Our Spanish house

We finally got the keys late Wednesday evening as both the estate agent and owner insisted on showing us where everything was, including all the fruit trees (orange, lime, plums, pear, apple, persimmon, nectarine, olives and a couple of grape vines).

After a quick trip to the supermarket for essentials, including a fan, we collapsed into bed, exhausted but glad to be here. On Thursday we had a run to IKEA for the basics such as plates, glasses, cutlery, pans and a load of other household stuff, and a bigger fan. It has been so hot here that the fans weren't enough, so Friday saw us purchasing a small air conditioner for the master bedroom upstairs where it's a lot warmer. We also had to buy a sofa as the owner took their's with them, and it got delivered today. We haven't missed it as we've been living outside on the terrace and enjoying the cooler evenings, so I guess the sofa won't see much use until the autumn

It will probably take another few days to finish unpacking and finding homes for everything. There is also a growing list of items that we need to buy here as we didn't want to remove them from London. Luckily for us there are a number of Chinese 'tat' shops within walking distance (although the first visit will be in the truck as initially, we need more stuff than we can carry) that have everything, and more, all at half the price of the bigger stores.

Mark has dismantled the pikey box and Tigger II is now back to normal and camouflaged under the orange tree. Mark has also started working on the camper - so much for having a rest for the month of August. I wondered how long it was going to take before he started to 'play' with his new toys :-)

Bienvenido a España

After 4 days on the road we, Tigger II and the pikey box made it to Spain in one piece. Hooray and much relief.

I had been concerned about the box getting wet and the plywood falling apart ('coz I is cheap and only bought lightweight non-marine ply), it blowing apart on the road at speed, wind getting in the holes in the front where some long stuff was sticking out and blowing the doors off the back, it going sideways at a roundabout as there was quite a bit of weight up high as it was completely full, or it otherwise failing and leaving a trail of debris through France and the Pyrenees, or getting pulled over by the rozzers to be told in foreign that I am not allowed to do such things on vehicles on their roads. As it turned out the journey was quite uneventful.

We did stick to the back roads mostly and tried to cruise control at 90kph which everything seemed happy at, although France does seem to have grown a huge amount of roundabouts at every imaginable junction on the non-toll roads which are interesting in a vehicle with weight up high. I guess in many ways its good practise for building Campalot - it will be larger and heavier still, but probably the centre of gravity will be a little lower.

We tried to follow parts of the route we used to take when i was a kid and the family drove down every 2 years, initially in a VW camper that was the same 1965 vintage as me, and later in a Renault 16 and caravan. Most of those trips went to the Bilbao region initially and then back from Barcelona to the channel, but at least one trip when I was navigating we came to Barcelona directly. Much of that route is now motorway grade toll roads so we tried to avoid them, but we did cross the Dordogne river just north of  Cahors over an old stone bridge that rang bells, and there was a municipal campground on the banks that could have been where we stayed one night and hung bottles of drinks in a shopping bag in the river to cool them off as we had no fridge. Or it could have been somewhere completely different - every thing i thought I knew about family and childhood has been corrected by other family members lately, so why should this one be any different?

Need to run around and buy some bits of furniture tomorrow so will keep the box for a couple more days, then it will be time to strip it down and get back to a normal vehicle, at least for a few weeks....

Pikey-mobile

In preparation for our relocation I've added a bit of luggage space to Tigger II in proper traveller fashion, although I think they tend to favour transit vans...

3 weeks and counting

We still have some work to do on our house and garden but it was at the stage where we could put it back on the rental market. The photographer came on Wednesday last week, the estate agent put it in the window and on the Internet on Thursday and they had two calls that evening and another one on Friday for viewing on Saturday afternoon. I also had a text from a friend saying their friends were interested in our house and if they could come and see it on Saturday too. So, four viewings later, two offers on Sunday, a deposit paid on Monday and it looks like we will be leaving on July 15th.  

It all got very real quite quickly. After a couple of days trawling through properties on the internet, I had whittled it down to six possibilities. Time to bring in a relocation specialist to help me set up viewings and then get my bum on a plane to Barcelona.  I flew out Wednesday afternoon and saw 5 of the 6 houses on Thursday. I ended up cancelling the last one as having looked more closely at the photos, there was no way Tigger was going to get through the gate never mind onto the driveway. I amused a number of the estate agents and owners by measuring the width of the gates, driveway and height of the garages before even looking at the house. After a very long day, we decided on one of the houses. It's a little further out than I had hoped for but it's  within walking distance of shops and the beach (sorry JohnMill, no pool at this one). 

