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!'