To those of you who read my earlier posts from the U.K., dithering about whether to move or not, it must be good to know that we actually arrived at a decision.
The decision was prompted by a number of factors.
The first one came from a young friend of the family who texted me while I was here in our Spanish home for a couple of weeks. She said 'Hi Jo! Would you rent me your house?'
I explained that we didn't rent out our home here in Estepona, we just liked to keep it for on the impulse trips away.
'No', she said 'I mean you English home'.
........Oh!
We hadn't thought of that. I passed it by Himself, and we pondered, and pondered, and pondered.
Meanwhile, we we're getting older, my state pension was coming up, he was finding the heavy lifting his work involved more onerous, and the thought occurred that one day we may lie in our bed in the U.K. wondering whether we should have given it a go.
Two months more dithering, chatting to grown up Sons etc. and we decided to apply for a NLV.
We knew it took ages, so we felt quite safe and carried on as usual apart from being asked every five minutes by everyone we knew when we were moving to Spain.
It was a bit frustrating not having a passport for 4 months, but nothing monumental had changed so we pushed it to the back of our minds.
3 weeks before Christmas, 'OH MY GOD!', the visas have come.
Now we really have to step up to the plate, - best not to think it over too much.
We agreed it would be nice for our tenant to be in by Christmas, so that she and her 10 year old daughter could have a proper Christmas in their new home, so we booked for the Chunnel, the oply feasible option with a cat and a dog to transport.
So that's what we did. Packed up, moved out in 2 weeks and drove down the length of Spain arriving 4 days & 3 nights with a howling cat arriving 2 days before Christmas Day. It was not fun.
3 weeks in, it's going okay. Different, but I think it's going to be okay!