Back to the Story

So, there we both were awaiting the arrival of the removal van, knowing that as well as moving the contents of our home we also had the 2m square hot tub to move. Having moved it once before we knew what we were dealing with and we had re-affirmed it at least 3 times to the removal company so we were hopeful that the guys were prepared for some hard work. With us being a groupage move we didn't know whether we would be first on the van or last on the van, and what would happen if we were last on and there wasn't enough room? We had a hotel booked 5 hours north for that evening - we couldn't hang around.

There was so much going through our heads while we sat outside enjoying the Spanish sunshine that it was a great relief when 2 guys walked round the corner and said, 'Hi, are you waiting for a removal van?'

'Oh, yes......... errr, where is it?'

'Well, we have the big van so we've left it at the top of the track to make sure a) we're in the right place and b) that it will actually get down the track.'

So, while we put the kettle on they walked back to get the van.

15 minutes later we were no longer worried that the van wouldn't be big enough or that there wouldn't be enough room. This was what we saw driving down our track.

It was huge and it was empty, we were their first pick up. Just one small problem, while it had come down the track OK, it wouldn't go round to the front of the house without one of the wheels going over the edge of the drop to the rambla bottom - so they reversed it as far as they could along the side of the house and it meant everything had to be carried or wheeled on their little trolley across the 20 meters from the house to the van.

Mmmmmh! Hot Tub!

They decided they would tackle the hot tub first. Neil had removed the flyscreens from the front of the house and the discussion ended with us upending the hot tub onto it's side, wheeling it across to the van and then dropping it onto the edge of the van and all 4 of us heaving it up onto the van.

1, 2, 3, and it was onto it's side and across onto the wheels.

Pushing a 2 meter high hot tub on a small trolley across an unmade stretch of land is not easy, but after several minutes we were at the van. It had already been decided that there was no way we could push it up the ramp as the floor of the van was about 4 feet of the road, but if we could lower it so one edge was on the edge of the van we should be able to lift and slide it into place. All we had to do was tilt it over without the wheels slipping from underneath and without the hot tub ending up flat on the floor. It had to be in the perfect position as there was less than an inch gap between the side of the hot tub and the van door.

1, 2, 3, and it was in position for the lift.

Now, I don't know how heavy a hot tub is but 4 of us did manage to get it up and onto the van - just.

Time to put the kettle on again.

It was by far the hardest part of the day and over the next few hours everything got moved from the house to the van so that by late afternoon we were ready to lock the door. The 2 guys worked really well and stacked everything to take as little space as possible as we had underestimated how much room we needed and they had 2 more pick-ups to make, one in southern France and one in northern France. If the south of France pick-up also had more stuff than they thought, northern France may not get on the van. Still, our stuff was on, that's all that mattered to us.

We had one final walk around the house, said goodbye to the Meerkats and Big Dog with a few biscuits and put the pups into the back of the car.

A quick view of our new dog walks.

This is home

This is the view

A couple of hundreds yards up the road, past the Rugby club we cross over a little river

And onto the canal banks. And even though there is a road running along part of the canal, it's on the other side and totally safe for the pups to meander along off their leads.

My favourite tree on the walk is this amazing weeping Willow, how gorgeous is this tree?

As we get towards town, about half an hour's walk from home, we start to reach some canal side apartments opposite the cricket club.

We have several locks along the stretch of canal we walk.

And such tranquil walks during the week, not another person in sight, although weekends are a little busier.

How lucky are we to have this on our doorstep?

Oh, and of course, if we walk in the other direction for 20 minutes - we have a lovely pub with an outdoor area on the canal banks. A great place to stop for refreshements before heading back home.

Planning the return.

I arrived back 2 days before my birthday to a greatly relieved Neil, on 2 counts. Firstly, he had been struggling with a very bad back after tweaking it severely doing something very ordinary. He bent down to pick the dog's dishes up and couldn't straighten up again. This had happened before the weekend but, as it was a holiday weekend in the UK, flights to Spain were incredibly expensive, and so having chatted it through with Neil, we decided I would wait until the prices returned to a more reasonable level before flying back. By delaying 3 days I saved over £150. Secondly, Neil was seriously of the opinion that having spent almost 2 weeks in the UK I might actually decide I would just stay.

