“It’s certainly been a bit of a journey since we moved here,” admits Catherine, who couldn’t wait to move to Cambridge from army quarters in Essex with her Scottish husband Derek and their three children.

“My husband was working in the army as a chef and he got made redundant,” she explains. “We had been living in army accommodation for 15 years since we were married, and the house was tied with the job.”

Catherine met Derek 17 years ago when he was first stationed in Cambridge and she was still living with her parents in Longstanton and working at Tesco’s as a stock control assistant. Since then, the Wallaces have done two tours of Northern Ireland, two and a half years in Cyprus and seven months in Germany before coming back to postings in Waterbeach then Wimbish in Essex. Charlotte, 13, was born in Belfast. Alice, 10, was born in Limassol, Cyprus. While James, 5, was born down the road at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

“I’ve pretty much done a full circle really because I was born in Cambridge, I met my husband in Cambridge, then travelled the world and finally decided to settle back in Cambridge,” says Catherine, 40, who always wanted to come back to the city where she grew up and where her Mum still lives today.

“Because I know Cambridge well, it’s made it a lot easier to settle into what in theory is our forever home,” she says

“It’s certainly been a bit of a journey since we moved here,” admits Catherine, who couldn’t wait to move to Cambridge from army quarters in Essex with her Scottish husband Derek and their three children.

“My husband was working in the army as a chef and he got made redundant,” she explains. “We had been living in army accommodation for 15 years since we were married, and the house was tied with the job.”

Catherine met Derek 17 years ago when he was first stationed in Cambridge and she was still living with her parents in Longstanton and working at Tesco’s as a stock control assistant. Since then, the Wallaces have done two tours of Northern Ireland, two and a half years in Cyprus and seven months in Germany before coming back to postings in Waterbeach then Wimbish in Essex. Charlotte, 13, was born in Belfast. Alice, 10, was born in Limassol, Cyprus. While James, 5, was born down the road at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

“I’ve pretty much done a full circle really because I was born in Cambridge, I met my husband in Cambridge, then travelled the world and finally decided to settle back in Cambridge,” says Catherine, 40, who always wanted to come back to the city where she grew up and where her Mum still lives today.

“Because I know Cambridge well, it’s made it a lot easier to settle into what in theory is our forever home,” she says

Because I know Cambridge well, it’s made it a lot easier to settle into what in theory is our forever home.

So why did she choose Trumpington?

“The reason why I wanted to come to this specific area was I was fancied the idea of the new build properties,” she says. “I knew about this development and thought it sounds like a perfect location for us. Because the children have all got doctor’s appointments regularly, I wanted to be close to the hospital to make it a bit easier with travel and transport.”

The Wallace children between them have around 25 different professionals caring for their various medical and special educational needs – ranging from dyspraxia to developmental delay to hearing loss and ADHD. Catherine spends a lot of time driving the kids to and from various hospital appointments, which is why living within such easy commuting distance of Addenbrooke’s was such an important consideration. Catherine also suffers from ill health herself, which means she relies on her mobility scooter and specially adapted car to get about. Just before James was born in 2010, doctors discovered she had a hole in her heart, which was making her dangerously ill. Today she suffers from chronic asthma, arthritis and a debilitating condition called fibromyalgia, which causes extreme pain and fatigue.

“When I have a flare up it’s almost as though my body’s been dipped in boiling water,” explains Catherine, who some days struggles to get out of bed. Some nights she can’t get up the stairs to her bedroom and sleeps on the black leather sofa surrounded by the hum of the tropical fish tanks that line the length of the living room wall. Derek – who’s studying part-time for an Open University degree in environmental sciences – is Catherine’s full-time carer. They rely on disability benefits and income support to make ends meet.

The Wallace’s home – one of 480 affordable homes on the Trumpington Meadows development – has been specially adapted to Catherine’s needs. There’s an extra banister and grab rails, a downstairs wet room with a shower, as well as a bath lift. It helps that the new build properties have been built with wider doors and wheelchair-friendly entrances too, but Catherine is hoping they can install a stair lift soon. Something that wouldn’t have been so easy if they’d moved into an older property.

“We’d seen a couple of older properties because we’re housing association tenants but they were really, really small,” says Catherine. “I read up a bit on this development and saw that the room sizes were actually quite good. We were very, very surprised at the room sizes. When we were offered the house here, I had a look at one of the other properties and saw it didn’t have much of a garden. So when we saw this house had a garden, we were really pleased.”

As far as Catherine is concerned, this is definitely the family’s “forever home”. They no longer have to face the uncertainty of moving from pillar to post every few months in different army bases. And they can finally make their Trumpington Meadows house into a home.

“It’s seeing the children being settled and actually being in a home,” she says. “Because being in the army it’s never been home. It’s just been a roof over our heads. Being able to decorate and put our things up, and feel we’re not waiting for a letter to come through the door to say ‘you’re going to be moving to another country’…”

“To know we can be here for as long as we choose to be here, and we can do as much or as little as we want to do with the home,” she adds. “Getting involved with the area; getting to know people. We’re not being forced to do anything. It’s all of our decisions,” she says.

