By Sarah Lewis

Until my mid-40s, if anyone were to ask what my guilty secret was, I would always answer without hesitation: snuggling on the sofa with a copy of Country Living magazine, poring over seductive rustic images while romanticising about life in a country cottage.

Such daydreaming would temporarily transport me from my stressful city life as a chartered surveyor in Bristol to a place of peace and happiness. The countryside, I'd always imagined, would offer my family an idyllic, perfect life.

But that dream could not have been further from the reality when, at the age of 45, I finally moved to Cumbria — and my life steadily fell apart. 

Instead of the "happily ever after" I'd envisaged for my family, living in the countryside cost me my marriage, robbed me of precious friendships and left my career in tatters.

Today, at 53, I'm a single mother-of-three. Even though the views from my garden are utterly breathtaking, there are many times I desperately wish I could rewind the clock and go back to my previous life.

Until our move to Cumbria, my husband David and I had been happy together. We'd met in Watford, where I lived, in the summer of 2002 and bonded over a mutual interest in running. We moved in together that Christmas. 

Two years later, at 42, we welcomed our son Alex. It was a surprise to have a late-life pregnancy, but nonetheless a lovely one.

Anxious to be near my parents, who lived in Bristol, so they could help with childcare, we sold my home in Watford and moved to the city. 

We were earning a combined salary of close to ￡70,000, yet even so we could only afford a second-floor, three-bedroom flat as house prices were exorbitant.

One unexpected bonus of moving while pregnant was that I immediately bonded with eight of the women in my Bristol antenatal group. Five months after Alex was born, I returned to work full time.

In August 2004 David and I married, and our much-wanted daughter Isabella followed just over a year later.

I had a fabulous career earning ￡45,000 a year (by now I'd decided to work a four-day week), my mum was a cherished regular visitor, on hand to look after the children at least once a week, and I had an unwavering support network of like-minded, career-orientated girlfriends ready to mop up my tears over a bottle of wine if potty training wasn't going well.

It was in 2005 that David, then a 30-year-old accountant, announced that he was fed up with Bristol and coveted a rural life. 

I struggled to understand his desire to leave. We enjoyed an active social life, receiving countless invitations to other families' houses with the children and we loved to host our own dinner parties too. With my parents' help we were both able to continue our passion for triathlons.

Life wasn't always perfect: Bella hardly slept, so neither did I. I was committed to a gruelling two-hour daily commute. 

Sleep-deprived, silly things would stress me out: there was no lift to reach our flat and, on my own, it was impossible to get two toddlers with their buggies up the stairs.

Over time, I convinced myself that a move to the country was the right thing to do; this was my husband, after all, the father of my children. Quite simply, I'd go to the ends of the earth for him. We'd start again. Somewhere beautiful.

It took two years to sell our flat so it wasn't until 2007 that we finally moved to Cumbria. 

Naive as it might seem, we chose this remote rural destination — hundreds of miles away from either my family in Bristol or his in Aberdeen — as our fresh start simply because we'd enjoyed holidaying in the Lake District.

When I told my mum we were leaving, she was devastated. She adored watching her grandchildren grow and spending time with me. 

My girlfriends were shocked; one even said, "This is what David wants. What do you want?" I quashed her apprehension and determinedly embraced the prospect of our rural future.

We sold our flat for what we'd paid for it — ￡210,000 — and within days I was offered a surveying job with the county council in Carlisle. 

David was also offered a position with them as an accountant. I grasped these fortuitous opportunities, telling myself that fate was signposting the way forward for us.

Reality first bit when we didn't purchase the sandstone cottage of my dreams. Rather, David chose a four-bedroom modern house. 

It's a large 1980s property in the market town of Brampton with a piano room, kitchen, sitting room, play room, study, utility room and two bathrooms. Even so, such a large house, at ￡190,000, cost us less than we'd sold our apartment for.

For a while, life was good. We enjoyed going for walks as a family and invested in bikes and sports gear for the children to accompany us on our runs. 

