Leaving and Arriving.

 

We've arrived!

Thursday (21st April)

This was the day all our stuff was being shipped. The van was arriving at 8am at our house in Liverpool and we were living with my parents in Cheshire. We left the boys with Granny and Grandad and headed off, nervous about whether everything would fit. On the way we discussed what stuff we would leave behind if we had to. Dan had been taking phone calls from France over the last few days trying to make sure we had electricity when we arrived, it seemed to be needlessly complicated. Apparently our house, number 4, didn't exist on the grid even though 1, 2,3 ,5 and 6 did. It's a very new house, built in 2020, but we're not the first people to live in it. We needed to find the name of the previous tenant to sort out our electricity and connect us. We also had to find away to connect to the internet straight away, because Dan's job is online and I really like to watch Netflix.

The Van arrived minutes after we did and they started packing up everything in the dining room, which was completely full of boxes, bikes and small bits of furniture. outside the room was also our mattresses and the fridge. One double bed was being left by a pervious tenant in the French house, so we decided if there was room we would take our king sized bed and use the double as a spare, but if there was no room we could at least sleep on the double. It turns out there was loads of room, which I was happy about but also a bit annoyed that I could have taken more stuff (or paid less). We had agreed on 20 cubic meters, which is hard to imagine, but the guys packing said everything in the dining room was 10 cubic meters, so I'm guessing with the extra bits it was around 13 cubic meters. So sort of annoying but I guess I should be thankful it all fit. 

I was so happy when the van left it finally felt like the most stressful bits were over and we really were moving. This is me literally jumping for joy as the van left. 

I feel really proud of myself that I managed to pack up a whole house. Dan has done all of the difficult french admin stuff but in terms of packing he really only did his own stuff. I did mine and the kids and the stuff in the loft and the shed and everywhere. We're a good team, if Dan was in charge of packing and I was french admin we would still be in Liverpool. I kind of wanted to celebrate that it was finally done, but it was 9 in the morning and I was just in an empty house I didn't even have a kettle. We stayed for quite a few more hours as I had to paint over all the holes that I filled in from all the shelves we'd taken down. I also had to paint over the kids bedroom space mural, including their rocket heigh chart which was a bit sad. 

I kept thinking we were done and then spotting more jobs. The estate agent that we're renting out the house with came to see it. He is responsible for putting in the new kitchen before they get us a tenant. Just before we left Dan got a call about the electricity they said it will be switched on on Saturday, hooray!! But that it will be between midnight and 11:59 pm- not so great. So we still didn't know if we would arrive to a house with electricity.

Friday

"WE'RE MOVING TO FRANCE TODAY!" the boys shouted as they danced round in circles. We tried to pack the last of our bags up. We went for the Ryanair family package which meant 1 20kg bag between us, a 10kg bag each and a small backpack each. In retrospect that was way too many bags especially as we had to get a train once we were in France. Carrying all these bags around was especially annoying because we had about 7 square meters of shipping that we didn't use and 90% of the stuff in our bags we didn't immediately need and we could have just shipped. But we had all our stuff from the last week of living in other peoples houses. As we'd last minute shipped an extra king sized bed, we also had another duvet we wanted to take, but hadn't been organised enough to put in the shipping so most of our biggest bag was taken up with that.

We said goodbye to my mum who was ill, so Eric gave her a hug he learnt in covid times (where you hug yourself). She is really sad about us leaving and (falsely) claims that she first heard about our plans to leave by reading this blog. My Dad gave us a lift to Manchester airport and we said a quick goodbye because if you park up for more than 10 seconds Manchester airport charge you!

We checked in our many bags and the Ryanair woman said we didn't really get the best deal and it would have been much cheaper to take two big bags. Easier to carry as well, but I swear that wasn't one of the options when we booked it. I have a fear of flying, not a like a normal persons fear of flying, I just have a massive anxiety about being late to a flight or having the wrong size bag or wrong documents. This is because I once missed a flight, and I once turned up at an airport with a ticket for the previous month and had to buy a very expensive last minute ticket. And then after they sold me that they said "run because you might not make it!" Anyway this time it was all fine, and were were in the departure lounge for longer than we were on the flight.

A cool lady with dead locks from Dan's Grandpa's town Malpas took this photo

The flight was fine and we arrived in Carcassonne around 5pm. This was Dan and the boys first time travelling on their french ID cards. They gave them in so they didn't get a stamp in their UK passports which means they can stay forever. 

I got a stamp and have to come back in May to get my visa. After we'd got through that bit we walked out to a group of Hari Krishnas all singing ready to welcome this guy on our flight, who was wearing entirely orange, including orange socks and crocs. That was surreal. We got onto the transfer bus to the station and Dan said "I can tell you this now, I didn't know if that ID card thing would work, I've never done it before." We got to Carcassonne train station and there were no trains until 8:20pm which was over two hours away. We strolled off with our many bags in search of food.

