So....last week I finished my temp job and have two weeks leave before starting to teach English to foreign students at a large local language school's summer school. It'll certainly make a change from working in a busy office. We have some relatives to visit in Norfolk and I have lessons to plan so time will probably fly. In particular we are starting to pack up things prior to the move and ladies will probably get where I'm coming from but Ian is indeed right - I have too many clothes and accessories! When moving anywhere, the space you take up reflects the cost and obviously we want to keep this down as far as possible. So I've spent a lot of time this weekend doing a clothes 'cull' - lots for the charity shop and the best stuff for eBay. It is rather nice though to get rid of some of the more extreme winter stuff on the basis of just not needing it out in Mallorca where winters are rather different to the UK!
Ian has just taken early retirement and finishes on 15th June. He has plenty of jobs to keep him busy along with all the packing of things like pictures, tools. He's also been sorting out all the contracts, utilities etc that you have to give notice on by calling them all and finding out what the notice period is. They seem to vary but some are three months notice so it needs to be sorted out from now.
This may be a good time to explain our journey plans. We normally fly out but with two little dogs we simply couldn't countenance putting them in the hold. We also felt we wanted to make a real event of the journey in order to mark the huge change we're making to our lives. After taking advice from friends in Mallorca we decided on the following journey:
- Drive to Portsmouth and midday ferry to Bilbao which arrives there the following midday.
- Drive from Bilbao to Zaragoza and staying in a dog friendly hotel, should arrive late afternoon.
- Drive from Zaragoza to Barcelona, should take the morning.
- Spend a few hours in Barcelona and then the evening ferry to Palma.
- Drive to PP
- Collapse in happy, emotional exhaustion!
If this type of travel appeals to you, particularly if you have a pooch, the cross channel ferry does have some limited dog friendly cabins but they get booked up a very long way in advance. We were booking in January for September and they were long gone. In addition, it's one dog per cabin so we wouldn't have been able to do it anyway. In any event, they have a wonderful, secure dog area on board, with individual runs, exercise area etc. It looks lovely and we intend to spend plenty of time with them there. The ferry looks well appointed and really quite luxurious. We have booked a basic cabin to sleep in as the journey is 24 hours. Dog friendly hotels in Spain seemed fairly easy to find and very reasonably priced. The ferry to Palma was booked in March when booking opened, they seem to do so only 6 months in advance. We haven't booked a cabin as it's only an 8 hour crossing - the distance isn't great but this is Spain and there's no hurry! - but will nap in our seats which look similar to plane ones so not a great problem. Cabins are available but quite expensive. There is a similar dog area to the cross channel one on the ferry we're booked on which looks great and as it's overnight and ours are used to human bedtimes, hopefully it shouldn't be a problem. We believe that some of the ferries are more well appointed than others both for humans and for dogs so watch out for that. We made sure we booked a good one.
For us this journey is as exciting as if we were embarking on a round the world trip but in many ways it's more so as this is a permanent change (we fervently hope!) and the start of a completely new life in every possible way. As we head towards the "13 weeks to go" countdown this is beginning to feel very real indeed......
Exciting times! Looking forward to the next instalment......
ReplyDeleteThanks! :-D
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