Nearly there...

I'm cheating a bit here. We're on the road now, so I'm going to backtrack a bit to fill in the past couple of days.

The weeks before we left were one big faff. Because we didn't have a set departure date, we didn't really knuckle down and get right into it until the last few days, so in the end, we left more than two weeks after we had planned.

But, we got a new fusebox installed, so we got our electrical safety certificate.

Matt the electrician hard at work

And as we were leaving, the plumbers were installing our new boiler, as we continued to accumulate more and more stuff for the trip, so with luck, we should have our gas safety certificate soon.

Chaos!

I'm going to digress here and write the final chapter of the Baxi Bermuda Inset 2 part 239280 front coals story. Just after we booked the plumbers in the replace the boiler, we got an email from Bob in Wales, who said he had found our missing part and was just waiting for it to arrive. Elated, we rang the plumbers to cancel the installation. But then, just as Kate was about to go online to pay for the elusive part, Bob called, devastated. As he was double-bubble-wrapping the coals, he broke one of them. And yes, it was the left one, the one that we needed, so the installation was back on...

With time running out to get to Greece in time, we finally puled our collective finger out and got to work in earnest. On the night before we left, I was up until 3am building an Ikea futon and doing a bit more tidying – before getting up at 5am to do the final pack and empty and clean the fridge.

The good news is that in the last few days before departure, we got our first booking for the house – four builders down from London for a job – hence the Ikea futon. They're booked in for four weeks with a possibility of an extension, which is great, as the booking will almost pay for the sodding new boiler.