Moving countries sounds like it should be the most exciting day of your life, it's definitely one of the most significant ones, but actually this was just a full day of waiting around. Really nothing exciting happened. The kids had a little play on a nearby playground, (we know the area a bit from our recce) and then we ate at a restaurant, sitting outside so as to not annoy people without our nine bags! Then we headed back to the station the train said it was delayed 15 minutes but just as we arrived on the platform a good 10 minutes before the delayed time of leaving, it arrived and then left, so we actually could have missed it which would have been a nightmare. 

We got into Perpignan around 10pm and we were all very tired! We had another little bit of a walk to our airbnb, the kids did so well considering how late it was. We stayed in this really trendy little flat with two tiny loft bedrooms off an open plan room. Eric was giddy with excitement seeing how cool the flat was and then immediately fell asleep with the light on the moment he lay down.

Saturday

This was the fun exciting day we'd dreamt of. Dan got up early to collect this hire car which was tiny and electric. He absolutely loved it and we all thought it was pretty cool too. He then went to buy car seats in a big supermarket and paid the same for them as it was to hire them for one day! 

the way the doors open is really cool.

He came back to get us and we sped off to see our new house for the first time (even Dan had never see it in real life before). The surroundings were very rural, fields and country roads and tractors and beautiful mountains in the distance.

We met the estate agent there and went to look round. It's super modern, all white with black tiled floor everywhere. Three bedrooms that are all a really good size. The garden was bigger than expected which made me both happy and annoyed that I hadn't bought my hammock. I really love my hammock, its one of my favourite things, but it's on a frame that takes a lot of space. When I saw photos of the garden I thought if I took the hammock they'd be no space for anyone else's stuff so I left it with my parents. The house is great though and the electricity was working! I love that it has electric shutters on all the windows that properly block out all the light, and I really love that you can see a snow topped mountain out of the window! This mountain is called Canigou, which we have been joking is like a Scottish person saying, "I cannee go." 

The view from our bedroom window!

The kids immediately filled the floor with lego, they had been given a couple of new kits which I was saving for when we arrived at the house and our other toys had not arrived. 

full house tour before our stuff arrived.

Our stuff arrived two hours after us and the driver helped us carry a lot of stuff upstairs. Unfortunately the TV snapped off the stand and is pretty unusable and a computer screen has cracked. The company are not being great about fixing it, saying it's our fault because of the way we a packaged it but the screen was wrapped in bubble wrap and cardboard so I'm not sure what more we could have done. We went to a massive super market to get some essentials in and stared the unpacking, tired but feeling very grateful to be in.

how we are eating until we get a table 

Sunday

Nothing is open in France on a Sunday, not much anyway so it was nice to have this day as a day off. We went to visit an English speaking church, where we had been invited for lunch after. The church was around 25 people meeting in the really big home of the church leaders. It was kind of a similar style to the church we came from. The church is run by a couple who moved to France around 24 years ago. The english speaking church is connected to a bigger french speaking church which we will also check out. It would be easier to just go to the English one but we do want to integrate and know French people, and if there's more kids at the French one then once our kids know French, they might enjoy that one more. 

One of the guest speakers was this lady about our age from Newcastle who was an A&E consultant doing medical work, including helicopter rescue, and then just as a hobby because that's not dangerous enough, she takes 3 months off to help in a war zone. She's just back from Ukraine, but she's also been to Iraq and the Bahamas (after a hurricane) and a load of other places. We had lunch outside in their court yard: us four, the couple who run the church, the war zone doctor and her friend who was also really cool and interesting (she left her job as an accountant to work in community theatre). I respect that a lot. I feel like everyone at the table were interesting cool adventurers, and the fact that we had just moved into a house without seeing it, the day before, made us part of the adventurous crew. 

The couple who run the church know someone giving away a dining table and chairs too so that's a bonus. We've been haemorrhaging money in the last few weeks, paying for a new kitchen in our old house, and shipping our stuff. We didn't bring that much furniture, so we still have a lot of stuff to buy including a car, so I'm very grateful for a free table.

Because we had the electric car I suggested we went somewhere cool after church, so we headed to Ille-sur-tet, about 15 mins west of our house. It's an area with a little town/village and some crazy rock formations. We parked up and started climbing up this big rocky path, the views were incredible and I can't believe we live so close to a place so beautiful. It was such a lovely day, and I really can't believe that we get to live in this amazing area of the world. I guess the lady in the pharmacy was right (see my previous blog) I really am lucky.

Ille-sur-tet

Next blog: dragging the kids round 8 shops in a day, meeting the mayor of the village, my terrible french, exploring our local area, buying a car, and whatever happens when I take the kids to town on the train today.

P.s we're going to make a Podcast about moving to France with tips about how to move, and funny stories. We've love suggestions for a name for it. The best one so far is "ex-scouse my french"