Cobham Archives - Financial Planning in Surrey

High Clandon Vineyard – putting some quality fizz into your retirement

Dominic Thomas
Post written: May 2026 • Published: May 2026
3 min read

High Clandon Vineyard – putting some quality fizz into your retirement.

There are lots of approaches to retirement. One that certainly captures the imagination is the course that has been charted by Bruce and Sibylla Tindale who in 2003 decided to move from Cobham to East Clandon, opposite National Trust property Hatchlands Park with magnificent views of London. They bought an equestrian property, which had development potential and it was hoped that the surrounding grounds would fulfil Sibylla’s desire to create a garden from a blank canvas. Sibylla was initially met with problematic chalk soil, however she quickly recognised that this problem was an opportunity (a common trait for entrepreneurs). They had the land, soil, geology and weather for a small English vineyard. Originally from the Constantia Valley in South Africa, this was a challenge that she was ready for.

They set about establishing an acre of vines, with friends helping to plant Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, the combination used in Champagne. At the time, English sparkling wine was in its infancy but starting to make an impact. Today they produce between 1,800 and 2,500 bottles each season. There is a very obvious emphasis on quality, artisanal expertise, patience and thoughtfulness, which is drawn from both of their careers in London – Bruce, who eventually ran PA Consulting and Sibylla who worked at Unilever. As a result, they have picked up a stack of awards and Sibylla is one of the five founder members to develop local Vineyards, helping form the Vineyards of the Surrey Hills.

If you haven’t tried English Cuvee, which is the finest champagne without the ability to use the term, you have missed an opportunity, which I would encourage you to correct. Laid down for four years or more, the High Clandon Cuvee goes toe to toe with some of the greatest Champagnes from Taittinger or Moet & Chandon. Indeed, much like The Paris Judgement (1976) 50 years ago, a blind taste between French and American, Sibylla formed “The Battle of Waterloo – Battle of the Bubbles!” a challenge between the French Champagnes and the English. You can join the blind taste testing event with Oz Clarke at the vineyard.

Bruce and Sibylla tend the vines themselves, this is their passion and skill, both having studied wine extensively at Plumpton College in Sussex, not far from Lewes. The Cuvees are as individual as each year, and named thoughtfully to reflect their tones. The most recent Borealis reflects the fortnight in 2024 when Surrey was treated to several nights of nature’s display.

High Clandon also has a rather magical wood where the Perigord truffle has been found, in fact the estate currently claims the largest single truffle find in England at 604g. Sibylla and her delightful cocker spaniels Persephone and Juno are avid truffle hunters having had training in Italy and, as you may imagine, this adds to the experience of a wonderful time at High Clandon.

The Tindales have created a magnificent business from their passions, building upon a lifetime together since University. Their estate has an incredible wildflower meadow which encourages rare blue butterflies and plenty of honey bees. It is full of sculptures from local artists to peruse (and consider relocating to your own garden!). Expect a warm welcome, deep knowledge and a delightful time celebrating excellence in the small local vineyard, competing with the best of the best.

Sibylla is passionate about life, it’s a real joy to spend time with her, learning about their winemaking process is fascinating and she’s an avid historian, with a nose for the truth including busting (or bursting!) a few of the myths around Dom Perignon. Sibylla holds special gatherings at the vineyard which include a regular charity Jazz event each summer. You can secure yourself a tour at High Clandon and maybe an attempt at sabrage in true Napoleonic fashion!

Our boutique office on the Cobham Park Estate is only 15 minutes from High Clandon, so why not take advantage of combining a visit to review your financial planning. You are already familiar with the required patience, pruning and harvesting of your investments. Every year is unique with its own challenges and results; we are here to design, craft, implement and maintain your plan for a life well lived and a moment to pause, reflect and celebrate your story and the legacy you are creating.

Website: https://highclandon.co.uk/visit/

Vineyards of Surrey Hills: https://www.surreyhillsvineyards.co.uk/

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High Clandon Vineyard – putting some quality fizz into your retirementJemima Thomas2026-05-27T13:59:53+01:00

Are you building a bridge to your future?

Dominic Thomas
Jan 2026 • 2 min read

Are you building a bridge to your future?

Financial planning straddles the past, present and future. Here at Solomon’s, we like to start with the end in mind, the second habit of “highly effective people”. We need to know what you are aiming for and where you are now. It’s helpful, significantly so, to also know enough about the history that has lead to where you are presently.

