Halfway to Paradise

well Rum :)

We've left Sussex, trailing our horsebox behind us. It poured with rain all morning which was both mildly inconvenient in terms of our stuff getting wet as we loaded it in and also felt in some way symbolic. I was trying to decide whether it was some way of the universe preparing us for our rather wetter new home or if there was some deeper message of there being raindrops along with the sunshine in our lives. My friend Tasha did a far better job with her tweet:

Worthing sky is crying cos that @nicgee is leaving.

which of course made me a little leaky around the eye area too. Having already welled up when saying goodbye to my sister in law, nieces and nephew, sobbed when I got home after saying goodbye to my parents and brother I think I am all cried out.

Friends had said to us the day before that once we turned the key and pulled away from our house it would really feel like the adventure had started. And it did :)

The drive to Sheffield to stay with friends for a couple of night to break the journey was smooth and straightforward. The horse box towed just fine, we got through lots of diesel (a theme of the whole adventure!) but the traffic was kind, the weather was on our side and we listened to music and sang along. It was like being back in Willow, limited to a certain speed, wobbly about going up hills and with a real sense of something amazing about to happen at any minute.

It's been a challenging few weeks in lots of ways, saying goodbye is always hard, living in limbo is a difficult place to be. There are so many uncertainties and hurdles still to overcome. We need to get all the way up to Mallaig with the car and horsebox, still another 400 miles to go! We've got a puppy to collect - more on that tomorrow. We have chickens, ducks and geese on order, are in talks to get piglets and have ears to the ground for cats. We have seeds ready to plant, a polytunnel planned, have opened accounts with various animal feed suppliers and today we went off to buy gerry cans for our petrol and a food shop to stock up loo rolls, tinned goods and UHT milk for those 'ferry didn't come' moments we are anticipating.

We're taking this stage one small step at a time. Yesterday we got to Sheffield, tomorrow we'll get to Fort William, on Friday we'll get to Rum. Many more challenges ahead long after we've managed that but at least we'll be home.