Perpetual Home Movers

So we are now the proud new owners of two houses in our beloved Sneem, county Kerry, Ireland.
My life feels quite surreal right now. Who would have thought that after leaving 9 years ago we would ever go back.
I remember when we left, Bert saying, "You do realise that we will never be able to buy a similar house in  similar surroundings around Sneem for the price we got from the sale of the house."
He was right - for a while.  House prices went up and up and up, until the bubble burst...
Being the restless souls that we are and, not forgetting, perpetual home and country movers (gosh ! life would be simpler if we were just to get rid of all our tat and bought ourselves a gypsy waggon and a horse), we decided to go back to Ireland. 
It took us 2 years to plan and  to get things in order.

The timeline of the big move is as follows.

• Friday, 12th April

- Arrival of shipping container (we bought a second hand one, that way we can make use of  it in Sneem as storage - we're gonna need it !)

- Cats go to  my cousin, Nancy's cat hotel , which is just on the other side of town.  Easy peasy.
The dogs will stay with us, hoping we'll be able to manage them as we load the container.

• Saturday, 13th & Sunday, 14th April

- Load container with the help of friends.  Neatly loaded, to make good use of the 20 ft space.

• Monday, 15th April

- Container gets picked up in the morning.
- Stuff 2 cars full of dogs and other belongings
- Get cats from cat hotel, stuff them in car too
- Pick up my mother (who will have made picnic parcels), she is coming for the ride and will get a suitable space in my car.
- Ready to roll by 12 noon
- Drive to Calais to get to the Channel Tunnel
- Hopefully all goes smoothly with importing the pets.
- Arrive in Ashford
- Drive through England and Wales towards Fishgard to catch the ferry....

• Thuesday, 16th April

- Ferry Fishgard - Rosslare at 2.45 am
- Arrival in Rosslare at 6.30 am (or thereabouts)
- Drive to Sneem with estimated arrival at 12 noon
- Brass band, cheerleaders, flags will be welcoming us back (haha)

The shipping container will leave the docks in Antwerp on Wednesday and arrive in Cork on Friday morning, so we will not be seeing our worldly goods till the next Monday at the earliest.

At this point the pets have had their shots, micro chips for the ones that didn't have one yet, passports have been updated, etc etc.  The dogs need a treatment for tapeworm between 1 and 5 days before arrival in the UK.

Boxes have been filled and many more still need filling. The weeks ahead are going to be hectic, to say the least.

Thank you for reading
Patricia xxx...x