One of the many problems with great financial planning is that it requires time and therefore patience. A combination that is not something that is easy to master and arguably the antithesis of our current cultural impulses; it’s also problematic because you only get the long-term once.

Compounding investment returns is a crucial part of your plan, in practice we are not magicians and really have three main ‘dials’ to operate – spending, contributing and time. So I wonder if you would consider the example of an actual bridge – the one that you have probably known about since early childhood nursery rhymes and probably crossed more than once … London Bridge. Construction of the first stone bridge started in 1176 and took around 33 years to complete; at the time it was the sole bridge across the Thames.

For hundreds of years, London Bridge was the only crossing of the River Thames. It had a total monopoly.

If you wanted to cross the bridge to get to the City, you paid a fee
If you wanted to sail under the bridge, you paid a fee
If you wanted to fish off the bridge (ill-advised in the Thames most of the time!), you paid a fee
If you owned one of the 140 shops/houses on the bridge, you paid a fee

Since opening in 1209, those payments have been accumulating and administered by Bridge House Estates (now called City Bridge Foundation). To give a sense of scale, the 816 years of being open for business until 2025 is obviously a very long time indeed.

To give you a sense of what compounding can do, if you’d invested the princely sum of £100 in 1209 and made a 3% return every year for the last 816 years, you’d have £2,986,588,300,073 today.

Today, now a charity doing all sorts of work and also the owner of Blackfriars Bridge (1769), Southwark Bridge (1819), Tower Bridge (1894) and the most recent Millennium Bridge (2000), the Foundation has annual income of over £42m a year, of which around £10m is from admissions and visits. The latest accounts report assets worth over £1.6bn. This gives rather a lot of meaning to terms like “spanning the generations” and is some serious legacy planning! Imagine the wealth of history that the bridge has witnessed – albeit rebuilt several times.

References:

Report and Accounts: https://www.citybridgefoundation.org.uk/about/governance/annual-reviews-and-reports

Charity: https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/en/charity-search/-/charity-details/1035628/assets-and-liabilities?_uk_gov_ccew_onereg_charitydetails_web_portlet_CharityDetailsPortlet_organisationNumber=1035628

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Are you building a bridge to your future?Jemima Thomas2026-03-24T16:26:11+00:00

Who is in your fantasy football team?

Dominic Thomas
Sept 2025 • 3 min read

The FA of Fantasy Funds for Footballers

I wonder if you know a professional footballer? Or perhaps you are one. Our offices are located opposite the Chelsea training ground in Cobham. As the season starts and the all important transfer window closes, a lot of money has changed hands (we have seen a new British record payment for a player – £125m for Alexander Isak) with over £3bn spent by the Premier League.

Professional footballers tend to be young, and with the odd exception like James Milner, most end their playing careers by age 35. Some go on to become pundits and coaches, occasionally a Manager.

Sadly, where there is money, there is corruption and I am sorry to report that football is no different. There are a significant number of Agents and villains all set to relieve the player of his money and of course there is plenty of pressure on players off the pitch to simply keep up the appearance of success.

Just like anyone else, young players (and old ones) are not sure who to trust when it comes their finances. Many have been ruined by bad advice or downright fraud. There are advisers who ‘specialise’ in providing advice to players, but this guarantees nothing, and if anything is probably a red flag. Many have lost millions of pounds in investment schemes that they didn’t understand and should never have been exposed to. They were young and not sophisticated investors (most people aren’t) and they have been scammed time and time again.

This isn’t new information, it’s been going on for years, but there is a new documentary on the BBC – which you can see on iPlayer as well – called The Story of the V11. Players get all sorts of abuse from the stands and in the media, but there is and has been a great deal of financial abuse. It is utterly disgraceful and inexcusable. Many of the players involved have lost everything (including their lives due to the perceived shame and resulting suicide). It is desperately sad and could have been avoided.

The main problem that most professional players face is a high income (which is taxed at 45%) and a celebrity lifestyle alongside little if any financial knowledge. So when you see vast sums of tax being taken from your payslip, it’s entirely understandable to ask the question: what can I do to reduce it? (as we all do). Footballers have a short career but usually a very normal life expectancy. However, there are firms of financial advisers that will always attempt to carve out a niche market and claim that they know what makes everyone in that niche tick … then they seek endorsement from others who are well known in the niche and who (by virtue of experience) imply that their recommendations can be trusted.

