New view!

We had a terrible sleep last night. Or rather, Tim did, and then I did too. He just couldn't sleep at all and we found ourselves sitting up at 2am, having a medicinal whiskey nightcap. We did eventually drop off, though didn't manage a huge amount more sleep before the alarm went off at 6am.

Anyway, everything went very smoothly after that. The removals guys turned up again at 8am and got the last bits packed and loaded onto the van, and Tim and I did all the last bits of cleaning. They headed off by about 10am and we followed on around 45 minutes later, dropping the keys through the letterbox as we left. (The estate agents already had a set, so no need for us to take them there.) A little sad and nostalgic leaving our home of nearly 13 years - but that emotion was gradually transformed into excitement the closer we got to Devon.

We had a really good journey, with a couple of stops along the way, and arrived in Ilfracombe late afternoon, not very long after our sellers had vacated the house. Dropped into the estate agents to pick up the key (and a bottle of wine they kindly gave us), then drove up to our new home. So, so happy to see it again and to find it was exactly as lovely as we remembered it being. Very happily, we had around half an hour to ourselves before the removals guys turned up, so had a good wander round all the rooms, and a look at the view from the balcony. Love it!

Gary and Paul brought in as much as they could for a couple of hours, then got ready to go into town (we offered them showers before they went, which they appreciated) - and Tim and I were finally able to have dinner after 8pm.