Well, that was difficult. We’ve finally moved house. Normally moving house is hard but this move was insane really.

I suppose when you have a situation that gradually becomes more and more of a headache, by the time the really hard bits kick in you’re far too committed to pull the plug so you keep going.

Cutting a very long, stressful story short, we eventually arrived in Scotland, having sold out house in Manchester so lived in a caravan while the rain POURED down, causing us to have to carry the kids across the mud so they didn’t get their new school uniforms dirty. We didn’t have much with us and we had to share the caravan with our 2 cats and the dog.

It was pretty cramped and being honest, Debbie and I thought we’d made a massive mistake.

The England-based removals people weren’t helping (we had to get another firm involved for part of the job – they were awesome). Nor were some of the English solicitors. The old couple we bought the house from certainly didn’t make the final few days before moving in that easy either.

We moved in, threw all our boxes of stuff willy-nilly into the building and immediately flew to Tenerife for a week to recover (once we’d bought new flights following the news that Monarch had collapsed).

Not Scotland

We had a minor scare when we arrived there too, when the apartment we were staying in didn’t seem to exist…

Anyway, we had a great holiday and returned to our new house. We’re here. Newton Stewart, a long way from Manchester, is our home now. As the weeks have passed, it’s become obvious that nothing that we’ve done in the past year to move here was a mistake.

The people here are friendly and welcoming. The girls are doing things at (or rather outside) school that they seldom had the chance to do in Manchester. There’s fresh air and the views up here are pretty spectacular in every direction. The house needs a bit of work but it suits us perfectly and it’ll scrub up well.

And the cycling and the running? Amazing. The best bit is that I’m yet to discover most of it.