Briefly Homeless

See that? Willow - our home, our bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, lounge, our vehicle, our shelter, pretty much our everything in terms of material possessions up there on a ramp about to have all her wheels taken off.

This was where Willow spent Saturday, Sunday and Monday night.

We on the other hand, by virtue of not being allowed to sleep in here there got to stay with our wonderful friends nearby. We had beds, baths, sofas, TV, electricity, we had all our favourite meals, Ady got to hoover and wash up (things he dearly misses!), I got to chat to my friends til the early hours of the morning and sleep in til much later in the morning (a thing I dearly miss) and Dragon and Star got to play with, watch films, connect on DS consoles and generally hang out with their mates (things they dearly miss).

What a wonderful weekend :)

Willow needed attention to her brakes - Ady does the driving (although I really must do some, I hate the idea of not driving at all for a whole year) and was feeling a decline in the brakes and having to press harder and harder on the pedal to get it to stop, particularly disconcerting when in control of a heavy van, loaded with all your possessions and your family hurtling down a hill! So we took her to a garage to have the brakes dealt with and are now £300 the poorer and have brakes that work. Money we can ill afford but can't possibly begrudge and when split over the mileage we have already done in the van is fairly good going per mile I guess!

We were fairly disorganised in decanting Willow into our friends' house and had underestimated how long we would be without her so poor Ady ended up walking miles in the rain carrying bags of clothes, pillows and various other things - he said he felt like he'd just been evicted from home! Fortunately another friend was able to go to his rescue and collect him - have we mentioned before how lucky we are to have such wonderful friends?!

All of us are now fully topped up, restored and in full working order and arrived tonight, slightly delayed at our next hosts, near Durham, up in t'north. We should probably reserve judgement until we've acually done some WWOOFing here but on first impressions as we sit snuggled up cosily inside a gorgeous yurt in flickering candlelight having shared a meal with our hosts, listening to rain pitter patter on the roof and glancing at the stars through the clear roof panel. The yurt seems to be incredibly well set up with everything we could possibly need and we're really excited at the prospect of working with these hosts and learning from them.