be lots of boxes that don’t fit!” he laughs. But it’s all about the balcony in his new home, from which he sits watching distant kayakers at sea, cargo ships on the horizon and the planes coming into land at Larnaca. “I am going to get some sort of cover made so I can sit out here all year round,” he says.
After the offer was accepted at the end of 2021, Ken has been out four or five times to sign the papers in May 2022 and then get his flat in order. He’s had to have a few adaptions done to accommodate his large American style fridge, washing machine and dryer. “It is a bit tight for space. It was previously used as a holiday home,” he says.
But Ken knows plenty of people who have able to help him, with friends in Nicosia sourcing him some tradesmen and also some friendly neighbours. “I have met three different British couples who live in the building. They’ve been so helpful, giving me useful numbers for taxis and dropping me off to the shops. One couple from Darlington who have a holiday home in my block even dropped me off home in Clifford when we were on the same plane back home.”
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He bought the apartment from a British couple too, who left him all the contents, and have been super helpful too with the broadband. “They live in Croydon, five minutes from my sister, as it happens. I was grateful for what they have done I sent them a hamper.”
Ken has now retired from work – he was prison chaplain in a number of prisons including HM Manchester and Leeds - as he jokes ‘he’s done a lot of gaols’. But he will soon receive a licence from the bishop of Cyprus so he can hold services in local churches, like St Helena’s, featured on the programme. He’s also in the process of sorting out his visa, with the help of a solicitor. “There are many things I didn’t realise about moving here but it’s all slowly getting sorted.”
