Well after months of planning the contracts were exchanged and completion happened smoothly. Then the real challenge began. I had given my notice in on my job as I didn’t fancy a 3 hour commute each way although my boss would have liked me to do that and save him the stress of finding someone to replace me! But because I was leaving work in three weeks I had to do all the house packing and cleaning whilst still working which wasn’t the best idea and I would strongly recommend that you take a week off work if you are moving (even if you aren’t moving very far) as this would definitely take some of the pressure off.
Anyway, moving day was decided to be 26 February so on Friday 25 Feb I hired a van and my Dad kindly said he would drive for me as I’ve only driven a van a couple of times I wasn’t confident driving for 3 – 4 hours each way in a van full of all my stuff. So friday night we picked up the van and drove to my house and filled the van which because I’d been packing boxes for ages only took us about 1.5 hours. Then saturday morning we were up and on the road nice and early and got to my new home at about 11am, the van was unloaded a lot quicker than it was packed taking only 30 mins! 
Because the house was in such a state, the previous owners never cleaned and certainly didn’t maintain the house in any way so we had loads of rubbish to get rid of but because we have double yellow lines (no parking at anytime) outside the house we can’t have a skip. So we decided to fill the van and take as much rubbish to the community tip as we could. The meant that the house immediately started to smell better!
We had checked the heating the weekend before and discovered that the gas and electric were on pre-payment meters which are a very expensive way of paying for these utilities but at least they were working! I called the supplier and arranged for them to come out and change the meters to normal meters with quarterly billing. We ran the heating constantly for 24 hours to warm the building up as it hadn’t been heated in any way for at least 6 months.
Then it was time to take the van back and work for another couple of weeks before the job finished and I could get on with the new life by the sea.
