Friday August 5 AT LAST!

Only one photo today. Love this butterfly flitting around the buddleia bush this morning.

Started out as another fine sunny normal day, with the first stop at the local car boot sale. It is pure entertainment wandering around all the rows of traders and the crowds of shopper. I visited my fruit and veg stand again and got some really good priced quality produce including sweet flat white peaches from Spain, with the real flavour of summer.

Decided to wash Kathy’s linen that we have been using (that must have been a good sign!), wanted to spend some time wandering around Horncastle again and they had a good laundry there so that was the day’s destination. Did my chores, had a lovely leisurely browse around the antique shops and craft shops before calling into a nice café for a late lunch and spent some time catching up online with their free wifi.

It was 4 when finally got home to the Barn, turned on the wifi and a message from Steve, the mail had just arrived….and all the paperwork for the van was finally through, we now have a registration plate.

As you can imagine we were like a couple of silly chooks, so excited and trying to work out what we had to do first. Firstly needed to get the insurance activated before they closed for the weekend, and after a couple of no replies finally got through and using our reference number he brought everything up and by 5pm it was all done….and we were feeling quite a bit poorer. This has been the biggie for us as we spent so much time before we left going through all the insurance companies but they would only deal with UK residents. Down Under insurance was the only one that would work with us, and as they have found a gap in the market, they charge accordingly. Evidently from our checks they are a good company so no worries there, so that was ticked off the list.

Checked out the ferry to Rotterdam and the first available berth was this Wednesday morning for the 7 hour crossing, so booked that online. Another tick.

We needed to collect all the paperwork from Steve and Kathy so popped into Boston after dinner. We have been so unbelievably fortunate to have them helping us out, do not know how we could have dealt with all this otherwise, but feel after this if anyone else asks them to help import a vehicle, the answer would be a definite no! We are forever grateful.

The most important document was the form with our new registration number that we will use to get the number plate cut tomorrow and then Ian will finally be able to drive Ruakiwi 2.

We will pack up here over the weekend, and head off on Monday morning, dropping the rental car off on the way South and have a couple of days camping in UK before we cross on Wednesday, 5 weeks to the day since we arrived in UK.

It has been quite a wait, but have put the time to good use having a good look around this area as well as getting the van all set up.

So as all the house linen is clean, tonight is our first night sleeping in what will be our home for the next 3 months, very exciting!