In praise of Kate

 

It being Mother’s Day here in the UK, I thought it was an opportune moment to sing the praises of the wonderful mother of my children. Those of you who know Kate won’t be surprised to hear that it’s she who has both driven our trip forward (often literally) and held it together in difficult times.

She did all of the driving in Europe while I looked after Sally and the girls (with varying levels of success). She’s a very cautious and skilled driver and the fact that she managed to get us all the way from Winchester to Greece and back without getting a ticket of any sort or, indeed, damaging the car in any way is testament to her abilities – and we drove on some pretty hairy roads and in some truly atrocious conditions. In her role as our personal travel agent, she spent hours and hours on the computer tracking down a series of amazing and cheap places for us to stay. And she was a calming presence whenever I lost it with the girls, which was far too frequently.

Back at home, she has found and called in a steady stream of contractors to sort out the damage to the house while organising the next, very complicated, leg of the journey. Her keen eye for trouble has helped us to navigate around all manner of potential pitfalls and to jump through an assortment of bureaucratic hoops. More often than not you’ll find her on the laptop, tirelessly researching yet another obscure element of the trip.

To say that we wouldn’t be doing this trip without her doesn’t even come close to covering it and I shall be forever indebted to her for making it all happen – and for generally making my life that much happier and more fun than it would otherwise be.

Day 169: Tickets to ride

Things are starting to happen... We’ve bought train tickets to cover us from St Petersburg to Ulaanbaatar and applied for our Russian visas (tomorrow we’re catching the coach up to London so that we can visit the Russian Embassy and get fingerprinted). Within the next few days we should have bought the train tickets to get us from London to Stockholm, the ferry ticket from Stockholm to St Petersburg and the train ticket from Ulaanbaatar, and applied for our Chinese visas. 

So, we’re well and truly committed now. The only problem is that there are a lot of Kafkaesque chicken-and-egg scenarios in play. You don’t want to book anything in case you don’t get the necessary visa, but you can’t get the visa until you’ve booked everything. For the Russian visa, we needed to prove that we had bought all of our train tickets and booked hotels. But you can’t book the ferry to St Petersburg unless you have your Russian visa. For the Chinese visas, we have to be able to prove that we’ve bought train tickets into and out of the country and booked our accommodation for our entire stay. So, today, we’ve been trying to plan out our stay, so at the very least we know how long we want to stay in China.

The one ray of light is that I’ve managed to secure a commission to do a story in Mongolia – so for six days at least, we’ll be hosted and ferried around, which is a huge relief.

Day 161: Moor or less

The weather was so gorgeous today that we just had to get out and go for a walk, so this afternoon we headed down the hill to one of my favourite parts of Winchester: Winnall Moors. The Wildlife Trust has done an amazing job of rehabilitating the reserve, putting in boardwalks, benches and bridges, and clearing away the brambles and nettles. It’s just a shame that they think it necessary to place faux-poetic messages along the boardwalks and to erect some rather hideous wooden sculptures at various spots around the reserve.

 

Day 160: Sign of the times

I noticed some movement outside the house this morning and went out to discover that we a ‘To let’ sign had been attached to our downpipe. I guess it was timed to coincide with the arrival of our first viewing, which is due to take place this afternoon, followed by a second tomorrow. It would be nice to have something locked in now, but as we won’t be leaving for another month or so, we’re not getting too worked up about it just yet. As you can see from the pic below, we've gone with a letting agent that has let a number of properties in the street - including the house next door (twice). Word has it that the letting market is pretty buoyant at the moment, so we're pretty confident of getting someone in.

Day 159: Progress at last

The first stage of our building works was completed today. The roofer who replaced the flat roof on our living room extension came around and replaced the flat roof on the bedroom extension. The weather was gorgeous - temperatures well into double figures - and they got the whole job done today. And it looks lovely. 

We also came very close to booking our first train tickets, but then Kate wanted to take the girls up to the library for their weekly maths activities and we were slightly nervous about whether we’re ready to commit, so we chickened out. However, with luck, we’ll be booking them on the weekend and sending our Russian and Chinese visa applications off on Monday or Tuesday, with an early-April departure date.

Day 157: Jabbed!

We all went to the travel clinic today to get our vaccinations under way. The medical practice with which we’re registered has started up its own little clinic, which is fantastic news for us as it means that we can get the common jabs for free. We all got typhoid, the girls got the combined Hepatitis A and B, Kate and I both got tetanus, polio and diphtheria boosters and poor old Kate also had to have a Hep A booster. The girls were really good - no fuss, no bother, no tears, no complaints. 

We’re now agonising over whether to get the jabs for Japanese encephalitis and rabies. Both diseases are certainly present in many of the countries we’re going to be visiting, but the risk of getting them is pretty low. And the cost is eye-watering: £85 per dose for Japanese encephalitis, and you need two injections, which would add up to £680 for the four of us. We also have to sort out our malaria prophylaxis, which isn’t going to be cheap either, given the length of time that we’re planning to spend in malarial areas.

An update to bring you up to date

We’ve now been back in Winchester for a bit more than three weeks. During that time we’ve had a near-constant stream of contractors traipsing through the house offering their opinions on what needs to be done to sort out the water damage. The general consensus seems to be that it’s all relatively superficial – apart from the carpet, which will need to be replaced. We’ve now booked a few of them in, so we should start to see some progress soon. 

Things have been complicated by the discovery of another water-related problem. I was up on the roof the other day seeing if I could do anything about the gutter on the flat roof, which has been overflowing when we get heavy rain. I couldn’t - it’s almost certainly roots getting into the wastewater pipe (which will also need to be sorted out) - but when I turned to go back into the house, I noticed that some of the tiles on the side of the little first-floor extension had come off. On closer inspection, I discovered that the beam at the top of the extension had almost completely rotted through - it looks as though the gutter above has broken, so water was flowing down and into the flat roof. So we’ve booked a roofer in to get that fixed as well.

With the house repairs now starting to get under way, we’re turning our attention to the Winchester to Beijing leg of the journey. We’re close to choosing where we’ll stop along the way and Kate will hopefully make contact today with the travel agency that will be helping us to get the tickets and Russian visas. We managed to get Sarah’ passport renewed in record time - we were expecting it to take three weeks but it was done and dusted in about three days. We’re also trying to put together basic itineraries for the various countries we’re hoping to visit.

We’ve had a real estate agent in to talk about renting the house during the next leg of the journey. He’s keen to market it right away, leaving the leaving date open for now. Kate has also been putting furniture on eBay, and pretty much all of it has sold straight away, some for way more than we could ever have hoped. And we managed to pick up a little under-counter freezer on Freecycle - the seal on the big chest freezer in the cellar has gone so we really needed something to replace it.

Other than that, we’ve mostly just been hanging out at home. We’ve had a few friends around for lunch and the girls have had a few play dates and sleepovers. During this more settled period, we’ve started up the School of Mum and Dad again in a more structured form - the girls are spending most of the morning at ‘school’ and then taking turns to help me cook lunch (home economics lessons), which is usually a soup of the day.