But I would never do that to him and the pups. Besides, I needed to be there to organise everything.

I had made some enquiries about removal companies while I had been in the UK. We had decided we would use a UK based company and had asked 3 different companies to quote. It isn't cheap moving a houseful of furniture from one country to another and there are 2 ways it can be done, other than hiring a van and doing it yourself, which we were definitely not going to do.

A door to door service sends a dedicated van for your stuff. They pick it up from your house and deliver it to the new place at a pre-arranged date, and most companies include a period of storage as they know there can be delays in getting back.

Or, you can opt for a groupage collection. This is where the van has belongings of more than one customer but ensures the van travels as full as possible and reduces the cost to each client.

We opted for a groupage collection. The main problem we had was finding one that could work to our quick timescale. Because we had taken a rental property in the UK we didn't want to be paying rent on an empty property, we may as well get back and start adapting to our new lives. One thing Neil and I don't do is hang about once a decision has been made. Finally, I found a company that could work to our timescales and the price was good, so we accepted their quote.

We had a few difficulties in tying them to a specific date for collection, they could only tell us it would be the week commencing 21st June. Now, I understand that they can't give precise dates until they know exactly what items they are picking up and dropping off where, and when you are covering a return trip of 4,000 miles they want to maximise their business along the way BUT when you are trying to arrange hotels, cross channel travel, rental check-ins, a precise date is quite useful and so it led to a few fraught phone calls between me and them, but eventually they gave me a precise date and everything fell in to place.

We had decided we would spend the 1st night (Friday) in northern Spain. Get up early and travel through France on Saturday catching a late night Channel tunnel train and spend the night in a hotel in Folkestone. This was mainly because of the dogs. They have to have tick and worm treatment, administered by a vet and then have to cross into the UK not less than 24 hours and not more then 48 hours after the treatment. If we spent time travelling home, we would need to find a vet in Calais to do this, or we could have our local vet administer the treatment and make the drive over a couple of days. We chose the latter method.

The dogs were seen by our vet on Friday morning, and deemed fit to travel. Their passports were stamped to say they had been treated as required and we were due to make our entry into the UK right in the middle of the window available to us. It gave us leeway for problems, should any arise.

So, more time on the internet and we had hotels, channel tunnel tickets and cardboard boxes all organised. Now, we had a little over 2 weeks to pack up the house. As this would be our 5th move in 5 years it's something we are well practiced at and the boxes filled up rapidly without it becoming a stressful time. On Friday 25th June we were packed, ready and waiting. All we needed was the removal van and both Neil and I looked at one another and at everything we were moving and said together,

'I hope they bring a big enough van!'

Viewings 2, 3 and 4

After a lovely few hours at the Butterfly house where we watched a display of Birds of prey including a Kookaburra, which although not a bird of prey as such, it's an Australian kingfisher, it was such a cute little bird and actually eats mice and lizards rather than fish, I left my friends and headed off to view a quirky cottage in the country.

Having spent several months living in the middle of nowhere I was keen to try and have some green spaces around us, so thought a quirky cottage would fit the bill. I had high hopes.

I found the village very easily and even found the road the cottage was on, but I couldn't find the cottage. The house numbers seemed to be very erratic, not sequential at all. I was looking for Bramble Cottage, No. 8. I could find number 6, 7 and 9 - but no number 8.

As I was lurking around someone came out of number 9 and asked what I was looking for. I told her I was looking for Bramble Cottage and she pointed further down the road, on the other side.

So, I set off and far from approaching a peaceful, rural property I was heading towards a large road junction, with no parking all over the place and a pub on the corner. If it was down here it was already not ticking any box on our list.

I walked to the road junction by which time I had run out of the road I was looking for, so turned around and walked back to the pub when I noticed some buildings at the back of the pub. As I walked up the back and turned the corner I recognised the cottage from the photo on the internet. I was in the right place - but it was not a place I wanted to be in. Such a disappointment BUT I knew the guy had travelled quite a way to show me round the house so I did the decent thing and went ahead with the viewing.

