15th August - The House is Sold!

As is the way of these things, the house completion date was pushed out from 9^th of August until the 15^th for various reasons and so it was that we moved out of our house at 12:30 on Thursday the 15^th August 2002.
We are now a trio of "Bag Persons" (UTB + CRB & Simba the Dog) almost literally living out of the back of the car this week. We have been offered a room by several of our friends and relatives, which will help a lot of course, but I (Colin) do feel that any problems we have with accommodation are purely self-inflicted and we should not rely too heavily on our friends.

Currently we are living with Colin's Mum & Dad, who have been exceptionally good to us. We have installed a loft ladder for them(?) and we have shoe-horned a lot of our 'must keep' items into the loft and garden shed there. Disposing of our goods and chattels has proved much more difficult than we could have imagined. As we have said, moving house is one thing, but to have nowhere to move to, is quite another! Friends have rallied round to provide (temporary) storage of our gear. In the next few weeks we will be further sorting this out and most probably dumping yet more at the local rubbish tip!

Our intended purchase of the 9th August has fell through - (probably just as well) - We were 'buying in haste' and with our hearts rather than using our heads. Subsequent communication with a number of brokers has convinced us we can still buy better and/or cheaper in Europe.

We met up with a couple (in our last week at 'home') who have themselves just purchased a boat in Holland. They had made a ridiculous offer on a very nice looking boat and it was accepted! Bargains are still to be had, but they will have to fork out £20,000 to get the interior up to standard, as the previous owner had 'improved it'. We wish them well with their new craft and hope to visit soon to see how things are progressing.

These photos are views of a boat we have seen - perhaps not to everyone's taste, but with a couple of big Diesel's and a 5kw generator it certainly makes an attractive proposition as far as we are concerned - and the bath? Well what can you say?

We are looking at the high end of 2nd-hand prices but the general build quality and interior finishing is just superb in this range and age of Dutch-Built craft.

Only time will tell!

We are lucky to be house-sitting in a couple of weeks, which will give us some space to sort out our belongings and probably have yet another clear out of those 'essentials' we thought we couldn't live without!

In mid September we will be off to Holland for a week, armed with plenty of brokers info, contact numbers and marinas to view boats in. Assuming the flooding problems in Europe don't get to us first, we hope to have purchased something suitable during that week.

© CRB Ltd. Updated - Saturday, 12 Sep 2020