The first thing the Wallaces set about doing when they moved into their new home was decorating the house in the boldest and brightest colours they could possibly find in the paint shop! The kitchen is a startling sunshine yellow. The staircase is painted in sunset orange. While the end wall of the living room is decorated top to bottom with a beach scene complete with palm trees to remind them of their time in Cyprus.

“It was also a statement because in an army home everything is magnolia, and if you decorate you’ve got to take it all back to magnolia when you move out,” says Catherine. “We decorated one house and the paint wasn’t even dry before we were told we had to move in ten days. So when we moved to this house, we wanted to make a big statement with feature walls.”

All the children’s bedrooms have different themes – for 5-year-old James, it’s a space man odyssey; 10-year-old Alice’s room is an underwater adventure; while 12-year-old Charlotte’s room will have a graffiti wall, as soon as she’s learned how to keep her bedroom tidy, according to her Mum! For the master bedroom, the feature wall will eventually be decorated with a huge image of the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s not that Catherine’s ever been there – or is ever likely to go there, because she finds it too difficult to get on and off planes these days – but for her, the bridge symbolises the journey they’ve been on to get to where they are today…

I knew about this development and thought it sounds like a perfect location for us.

After two years living in their new home, the children have settled well. The Portakabins have gone elsewhere and outside their front door is a park that’s become a hub of community activity. Dads come and play cricket with the kids in the summer and there have been community events and barbecues there too. For Catherine, it was a big draw to move into a new community where everyone was starting afresh.

“From the military experience, I’d found it quite hard infiltrating a community that’s already in place,” says Catherine. “So to have something that’s brand new and everyone’s in the same boat, with all the children starting at the school is great. It’s going to be a big, massive community...”

Charlotte was one of the first children to start in Year 6 at the new primary school in Trumpington Meadows when it opened in September 2013 (the family had to commute backwards and forwards for a month from Essex to the school because their new house wasn’t quite ready). And all three children have thrown themselves into local activities – with karate on Mondays, youth club on Tuesdays, swimming on Wednesdays and drama club on Thursdays. Charlotte has also joined Trumpington’s youth panel, and has been away on residential weekends with the local youth club too.

We plan to stay here as long as possible.

“The children were born into the army way of life but Charlotte did find it very difficult,” admits Catherine. “To her, leaving her friends was the end of the world. Since we moved here, she’s made some good friends from the development and the village too from the activities she does.”

Catherine has found it more difficult to make friends, though, because it’s so challenging for her to get out and about. She has one friend who she meets for coffee occasionally at nearby Waitrose, where she stocks up on dairy-free foods for herself and Alice (though she prefers Tesco’s for the family’s weekly shop). She struggled to make friends with her immediate neighbours at first because they didn’t speak much English (one set of neighbours is from Hungary and the other is from Turkey). But things have definitely got easier as time has gone on.

“I’ve noticed with the school there are lots of people from different cultures that we say hello to,” says Catherine. “It’s nice and it’s interesting. Now we’ve been here a few years, we’re getting to know people.”

The only complaint Catherine really has about her new “forever home” is the occasional late night noise from fireworks let off for celebrations at neighbouring Anstey Hall, which has recently been turned into a B&B and wedding reception venue. And parking, which is an ongoing issue for the Wallace family. Everyone in the new development has been allocated two parking spaces – and the Wallaces were allocated a double garage directly behind their home, which sounds like the perfect solution. However, the family have two specially adapted vehicles so that Catherine can get her mobility scooter in and out of the cars when she needs to – using ramps and hoists. And the double garage is just not big enough for both of these cars.

To have something that’s brand new and everyone’s in the same boat, with all the children starting at the school is great.

“One of our vehicles doesn’t physically fit in the garage because it’s wheelchair adapted,” Catherine explains. “My car we put in the garage but I can’t open my doors properly.”

Ironically there are two parking spaces marked as disabled directly behind the Wallace’s garage, but these are allocated to other houses where there are no blue badge holders. The situation is frustrating and is unlikely to be resolved until the roads are adopted by the Highways Agency, according to Catherine. In the meantime, she has already had one parking ticket for parking in front of her own house.

“I disputed that and the parking enforcement team said I should park in the disabled spaces,” says Catherine. “It’s a bit of a vicious cycle and it’s confusing to know who’s responsible. Obviously when they planned the development, they needed to have a certain number of disabled parking spaces, but I don’t believe these should have been allocated to homes. To me it seems the disabled parking spaces aren’t worth the paint – and I’m aware of another family that are having the same problem.”

Parking issues aside, though, the Wallaces couldn’t be happier with their decision to move to Trumpington.

“Parking has been the only headache that we’ve had since we’ve been here,” says Catherine. “It’s something we’ve just adapted to and managed how we can. Yes, it’s inconvenient but the benefits and everything else of being here outweighs that and it will be sorted at some point.”

“We plan to stay here as long as possible,” she adds. “Charlotte joked that this is her home now until she gets married!”

Looking at the sheer excitement in Charlotte’s eyes as she gives a tour of her precious bedroom, carefully navigating the piles of clothes and toys, it’s clear that she too has fallen in love with her family’s “forever home”. And it looks like she has no plans to leave any time soon either…