The reality is of course that everyone is different, we may share lots of similarities, but we are all different. The common ground we share is attempting to secure our own future for when we get sick and are unable to work or decide to retire and stop earning.

The only thing these players did wrong was to trust the wrong person, who financially abused them and sold them investments that were and are… a load of rubbish. The advisers concerned sold utterly awful ‘investments’ (honestly, they cannot really be called investments). The advisers earned huge commissions and pretended that the tax-incentivised schemes (film partnerships) were backed by the Government and were risk-free.

It is a desperately sad tale and I hope that they get justice and the ‘advisers’ concerned all go to prison. They have caused misery and hardship and all the ingredients for a painful existence. When people are victim to these sorts of fraud they often feel stupid; they are not; they were ripped off and taken advantage of by criminals and fraudsters under the guise of being a qualified financial adviser.

Your financial plan does not need to involve complex investments, irrespective of your level of wealth. Investing doesn’t need to be complicated; it’s about owning a diversified portfolio of real businesses that produce income from the profits they make. Some businesses fail, but owning them all in the way our clients do, means the risk is minimal – barring a world ending catastrophic event (at which point none of us will be worried about money).

A good financial plan reflects your aspirations; a great one expresses your values and is reviewed regularly and importantly, you should be able to see the valuation of your portfolio and have it verified by various properly regulated entities.

So, you may not be a footballer, but the issues are the same – trusting the person that is advising you about your money, which is your future. If you know a footballer (I spot many in the Cobham area) or someone who needs our help in providing impartial, transparent advice with clear fees and clear communications, by spreading the word about us you may not be simply saving them money, but perhaps saving their life.

It is my opinion that currently, the legal system, tax system and regulatory framework have all failed to help these players and it is a disgrace – another one.

Get in touch to find out more, share this with a friend.

Here is the link to the BBC documentary: Footballs Financial Shame

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Who is in your fantasy football team?Jemima Thomas2026-03-24T16:43:56+00:00

Riding High on Free Spirits

Dominic Thomas
Oct 2024 • 4 min read

Riding High on Free Spirits

You cannot have failed to notice a significant increase in the number of camper vans pootling along British roads over the last few years. The pandemic really prompted a desire to get out and about but in a controlled personal environment. I know camping isn’t everyone’s idea of fun, but I found myself undeniably attracted to the idea of a quick getaway and the ability to pitch up almost anywhere and relax.

In the Spring, after much research I bought my first camper van from Free Spirit, based near Chichester. Like many, I had grown up with a fondness for the VW Beetle (thanks in part to Herbie and the 1972 Streisand and O’Neal film What’s Up Doc?) and its bigger partner the camper van. There is something reassuringly simple about the shape and sound, but of course the original vehicles are all now considerably older than me – and I need a reasonable amount of care, let alone a vehicle.

Like most, my default setting was heading towards club VW, that was until I looked at what I was getting, invariably a converted diesel tradesman’s, couriers or ex-breakdown van, all of which have had a serious amount of ‘stress-beating’ before then being gutted and converted into a camper. Thankfully I came across Ian and his team at Free Spirit. They import Japanese vehicles – unleaded petrol, steering wheel on the right side, well-maintained in a climate that makes life hard for rust. I ended up with a much better vehicle, it cost significantly less money than its VW competitor and having been designed as a luxury exec vehicle in image-conscious Tokyo, is a much more comfortable and smooth ride (it’s a Mercedes).

It’s early days in my camper van experiences, but I’ve already been able to enjoy rolling up to music festivals in fields, pulling up to a fantastic view of a sunlit coastline, then unrolling the bed to simply relax with a cup of coffee. I’m delighted. It’s probably not the typical vehicle that a financial adviser drives and I’ve had many battles with my own ego of ‘what a car says about me’ over the years. In my three-and-a-bit decades as an adviser, I’ve only been asked twice about what car I drive (by a client). I have no idea what you would think about cars or the car I might drive, but my suspicion is that if I turned up to your house in a new Ferrari (or even an old one) you would possibly think I am charging you too much! I’ve had this debate (sorry ‘discussion’) with peers before and I know many don’t walk their talk.

