The Big Move: March Update

Only two weeks to go! March has been a very busy month with lots of admin jobs related to the move and the tying up of many loose ends.

We have decided to ship our car to Malta. This involves a great deal of bureaucracy and a  lot of expense, including a massive registration fee of more than 4000 Euros. However, given the cost of cars in Malta, it’s still the better option. All our Maltese contacts advised us to import our existing car. It is being picked up to begin its long sea journey on Monday 28th March.

We sold a canoe on ebay and donated a lot of “stuff” to a local charity shop, enabling us at last to vacate our container at Ridgeway Farm. It was a bit sad saying goodbye to Malcolm, Jo and Nick who run the storage operation and have been a pleasure to deal with.  The farm, with its spectacular view of the Malvern hills, has always been a delight to visit when accessing our container.

It has been a month of travel. I have been winding down and handing over my involvement in the Grand Lodge Universities Scheme, which has required recent journeys to Birmingham, Swansea, Bristol, Bath and London with a final visit to Cardiff on Friday of this week. Jaqui and I were in Manchester last weekend to bid farewell to our friends at Internet lodge.

We have also travelled to the Optegra Hospital in Hampshire on three occasions for what we hope was Jaqui’s last eye operation. All seems to have gone well and her sight in the right eye is improving by the day.

We have started packing in earnest and already our self-imposed limit of 50Kg in total is proving a challenge!