Even the children seemed happier. Bella, who had never settled in her nursery in Bristol, liked the first one we visited in Cumbria.

Yet I missed my girlfriends and my family. While I tried to strike up friendships with other mothers at the school gate, I struggled to find things in common with many of them, who were stay-at-home mums. I realised that it's unusual for women to juggle a high-flying career and a family in our new location.

Then, two years after we moved, two incidents occurred which, had we been in Bristol, would not have had the enormous impact on our family that they did.

First of all, I was made redundant in 2010, a casualty of the financial crisis. 

Then, shortly after, I discovered I was pregnant. At 48, it was a happy accident, and there was never any question of not keeping our baby.

It was impossible to secure even a part-time position while pregnant, particularly one which paid the kind of money we were used to. 

That was when our third predicament presented itself — without my income, our finances halved overnight. 

In the countryside, flexible part-time work for career-minded mothers is not embraced by employers in the same way as it is in a city.

Of course, not everything was bleak — the children were happy and settled — but without the stoic support of my mum, our on-tap babysitter, David and I lost our precious time together as a couple.

We both fiercely guarded our "me" time to run. But it meant that when one of us was with the children, the other pursued their hobby alone.

By 2011, I had a newborn son, Edward, a four-and five-year-old and no job. I was permanently exhausted. 

Date nights went out of the window, even though David tried to arrange them, concerned that we had started to lead parallel lives. But we had no babysitters on hand — not to mention no means to pay them.

He tried, I can see that now. Yet I didn't put the same effort into our relationship during this fragile time. 

To my eternal regret, I was grumpy, exhausted and felt like a drudge. I seemed to be doing most of the housework and childcare despite finally having found some part-time low-level admin work.

So while life outside our front door was breathtakingly beautiful, the day-to-day reality of life in a rural idyll wasn't panning out the way I'd envisaged.

When our parents came to see us — we couldn't expect them to book into a hotel — they expected to be looked after, rather than to look after us. 

Live-in guests added to the pressure. Once, when my mum was visiting, I went for a bike ride and, in desperation, remember thinking, "I could just keep cycling and not return."

In the summer of 2013, David announced that his brother had offered to pay for him to go to the Caribbean for ten days on a sailing holiday.

We hadn't had a holiday for years because we couldn't afford one, but if his brother was paying, how could I stop him? When he went that November, I felt incredibly resentful.

On his return, we continued to rub alongside each other. Yet silently I seethed about his holiday, the housework, my undemanding job, lack of friends and my family so far away. 

David would still take himself off for triathlon training. He may have been able to enjoy the countryside, but I couldn't.

Then, in May last year, David announced he was thinking of leaving me: I was shocked, angry and appalled. I felt incredibly let down. We saw a counsellor for four sessions. I desperately wanted to save our marriage, yet it was a fruitless exercise.

Apparently all the signs were there: David was distant, I was resentful and our relationship was strained to breaking point. I'd simply failed to read them. But friends had. 

One who'd stayed with us that March had texted me a week later asking, "Sarah, is everything OK?"

Even my parents had sensed the tension between us, although they didn't say anything at the time.

At the end of August, David finally left. While he moved into a rented place a couple of streets away, my immediate reaction was to put the house up for sale and return to Bristol. 

Within months, I told myself, I could revive my career, fall back in with my girlfriends and our social mummy scene and once again rely on the support of my family for childcare. All things I took for granted when I lived in a city.

But it wasn't a realistic option. I wouldn't be able to afford to get back on the property ladder, for starters. 

More importantly, I had to put the children and their needs first. They didn't want to move, they're happy and settled in a village school that has an outstanding Ofsted rating. They like being close to their dad, with whom I am still lucky enough, at least, to have a friendship.

So I can't afford to feel sorry for myself. I've got three young children to look after. I've taken up singing again, and also started writing about life as an older mum.

It's not the happy-ever-after I'd anticipated. Yet, somewhat ironically, when the children are spending time with their father, I at last get to enjoy the rural life that had eluded me for so long.