The cottage was accessed from a narrow path, I'm kidding myself, it was an alley at the side of the pub! Our furniture would struggle to get from the road, up the alley and in the front door - and it would all have to be carried 400m because that was the nearest you would get the vehicle to the door. So far,there was nothing going for this cottage at all.

And it went downhill from there. The photos definitely DID do it justice, it was tiny, it was tired, it was a real shame. Yes, it was quirky, it had rooms on about 7 different levels, cupboards in all sorts of wierd places and rooms that were half decorated.When I asked about parking for the cars as the brochure had said it had parking for 2 cars, 'Yes', he replied, 'we have 2 spaces allocated in the pub carpark'.

No Thank You Very Much - I was out of there as quick as politeness would allow.

So, house with small kitchen was still a streets ahead winner with only 2 left to see - by now I was beginning to feel that if you aren't on the net at the moment a property is put on for rental, you've missed it. Definitely, all the good ones had gone.

Property 3 was actually not bad, except it was in the middle of a housing estate, hemmed in with houses front, back and both side and the shortest front garden I've ever seen so it felt as if the door opened straight onto the road. It was a shame as the rear garden was perfect for the dogs, so long and lots of large bushes and trees for them to inspect.

So everything hinged on property no. 4 - my last viewing scheduled.

I remembered seeing it on the internet and thinking, it's too big - there are only 2 of us, but as choice was running out, it had sneaked into our list to look at. It was the farthest from Sheffield but was very close to 4 good golf course, maybe that was why Neil had pushed me to view it. I'd rung ahead to make sure the dogs would be OK and so I headed towards the town centre. Having expected a rural location for the cottage I was certain that one on the edge of a town would not fill our wish of some greenery but, as I drove up to it, I was pleasantly surprised. The house was on the edge of a housing estate, not overlooked at the front and across the road - open fields and allotments hidden behind a large hedge. Ok, this was looking better.

As soon as I walked in I could visualise us living here. The rooms were in the right place, the kitchen/diner was large and there was even a large cooker similar to the one we had in Spain. The garden was a good size for the dogs and all enclosed - so what if there are 4 rooms and a conservatory we have no use for! Because we are farther from Sheffield it was almost the same price as the 3 bed house I'd seen that morning. Finally, I felt I could tell Neil I had found a house that wasn't a compromise.

Then the clincher - 100 yards up the road, is the Rugby club beyond which is the canal, with lots of lovely dog walking along the canal banks, safe from traffic and as far as you want to walk. 15 minutes walk in one direction brings you to a pub where you can have a short coffee break, half an hour in the other direction brings you to the centre of town and a Costa Coffee shop you can sit outside. This was definitely ticking more boxes for me than were on my list. I could visualise a leisurely walk along the canal with the pups on a sunny morning, a large cappucino and Blueberry muffin while the dogs rested at my feet before heading back.

Mmmmmmh, somehow we had saved the best 'till last.

I could go back to Spain knowing we had a nice place to move to. That's when I knew for sure we would be moving back.

Now all I had to do was make it happen.

Starting the process of moving back to Sheffield

The hardest part about any move is finding somewhere to live. When we decided to move abroad we did what most people do and went on viewing trips organised by an overseas agent.

I’m not sure that this facility is available for people moving to the UK. I suppose it’s because we knew the area we wanted to be in and could use local agents we didn’t need to look into relocation agencies for people coming to the UK, but it did occur to me that if a Spanish couple were wanting to move to England, are there agencies that sort out viewing trips?

Having discussed the idea of moving back, we needed to know the practicalities of finding somewhere to rent, and the only way we could do that was for one of us to come back and spend time looking.

And so, on the 22nd of May, I found myself on a flight back to Manchester Airport on an open ended ticket, only to return once I had checked it all out but knowing I needed to be back for the 5^th June, as I didn’t want to spend my birthday away from Neil and the boys. I had a maximum of 2 weeks. I’ve always worked well with deadlines.

I was fortunate to be staying with good friends who have internet access for me to use, as I knew I would be trawling websites looking for rental properties. We had our tick list and although fairly short, there was one item that would cause 80% of the rental market to be unsuitable.

