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But it occurred to me when I met Heather Bridgewater that the two have more in common than is

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But it occurred to me, when I met Heather Bridgewater, that the two have more in common than is generally supposed. And it's all to do with how you go about looking for Mr or Miss Right. Mrs Bridgewater is wanting to move house. She already has a marital Mr Right of some years' standing called Geoff, who does things like building 50ft dry stone walls in his spare time He wasn't there when I went to visit He had gone off to spend a few days at the airfield. He flies light aircraft when he isn't running his miniature steam railway (seven and a quarter-inch gauge, with an interweaving track almost a mile long, but more of that in a moment).The pragmatic view of finding the love of your life ­ or someone to buy your house ­ goes like this There are six billion people in the world. The law of averages dictates that there must be loads who would do, if you can only attract one of them So it's just a question of searching diligently enough. The romantic view is altogether more high-flown, concerning itself with notions of fate and the crossing of unique lines of destiny. Personally, I've always subscribed to the more prosaic version ­ only now I'm not quite so sure.At first glance, you might think it should not be too hard for Heather and Geoff Bridgewater to find someone to buy their home.

Millerbeck House is a four-bedroomed barn conversion of Lakeland stone, located in what the Kendal estate agents Poole Townsend rather infelicitously call "an unspoilt corner" of the Lake District National Park The bottom of Lake Windermere is only a five-minute stroll As are the National Trust gardens at Fell Foot The glorious fells of Gummer Howe look down on the scene. It's a rural idyll, and yet the mainline to Glasgow, Manchester and London is only 20 minutes away. And, though it would be out of the price league of a local farmworker, your average suburbanite Londoner could sell their semi and stick a big lump of cash in the bank after buying it outright.The trouble is that the Bridgewaters don't just want to find someone to buy the house. They would like to find someone who also wants to buy Heather's mother's 400- year-old cottage next door. "Otherwise we will have to build a wall between the two properties and run a fence right through the garden which," as Heather puts it, "will spoil something rather special."And that is not all. They are looking for a buyer who is also prepared to take on the miniature railway, which joins the garden and the five-acre paddock to the side of the converted barn.Be warned. When you buy a light railway you don't just get the track, level crossing, turntable, station and the signal box.

You also get the Millerbeck Light Railway Association that goes with it. Its 12 members meet every Sunday in the workshop of the Bridgewaters' home, to build and repair the one-third sized steam engines that run on the track. They are a varied bunch, including a design consultant, a television retailer, the local vicar and a Buddhist monk from a commune in the nearby town of Ullveston What unites them is that they are enthusiasts to a man. (It's not a woman's world, steam trains and burst boilers.) As well as running the trains they have also re-laid the entire track, dug the cuttings, built the four bridges over the meandering Miller Beck and installed an electronic signalling that allows eight trains to do two-way running."They are a nice bunch of chaps," says Heather Bridgewater.

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