Hey folks. Firstly, thanks to each and every one of you that spent a rainy afternoon with us in the Hare and Hounds last weekend, we were overwhelmed by your presents, cards and well wishes. Just thankyou so much for coming.

The last few days have been beyond stressful, so I’ll fill you in on the saga so far…..

The last few days of packing were pretty hellish. That sort of time where you’re taking down curtain rods and packing things that up to this very moment you were using etc. We pulled a couple of late nights and got up at 6.00am on the day of loading the van to finish off. Typically ran out of bubble wrap but at this point I think neither of us gave a rats ass. The van arrived at 9.30 as planned and my heart sank. There was just no way everything was going to fit. We had made provision to use a friend’s empty garage just in case (thanks Micheal) but it became apparent that that was just going to be silly. We loaded what we could, the big stuff, sofas, our American fridge freezer which was a bugger to get out the door, dining table, patio furniture, and then as many boxes as we could manage but we still had a world of stuff left. So van one left yesterday morning and is now unloaded in France, massive thanks to everyone that helped! Meanwhile back in Blighty we needed to arrange a second emergency van to move the remainder of stuff to storage. Fortunately 2nd van arrived at 1.00pm and while loading said, we could probably take this across for you. At this point both of us would have given our spleen to not have to unload this into a storage unit and then reload at a later date. It doubled our removal budget but 2nd vanload should arrive hopefully with us tomorrow teatime. That is if someone we met just yesterday, doesn’t run off with our money and a vanload of our stuff, but, beggars, choosers, and what’s the worst that could happen…. 😬

Meanwhile our buyers solicitor was still being a dick, raising 11th hour queries with days to go before they wanted to move in. Issue with planning permission on our summerhouse (our solicitor adamant it’s not needed) and an issue with a statutory declaration that I had to get witnessed by a solicitor on Friday, again all last minute. I could see from the correspondence sent from our Solicitor that she was fast losing patience. So these issues raised THIS MORNING meant the buyer’s lender wouldn’t release the funds to exchange. So, after another £205 indemnity policy set up at 4.30 this afternoon, about an hour away from our hotel in Folkestone we finally exchanged. I cannot tell you the relief. If they’d pulled out now with all our stuff en-route I think I would have had a mental episode.

I have a beer and am currently relaxing in the Best Western Burlington at Folkestone, which I have got to say has been a welcome surprise in a very stressful few days. I honestly think we stayed in a worse hotel for part of our honeymoon. I had low expectations given it’s a dog friendly room. I really struggled to find a hotel that would allow 3 dogs firstly, this they did by prior arrangement and were so helpful. Secondly, the room is lovely, and already laid out with dog beds and bowls. Just brilliant after today. All three have had so much upheaval in the last few weeks, their routine has been totally changed, yet they slept the full 4.1/2 hours to here, and are now after much excitement at going in the lift, are all sleeping.

We are up at 5.00am tomorrow for our tunnel slot at 6.40am, we have to be there 40 minutes before to check in. I don’t think sleep will be hard to come by tonight.

Thanks to everyone for their kind words and well wishes. I said goodbye to my Mum and sister last night and cried all the way home. Then I fell down a muddy embankment this morning on our walk, and had to do the walk of muddy shame past 40 school kids out blackberry picking…..you couldn’t make it up. I nearly bawled this morning too. But, we’re doing this and it’ll be fine. Won’t it?

TTFN xx