A camper van is not for everyone of course and it’s a fairly large vehicle (I even went long-wheel base), so it’s fortunate that I have a decent driveway at home (and at the office!). I’d be curious to learn what car you think your financial adviser ought to drive… I assume there are various scales at play – the price, brand, age and of course the affordable value purchase, versus desired aspirational one, all of which is subjective and reflects your own values.

I know several of you have camper vans or have considered getting one as part of your retirement treat (it’s not mine) but as ever, I suggest speaking to experts, people that do this stuff all day every day and not to be solely persuaded by lifestyle marketing and a sense of nostalgia. As ever, your decisions are best based on your values and earmarked resources. I can certainly recommend a discussion with Ian at Free Spirit, he has a great business and I’ve been delighted with their service, a simple five stars from me.

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Riding High on Free SpiritsJemima Thomas2024-10-23T14:11:38+01:00

Game, (Re)Set & Match?

Debbie Harris
July 2024 • 2 min read

Game, (Re)Set & Match?

It seemed rather fitting that on the day Solomon’s bid farewell to our office in SW20, Andy Murray bid a tearful farewell to the green grass of SW19 (not to mention it was also the day we had a changing of the guard in parliament … but that’s a blog for Dominic to write!)

I met Andy well over a decade ago (before he won the coveted Wimbledon championship trophy) and he was a really down to earth guy. I was relieved to see that despite fame and fortune, during his post match interview after his foray into the doubles tournament with his brother Jamie, he seems to have retained that ‘average Joe’ attitude to life.

I wish him well for the future and I feel confident that he will remain in the public eye in the sport that he loves, but I actually wanted to talk to you about our office move to the leafy village of Cobham in Surrey.

As much as we loved our office in Raynes Park (it was the firm’s home for 17 years), we had started to outgrow it. And growth is a good thing! Our new space in Cobham is a wonderful place surrounded by nature and shrouded in the history of the area. You can read about ‘The Old Mill’ here.

Just like Mr Murray, it will take us a little time to adapt to new routines and arrange things so that the new office feels like ours, but it opens up new opportunities for us as a firm providing a more flexible space for us to be creative and productive.

As with all change – there is a feeling of having a ‘reset’ … it’s why I love Mondays so much (and the first page of a new notebook!). The team here don’t all necessarily agree with me about ‘the Monday thing’ but there is a freshness about starting something new – the novelty factor – that gives us an extra spring in our step and a little more focus.

We are hopeful that as we move forward in our new ‘home’, we will continue to do better and to challenge ourselves as we aim for excellence in everything we do for you.

We would love to welcome you to our new offices in the coming months – whether it’s for a meeting with one of our advisers or just for a coffee and a chat!

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Game, (Re)Set & Match?Jemima Thomas2024-11-19T16:46:53+00:00

New client surge?

Dominic Thomas
June 2024 • 3 min read

New client surge?

We are expecting and ready to meet with lots of new clients. Our premises in Cobham are perfect for quiet, confidential and tranquil client meetings. There is ample parking and decent coffee!

This is perhaps just as well since a recent report by Investec Wealth has revealed that nearly 60% of investors are looking to get advice. This is for a variety of reasons, but nearly 30% are expecting to do so within the next 12 months and a significant proportion have over £250,000 of investments.

By and large, most are seeking advice about retirement, but a not-so-insignificant 20% reported that they simply don’t have time to manage their own investments. Whilst I welcome the opportunity to meet with them, I fear that many will be expecting to find a magician rather than a financial adviser as they may have left good planning somewhat late in the day.

Of late, I have growing experience and awareness of the problems that many face as they age. Memory isn’t quite what it was and we are seeing more people with concerns about Alzheimer’s. Many of us will have some experience of this already and sadly many will do so in the future. There are considerable issues for your finances and ensuring that you have your ‘ducks in a row’ is of key importance. As is having the right team around you; providing what you need.

As we age, we invariably become increasingly aware of the importance of relationships, much more so than anything else; but these are loaded with a lifetime of baggage. Spending time on the things that are important (what you actually want and value) rather than attempting to impress people with your brilliance at managing your own money; is something that I would actively encourage. Managing investments, tax and regulations is a time-consuming exercise and not one that most people would want to waste their most valuable resource on (time). I suspect and believe that you have better things to do with yours.

We are here, ready to begin your journey with us and towards financial freedom – or maintaining it.

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New client surge?Jemima Thomas2025-01-27T15:37:51+00:00