Kay Morris and her sister Wendy from Cardiff in South Wales both loved A Place in the Sun.
Although their husbands wanted nothing to do with it, back in 2002 they made a video of themselves at home and sent it to the programme makers and got the call-up to fly out to Spain.
“I had just retired from my job as a teacher, and we’d fallen in love with a place called Isla Canela in southern Spain, near the Portuguese border,” says Kay, now 82, whose husband Bill Morris was a Wales international rugby union player before becoming a solicitor. The couple had two children.
They didn’t buy one of the Spanish properties shown them with their £85k budget on the TV show but then they went on to buy a two-bedroom apartment frontline to the sea in their beloved Isla Canela – for £150k.
“We signed in 2004 and the TV show filmed it as a follow-up. The presenter was Gavin Lowe and we all had a great time. A few years before I’d put down a deposit on a place and then pulled out, but the programme gave us the push to try again for our dream home.”
Kay has now been over 50 times to the apartment and never fails to feel a lift when she walks through the door. “I always think ‘aren’t I lucky to have this’ because it’s where I still love to go, and it’s given our whole family two decades of happy memories.”
Kay brought out Wendy early on and Bill sadly passed away at the end of 2023, but the couple’s two children, now 51 and 55, along with their four grandchildren, aged 19 to 28, use the corner property which has three terraces overlooking the Guadiana River and Portugal from the side, the communal pool and then the Atlantic sea from the front.
“It has changed surprisingly little in 20 years,” says Kay, on the Ayamonte area that has remained more affordable than the Eastern Algarve just over the river, where prices have increased steeply.
You can find new two-bed, two-bath apartments there from around £200,000, or pick up a resale for less than that. Frontline beach ones are for sale from around £250,000.
“More apartments have been built but it’s still overwhelmingly Spanish – in fact the other British owners in our block have since sold. We know the owner of the penthouse upstairs and that’s where the family stay if we all go together,” she adds.
Just 45 minutes from Faro airport, the area of Ayamonte is easy to reach. “It feels totally safe, relaxing and even in peak summer the beaches never get too crowded. All the restaurants remain Spanish owned.”
When not travelling to Isla Canela four or five times a year, Kay is still an avid watcher of the TV programme. “I’d suggest to anyone to just go for it – it can bring so much happiness.”
Search for properties at Isla Canela or find out more about the resort.
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