And there we were – moving into our new home!
Next to Laika it looked rather small and I was convinced that it wasn’t big enough to hold all the camping van stuff – especially the books!
It took me all day to unpack the van while John swept out the rooms and fought with the spider webs and pigeon and mouse dirt and mould but we did it and the place looked a mess but could be lived in except that it was bitterly cold!
Spring turned out to be very wet and miserable and the house extremely cold. ‘Withnail-bitingly cold and I frozen”. It is stone and had been empty and shut up for thirteen years. It was weeks before the temperature inside moved up to double figures. We had electricity but so little amperage that we could use one radiator at a time without tripping the main fuse.
There was no hot water.
For over a week we bathed in a saucepan those needy bits of us that we felt could be exposed enough to risk pneumonia.
So no warm south for us for a while then.
It had been warmer on the campsite outside the van!