Here is our new home

Yesterday morning and early afternoon was spent dealing with estate agents/relocation specialist, agreeing contracts and paying the deposit, all of which turned out to be more stressful than anticipated. This called for a late lunch with wine to calm my frazzled nerves - might as well learn to live like a local as all shops close from 2 until 5pm there. 

I'm now back home for a rest  (read - carry on tidying the garden) and to sort out what we're going to take to Spain. Meanwhile as well as finishing all the other jobs on the house, Mark needs to build a large wooden box on the back of Tigger (no time to get the camper shell built) to take all our stuff.

The countdown has begun...

Back home - one month in

We moved back into our house on April 25th and were shocked with the poor state the last tenants had left it in. We hadn't expected to have to redecorate every room and replace carpets that had been damaged by the cats they weren't supposed to have. 

I spent most of the first week cleaning and got some professionals in to help. After 14 hours of Eastern Europe's finest just in the bathroom and kitchen, those rooms looked more habitable. We started bringing stuff up to the house from the shed and as crockery, cutlery, kettle and microwave were near the door we had the basics but by day 5, still no sight of my pans. If I couldn't grill it, oven bake it or microwave it, then we weren't eating it. I was so happy that our local M&S was doing meal deals so by adding packets of microwaveable veges we had tasty meals in the evenings without having to rely on takeaways. Later that week Mark had some help from a young chap in bringing the furniture up to the house so at least we had our comfy sofas to sink into at the end of the day, rather than just the two stools at the breakfast bar. I've just about found a home for everything but need to be quite brutal over the next month with the clothing and send bags full to the charity shops as we have far too much and we probably will never wear again. We had kept a lot of clothing just in case we had to resume the life we had before if travelling hadn't worked out for us, but I think we're past that stage now :-) We have no intention of going back to work EVER.

Mark spent most of the first week trying to get the main bathroom back in working order by removing all the tiles in the shower and installing showerwall boards instead. He needed to make sure there were no more leaks coming down through the remaining ceiling into the hall. He then spent the next few weeks treating the joists and repairing the ceiling,  stripping wallpaper from the hall, stairs and landing, and three bedrooms, re-plastering holes in the walls that had come to light with removal of the paper, sanding and painting woodwork, thirteen door frames, painting ceilings, replacing lights and light fittings in the bathroom and kitchen and a myriad of other small jobs that all take time and energy. 

I filled 3 wheelie bins just from the front garden and now I'm onto the back garden. We got a gardener in with all the power tools to at least make a start on it and get it looking tidy and now I need to cut it back even more.

Having cancelled the post redirection 3 times, we finally got the truck paperwork through to our friends Yvonne and Tony, so finally got to bring Tigger 2 home. Mark has had a couple of hours with spanners to take the bling off the load bed and he's now starting to work towards Camperlot.

Carpets and lino are due to be fitted on Wednesday and hopefully another decorator will also be in to help us this week so the house will be fit for photos to advertise and view to get new tenants in . Whilst we like being back home, we can't afford to live here without one of us going out to work (and that's not going to happen in the near future).

Maybe next month we can fit in a social life without falling asleep in our wine.

Happy Easter from Shropshire

The last month has been great catching up with friends and family. A couple of weeks with John in the Netherlands, a week in London (thanks again John for your hospitality), a few days up north seeing family and doing repairs at the bungalow and we are now with Knees and Clive at their lovely house in Shropshire. Here is the fabulous view from their place

With Mark and Clive enjoying a bit of downtime in the garden.

In a few days we head back to London, reclaim our house and then the fun begins.

Copacabana it isn't

Somehow we seem to have traded down from Carnaval in Copacabana to Clacton on Sea. It's a bit different to say the least.

Its been an eventful couple of weeks and we have achieved everything we hoped to:

• Picked up the new truck, brought it back to the UK and started the import paperwork
• Been out to Spain and got our residency cards
• Visited the house and dropped off some beachwear that we won't need for a while, especially here
• Caught up with a few friends and relatives around the North Essex coast

We get the ferry back to the Netherlands on Thursday to visit the campervan show on Friday to look for some ideas and inspiration for Campalot, then we are going to spend a couple of weeks at Johnmill's place near Eindhoven to wait out brexit and chill before we come back to the UK and visit other friends and family and then get the house back