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The Journey

Ah the journey! We thought we were so organised. Having lived on a boat for over a decade we pride ourselves on having very few personal belongings. But due to Ben's work (as a builder/ creator of wooden things/ and handyman of just about everything) and my work as a musician we did have a workshop full of tools to transport and to a much lesser extent a fair few musical instruments to cart with us... But it looked good we had packed it all down into boxes and our transport man seemed confident it would all fit and that me, Ben and Shanti (aka Sosage) could accompany him in a long drive all the way through Europe to Corfu in his Van.


 Read on below or watch the video....










  Then the snow came.  They called it 'The Beast From The East' which we thought was rather dramatic until it was down to -6 and several inches of snow covered everything.


Still the roads near us were clear. we had a fantastic leaving party (themed Pirates and Greeks) and danced the night away to lots of soul and funk and a few plays of Zorba the Greek.  But the snow kept falling. Our removal man postponed our move by a day which felt like a very long time since all our belongings (including pots and pans and clothes) were packed up and we had said goodbye to everybody... but we filled the time doing last minute leaving things and woke up the next morning ready to move...

   Only we were delayed again. This time a problem with our drivers trailer took the whole day to fix.

 By the time we were packing our things into the van it had gone 10pm (and we were supposed to be catching the ferry several hours drive away at 11pm. We finished packing at about midnight, and our plans to move were then rolled over until the 6.30 am ferry the next day. Exhausted, feeling keen to go and a little homeless we got into bed at Ben's parents house to an ominous txt saying

 ' The van is overweight guys, we are going to have to remove some stuff tomorrow. I'll meet you at 5am.'

  Great!

  What transpired was us getting up at 4.45, meeting our driver and having a mad 30 minutes carrying off random boxes of belongings until we had literally removed 1/2 our things from the van we had so diligently packed the night before. :( We prioritised my instruments and Bens tools and left behind pretty much everything else. When we arrived we had about 2 sets of clothes each and no pots and pans, knives and forks and missing a million other things that we are to this day still living without- but managing!

  The journey was epic, in order to meet Barbara- (the lady who is selling us the house). We had to do 4 days driving in 2 days!

    Our driver drove like a trouper (and smoked like a chimney...), little Shanti was stuffed in the foot well of the car by my feet (but didn't complain too much!) and the world whizzed by as we went with out food, toilet breaks and sleep to cover many, many miles.  We crossed France, and Italy making our way over to Ancona Port.

  It was touch and go though- Even after our epic drive it looked like we were going to miss our ferry to the Greek mainland thus missing Barbara- nooooooo!

  Thankfully we caught the ferry with literally about 5 mins to spare. The tension was ridiculous. We were against the clock, hungry, dirty, tired and very likely to miss the boat and then to add to the drama we ran out of fuel!  We couldn't stop in case we missed the ferry so we ignored the light and drove for 20 miles on fumes while the warning light flashed relentlessly.

We pulled into port just in the nick of time- phew!

  But the comforts of England were gone. They didn't like Shanti on the Ferry and communicated this by tutting, shouting and waving fingers and grumbling at us in Italiam or Greek (eventually I deciphered where we needed to put her as we had been told she could stay with us by the people at the ticket office). She had to sleep in the saddest kennel I have ever seen. Completely alone, in a semi-covered area that was wet and cold, I felt like the worst person ever leaving my little friend in there, but by this point I was sleep deprived and out of options, I locked her into her little sad-box and Ben and I found a place to sleep on the floor inside the boat.   I woke up early having a nightmare that Shanti was howling for us to let her out and that she had died from the shock of the journey and the cold in the night :(

  My suspicions were of course irrational, but once I was up I prodded Ben awake and convinced him to sit out on the open deck with me where she was allowed to be with us- The family re-united again!

 We wrapped up in and old sleeping bag that had been used to wrap around a mirror we were bringing. It smelt a bit funny but it helped to keep the cold out.  We were all a bit delirious by this point so we didn't care!

   Ben and I got more and more excited as we saw the mountains of Igoumonitsa (Greek mainland) come into view.

   The final leg of journey was fast and beautiful- One quick and stunning ferry ride to Corfu Island and a short drive from the port to our new home.

   We spied coves of secret beaches surrounded by olive groves and endless hills covered in cypress trees.  The sun was warm and the sea was blue. If felt like coming home the moment we stepped off the boat.  The dusty, shabby chic of Corfu town heralded us in and the olive groves were full of wild flowers as we wended our way up the ridiculously windy, mountain roads to our new home- beautiful Magoulades.

   We met Barbara at last! We were greeted by her and her friend at the gate.

 We shared a lovely meal, she talked us through how the house works, where we find things and showed us pictures of the extensive work she had done on the property.
    Barbara has been such a dream to deal with ever since we found our new home. It meant so much to meet her in person after so many emails.  Her and her friend were a comedy double act- they bickered like a married couple and made us giggle all evening :)  We were sad to see them go the following day.

     It had been an epic voyage, but the adventure had only just begun...

www.mandalayogabnb.com

www.gofundme.com/launch-the-mandala-yoga-bnb

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