Buying a new home is always an exciting, but stressful experience, especially if you've never been through the process previously. Buying a new build property can be even more complicated because of the additional steps that are required to complete a purchase, and with most new build properties being sold "Off Plan" (not yet built) the process has a few extra steps then buying a house that is already built.

Hopefully sharing the steps I went through when buying a new build property Off Plan from Bellway Homes in Manchester might help someone else, although if you're buying from a different builder the steps might be different.

With React and its associated build chain there's a lot of interesting links I've come across to read into best practices and also interesting features and options you can build out with additional libraries. So with that in mind I thought it might be a good idea to have somewhere to store a list of these useful links to come back to should I want to read them again.

The Chinese New Year Celebrations in Manchester were a four day affair this year culminating in a large parade stretching from the town hall all the way through the China Town district…

I recently spent an evening over in the City of Derry prior to attending a wedding. Although I didn't get to spend too much time there I got to wander over the Peace Bridge that spans the river Foyle, and to have a quick look around the old army barracks that are situated on the other side of the bridge…

Birch Vale is a small town in the Peak District, situated on the Sett Valley Trail. Because of this, it is a short and relaxing walk from there to New Mills via the reservoirs just outside New Mills itself…

Blue John Cavern is somewhere I've been meaning to visit for a while now, after visiting the Chestnut Centre just down the road from it in Chapel-en-le-Frith it has looked like an interesting place to go. Then recently after visiting the Wieliczka Salt Mine near Kraków I was reminded of it and set out to visit it, and although it's not as extensive as the one in Poland, it was still quite impressive inside…

Down in Hope Valley in the Peak District there's a quite well known hill called Mam Tor which I went to have a brief nosey around…

Stockport's Viaduct is known locally as one of the largest brick structures in Europe, and can be seen from many parts of the town spanning across the valley that is Stockport itself. You can travel across it via train and get some nice views across the area. Also at night, with the famous Stockport Pyramid in the background, and the lighting from the M60 which passes beneath it, provides some interesting photographic opportunities…

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Woodbank Park is a large park in south Stockport, sandwiched between Vernon Park and the River Goyt which has some quite scenic walks along the river, along with large open spaces to rival that of any in the area…

The next morning was an early start after our brief and fleeing visit to Kyoto. This was to allow us to traverse the complex maze of subways in Tokyo in between rush hours to allow us time to check into our Airbnb rental house while the owner was around…

Kyoto was the next stop on our whistle-stop tour of Japan, and only a short one to give us a chance to meet up with the rest of our group and also to have a chance to experience a capsule hotel. I was down to stay in a more traditional style hotel and my travelling companions were booked into something called a capsule hotel which is kind of like a hostel only more futuristic. Everyone gets a locker, a place to store their shoes and a small tube style sleeping quarters, such an arrangement was a bit too claustrophobic for my liking, hence the hotel for me…

The third leg of my trip around Japan was down to an area due south of Sapporo known as Lake Tōya which is known for being close to a valley of hot springs (Hell Valley as it's known colloquially) and what's described as an evening of fireworks set off from an island in the middle of the lake itself…

Matsushima is considered one of the top three views in the whole of Japan, and with it only being forty minutes away from Sendai on the train, we made an early start and wandered over. Upon arrival, just outside the station, we came across the towns information booth where we met a friendly lady who told us all the ins and outs of the town, what there was to see and do and recommended, that if we were hungry, to head over to the towns Fish Market where they were getting into full swing of it being Oyster season…

Sapporo and it's surrounding areas were technically the second place we visited in Japan after a brief stay just outside Tokyo to enable to us take a short internal flight the next morning up to Sapporo itself. Once we arrived at the airport and made the short train journey down to the city itself we dropped our bags off at the hotel and went exploring…

Sendai is the main city for a region of Honshu known as Miyagi, and was a great stopping point between my travels between Hokkaido to the north and Tokyo/Kyoto to the south. The surrounding areas had plenty to see and do and all within a short set of train journeys away. As well as that the city itself was relatively big and had such pleasures as a local cat cafe, a pokemon centre and plenty of hidden bars and cafes…

After the visit to the Fox Village we decided to explore Shiroishi a bit more as we'd seen in the distance a castle that we fancied having a look around. After walking through a the rural edges of town that felt quite like a scene from an anime, stopping off at a local supermarket for some food and a zen garden in a nearby temple, we came up to the hill housing the castle, which after visiting we found out had been owned by Date Masume and dated back to the Edo era…

After spending most of the day in Matsushima, we headed back towards Sendai to make a connecting train towards a small town called Yamadera. Yamadera itself is a tiny village just outside the Myabi district which in itself is pretty unremarkable, a shop, a cafe and a few houses however up in the mountain behind it is a set of temples that lead to its peak. The journey itself is about 1.2-ish kilometres leading you to a height of a kilometre above the town below. The journey up is initially through some woodland and graveyards, before getting to the higher reaches where it thins out and becomes dominated by shrines, temples and housing for the people who work in them. There are also a lot of stairs, I really mean a lot, like millions! The time of day we'd ended up choosing (by fact of us deciding so late in the day) meant the local tourists had all but gone home and the way back gave way to some beautiful sunset views and a walk through the forest and graves at dusk which gave a hauntingly weird but quiet feeling…

A day trip to the Zao Fox Village was in order next, a short distance from Sendai, the town of Shiroishi houses a small sanctuary in the form of a village of foxes, high in the mountains nearby. After a bit of messing about trying to order a taxi in pigeon Japanese we were quickly whisked away up the mountain to our destination…