Dan found a house!

Since my last blog things have been a bit crazy. Sometimes I'm so excited for this adventure and sometimes I'm so bored of the logistics and I'm not really sure if its a good idea anyway. 

Dan came back from his four day trip to find us a house on Tuesday/ early Wednesday morning (I picked him up from the airport at 1:45 am, yawn). I had to drag the poor kids out of bed, I let them go to school a bit late, but not quite late enough. School starts at 8:55am we arrived at about 9:05 which looks like we were just casually late whereas I wanted to give the impression we were intentionally late for a good reason. Oh well.

After doing a recce in October to Carcassonne, Narbonne and Montpellier we decided that we would go to none of them and Perpignan is the place we will live. We initially discounted it because you can't fly there from the North West, but we changed our minds because it's just such a beautiful place. Here's a photo I took there in 2019, when we did a camper van trip from Nice to Barcelona. Who wouldn't want to live in here:

From April you can fly from Birmingham to Perpignan, but not in the winter months, so Dan flew from Manchester to Barcelona and hired a car to drive up Spain and over the border, which takes about two hours. Perpignan is only 30 mins from the border. He had four days to find us a house and spent the last week trying to arrange viewing with estate agents.

There was one estate agent doing viewings on Saturday but it was in the morning and Dan didn't make it on time, so day 1 nothing really got done. Day 2 was Sunday when everything in France is closed. Dan went to a Church though, and had lunch with the leaders of the church, so Day 3 was the big day. Dan was planning to walk into all the estate agents he could. The first one had nothing to rent the second one "looked a bit weird" but just like the story of Goldilocks the third one miraculously had a house that was almost exactly when we were looking for: a 3 bed in budget in the outskirts of Perpignan with a bit of a garden. It wasn't even on the market yet and so the estate agent said he could see it and if we liked it we could get it. Dan sent me a few excited video messages, I couldn't believe it it was 10:30 am and he'd smashed it. Some of the positives are we can sign for just a year, a lot of places want you to sign for 2 or 3 years, it's walking distance to a school, its energy efficient and a new build.

It's 15 minutes from town, 20/25 minutes from the beach and 10 or 15 minutes from this very cool lake:

 and maybe 10 minutes from this cool area:

A few negatives are: it is unfurnished which is a faff, it doesn't have a bath and the garden is tiny, but overall great and we don't have to stay more than a year if we decide it's not for us. 

I thought we might be in Airbnbs for a while we we tried to find somewhere, but getting a real house has changed a few things. Our original plan was for Dan to take one car load of stuff while the 3 of us fly but now we have a real address we have decided to change our plans completely. We're going to get our stuff shipped so we can take some furniture and mattresses. We'll all fly and we won't buy a car until we're there. It was stressful trying to decide if shipping was the right option as it's pretty expensive (£2600) but the idea of trying to get rid of all our mattresses and then immediately buying a load more as soon as we arrive sounded too annoying. Currently the shipping people are desperate for us to confirm by paying our deposit but the estate agent hasn't 100% confirmed our paperwork and approved the moving in date we want yet, even though it looks very probable for 22nd April. 

The boys French ID cards are done but we haven't managed to pick them up yet. Hopefully they will arrive in Chester next Wednesday for collection (they can't be posted to your house you have to collect them from London or Chester and you can only collect from Chester on Wednesdays.) 

I've previously said that my visa "is easy, it takes a maximum of 20 days and you only have to go to Manchester." So with a date almost confirmed and just over 20 days to go Dan went to get me a visa appointment. That's when we discovered it's 5-20 days FROM THE DAY YOU CAN GET AN APPOINTMENT and the next available appointment was 29th April. As we were staring at the computer screen wondering how we had made such a massive error, 29th April disappeared and the next available appointment was 4th May. So frustrating because if we'd have thought about this a month ago it would all be fine. Now the plan is when I come back for a wedding in June I will have to stay up to 20 days while getting the visa sorted.

There was no real time to process that, because I had to go straight to my last ever day at work, teaching art in an after school club that I do every Friday. Then I went home for a quick tea before getting the train to Southport for my last ever comedy gig. Which actually was a lovely gig and considering the only practise I did was listening to my own set on you tube on my headphones on the train, it went pretty well and was a nice one to end on.

So much to do next week: builders will be knocking down a wall in our kitchen in preparation for putting in a new kitchen to make it nice for our tenants, and I have to make two easter bonnets! As if I have time for that!

I hope all this stress will be a distant memory when I'm swimming in the Med with the boys.

Please come to our leaving party!