Last WWOOF

So many feelings as we leave the holiday cottage in the morning ready to travel across to catch the ferry on Monday that will take us to our last WWOOF host. Before every host we have had feelings of trepidation. Will they be nice? What will be expected of us? Where will we sleep? What sort of food will they feed us? Will we like them, will they like us? Will we have to run off in the dead of night to escape?

This is our biggest gap by far between hosts as is also tinged with that end of term is approaching type feeling. In many ways this feels the same as just before we were leaving our house to start this adventure - lots of uncertainty about what happens next, lots of excitement about the next phase being imminent, lots of looking ahead and wondering what will happen next, lots of looking back and thinking about what we are leaving behind us.

We have toyed with the idea of not doing this last host. It will be our first host where we have to leave Willow far behind - the island does not allow vehicles so we'll be boarding the ferry on foot with an even smaller percentage of our belongings than we are currently used to - and we thought we were already being pretty darn minimalistic! The weather is changing and is wilder, windier, wetter - not quite so inviting to be living the outdoorsy lifestyle in November as it was back in May. We've had a taste of the comfortable lifestyle back in a cottage for a week. Also the call of friends and family back south is getting louder - we'll be heading back to Sussex to catch up with people and put our affairs in order in just a couple of weeks and there is a temptation to just do that now.

But this host is on an island, something we have not done yet and we are excited about the idea of that. They sound nice and interesting and able to teach us new stuff which is of course the whole point of this exercise. Plus there is certainly a part of me at least that wants to actually know it's our last host while we're there, not looking back retrospectively thinking 'oh, that host five weeks ago was our last one after all'. I want to do my saying goodbye to this section of the adventure while we're still actually there to do it properly.

So, no idea what we'll have in the way of phone signal, internet connection, electricity to power things up. Don't know if toilets will flush, showers will be hot (or indeed there at all). No idea if we'll be working inside or outside, eating dinner at 5pm, 7pm or 10pm. But at some point in the next few weeks I'll be back to tell you all about it. Until then, we'll be off WWOOFing again.