The Adventure Begins

The usual chaos for everyone involved – as always. I don’t think it’s possible to move house, without something going wrong. In reality, I think we did very well. Jamie turned up early to help, I had a few things to finish packing, but the removal men didn’t arrive until much later than expected. As there were 3 of them, and 3 of us, it didn’t take too long to load up the wagon. However, they packed up everything, including a load of things we were leaving behind, the tarpaulin that Ed wanted to cover up the back of the truck, and even Ed’s rucksack that he wanted on the ferry! Thank fully, they didn’t pack the clothes he wanted for the trip, and he was able to find a carrier bag to put them in.

I dropped the keys off at the estate agents, even though we hadn’t even exchanged, let alone completed, on the house sale. Then I went back to the house, to pick up something Ed had left on the drive, only to find that Ed had gone back too, for a different route out, to escape driving up a steep hill with traffic lights at the top. So after 30 minutes, we were both back where we’d started! Still, the journey to Portsmouth was fine. We were at the terminal for ages before we finally loaded up. Ed and Jamie getting on board about an hour before me, even though I booked in about an hour before them!

The crossing was superb. We were really lucky with the weather. Very calm, even in the open water. We saw lots of dolphins. The first school was very large, and very spread out. I think there were over 150 of them. They came right to the boat, jumping and playing, and swam right under. We could see them really clearly, which was truly wonderful. Even the First Officer seemed impressed, as he made a comment on the tannoy, after they had finally passed by.

We arrived safely on Friday morning, departing from the ferry on schedule, 8 am Spanish time. However, we both then boobed!! Jamie had set Ed’s sat nav to avoid toll roads, so he was directed out through tiny roads, into villages and up steep hills. I accidentally missed a split in the motorway, and ended up in the middle of Bilbao – at rush hour! Still, we both sorted ourselves out, and the rest of the way was quite uneventful, apart from the sat nav’s thinking we’d gone off road, when we were actually on brand new stretches of autovia. (Mine once told me to turn right after 18 meters, when I was actually about 100 meters up, on a new viaduct. I ignored it.) Thankfully, on Friday afternoon, the solicitor called, to confirm that everything had now gone through with the house, we could now move out!

We got to the villa ok, and unloaded the cars, but had to wait for the removal van. Disaster. There was no way that he could get the huge van down the little lane, even from the bottom end. We ended up with him parked on the pub car park, Ed driving up to him with the truck, the 3 of them loading the truck, then Jamie and Ed unloading it again at the house. I then shifted everything into the right rooms, where I could. We finally finished it all at 2am!!

Needless to say, the next few days were spent, trying to sort everything out. Boxes for the garage were in the house, and boxes for the house in the garage! I couldn’t shift them all myself on the night, and if they had mostly garage stuff on one load, that’s where everything ended up! Jamie had soon had enough, so we took him back to Valencia airport, where we were able to get him an earlier flight back.