Ady and I both had really bad nights sleep last night. Practical reasons included it being bloody freezing (we’d foolishly gone to sleep with just fleece blankets over us as the fire was lit and the heating on so it felt warm. At 3am the fire had gone out, as had the heating.), the camping mats not being fully inflated and therefore not the most comfortable arrangement after a full day of lifting furniture around and cleaning, emotional reasons included it being our last night in the house before embarking on a crazy adventure.
So this morning when I finally woke properly after a 5am conversation with Ady including the dialogue; ‘are you alright?’ ‘no, I’m bloody shitting myself!’ it all felt quite surreal and tinged with sleep deprivation. Ady was sorting the garage, I made breakfast and ran the kids a last bath as they’d run out of time for one yesterday evening and then Dad arrived. He’d been in a slightly strange mood yesterday which I put down to feeling wobbly about us going but today he was fine and stood for ages looking at the chickens and checking details on our itinery for the next week or so.
Ady did a run to the tip, I started loading more stuff into Willow and the kids had their bath, then Dad took me along to the letting agent to drop the keys and paperwork off. Mike, the agent was the perfect encounter, standing up to shake my hand, brimming over with a great mix of envy (if my wife would agree we’d be off doing the same thing tomorrow, I’d love to do it) and positivity (you are going to have such a great year, don’t give the house a second thought, have a fab adventure!) and telling me he’ll be praying for a gorgeous sunny summer and thinking of us along the way. 🙂 Yay Mike!
Mike also said the inventory isn’t happening until tomorrow so actually we then had until lunchtime tomorrow to be out of the house. This meant we lingered far longer over the final clean up and packing up and finally left about 2pm. It poured with rain for the duration so everything took longer to clean as we were treading muddy footprints behind us and having to take shoes on and off all the time but we eventually got there.
Ady and the kids headed straight for Chris and Julie’s in Willow while I followed in my car via Boots for a plastic mirror having realised I’d already packed the camping one into storage and my Dad’s to drop off one final box of kitchen stuff that we’d ambitiously thought we’d bring in Willow but since thought better of.
Chris and Julie have been perfect hosts, full of tips (both of them have had campervans and lived in them for summers in years gone by), loads of enthusiasm for it all and a lovely dinner complete with ham bought in our honour. They are early-to-bedders anyway so we retired to the van at 10pm and I think we could all do with the early night anyway. I’m going to do a quick post to WW and then try and get some sleep.