Our wish list:

Detached

Pets allowed

Secure garden

Pleasant outlook

3 bedrooms (one to use as a study)

The majority of agents will have a standard clause which states no smokers, no pets!

And so, more than 80% of properties which ticked all our other boxes were unavailable to us because of our precious pups.

Not ones to flinch from a challenge, Neil and I started a 2 pronged attack on the internet property portals. He would Skype me links to houses he liked the look of and, I would be Skyping him with the same links at the same time.

The first few hours were discouraging. Many of the properties were already under offer or let but eventually I started to get a few viewings booked. I decided I needed to challenge the agents a little and so I started to ask them to go back to the landlords and ask this question:

Will you allow 2 small, well behaved dogs IF I agreed to pay an increased bond and have all the carpets professionally cleaned at the end of the tenancy?

Suddenly, I had more properties to view – some Landlords were happy to take dogs on that basis, so it was worth asking the question.

The first few days viewings were very reminiscent of our viewing trips in Spain, seeing properties I definitely couldn’t see us living in, not anything we could live in.

By the end of the week one I hadn’t seen anything that was suitable, and only one I could possibly see us compromising massively on, but would allow us to move back and continue to look for something more suitable.

Finally, I got phone calls back from agents who had been trying to make viewings for me on 4 houses. I could see all of them on Saturday, a day I also decided to visit the local Butterfly House with my friends and their grandson.

I could fit it all in, with a bit of careful planning.

So, Saturday morning 10am, I drove up to look at the first house. It was only half a mile away from where we used to live so I knew the area was good for us. Initial kerb appeal was good. Not overlooked, on the edge of a development overlooking farm land.

And so, I entered the house feeling positive only to be let down when I went through the kitchen door – it was tiny. Now, Neil and I like a large kitchen with lots of work space and room to move around each other – and this was the complete opposite. The rest of the house was perfect, even the garden was perfect for the dogs, oh why did the kitchen have to be so small?

As I left, I thought I had found our new home and hoped that Neil would be okay with the small kitchen, but after a week of looking at totally unsuitable properties it was a relief to find one that met most of our wish list.

My next stop was the Butterfly House. I remember when this opened many years ago, it was little more than a glorified green house but it had a lot of free flying butterflies and an ant colony that used a wire bridge over a walkway and you could watch them all taking bits of leaves back to the colony, that always stuck in my mind.

Well, over the years, it’s grown up and it well worth a visit. Here’s the link.

http://www.butterflyhouse.co.uk

Can you relocate back to where you relocated from?

This was a question my brother asked me a few weeks ago when I told him we had moved back to the UK.

Ok. While you absorb that sentence I’ll check the dictionary definition of ‘relocate’.

Relocate – to establish oneself in a new place.

Ok, so on that basis – no, you can’t relocate back as it’s not a ‘new’ place.

So, instead we will just have to say that we have returned.

Having got their head around that statement, most people’s next question – surprisingly – was not ‘why?’ – but – ‘what are you going to do about your blog?’

Well, I don’t quite know what to do about my blog. I am not in Spain anymore so cannot write about life there, but I have been living there and now have to integrate back into life in the UK and in that , there are still experiences to tell, so maybe I should carry on writing about my daily happenings.

In the meantime we are all well and settled in our new home, me, Neil & and the pups. We have been back a couple of weeks and have had time to adjust to being back. The move went remarkable smoothly and, although we were travelling for 4 days and in hotels for 5 nights, the dogs were unbelievably well behaved. They were absolute stars.

And so to the question, why are we back?

Because, I wanted to come back.

And I am incredibly fortunate to have a husband who was happy to come back too, even though he was very settled in Spain and enjoyed life out there, he told me it is important that I am happy and after all, he can play golf anywhere.

And so we are back to normality. My time in Spain has felt like I had opted out of normal life, as if I was living in a bubble, away from the day to day hullabaloo that is life. Maybe I am just a classic case of ‘You can take the girl out of the city but you cannot take the city out of the girl’ who knows.

What I do know is, I am very happy to be back.