We're settling down into our Brittany sit and I am out of action (and out of gardening!) with a throat infection, so it's a good time to reflect on our trip to the UK.
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| Our current home on the left. |
We ended up spending longer in the UK than originally planned but the beauty of our current lifestyle is the flexibility it offers us. We simply set up a few house sits (it turns out we are quite in demand at present and have been turning away sits) to keep a lid on accomodation costs, (it's not so easy to free-camp in the UK) and give us bases to help with Charmaine's revision.
We used CMC (Caravan & Motorhome Club) sites for the periods between the sits and had some lovely stays in these as well, especially our 'holiday' at Kimmeridge Bay in an affiliated site. The house sits also all worked out very well and we met some lovely people and their pets.
We spent a total of 65 nights in the UK, 9 of them on campsites and the balance in sits.
Bokkie drove a total of 783 miles (1.253 km) and didn't particularly enjoy the congestion, narrow roads or driving on the wrong side of the road although it was nice being able to read the road signs! We tried to limit filling up in the UK as diesel is much more expensive, so made sure we entered with a full tank and left with an empty one. We only bought 80 litres of fuel at a cost of £106 and our consumption is still around 29 mpg.
We used almost no LPG but did make sure we filled up our bottles as, strangely, LPG is cheaper in the UK than in France.
We spent a total of £1,618 (€1,484) in direct costs. As before, this excludes 'above the line' costs of which there were quite a few as we had to repair Bokkie's brakes, get her through the MOT and fix Charmaine's car and renew insurances, etc. The highest cost, as expected, was groceries at £677 followed by campsites £169 and diesel of £156 (this is diesel consumed as we used French diesel as well as the UK diesel we bought). We also did a fair amount of minor repairs and stocking up of clothing and essentials for the upcoming winter sit.
Our daily cost was only £24.52 (approx. €22.50) mainly due to us house-sitting so much of the time - which cut down on diesel, gas and accommodation costs. It was really interesting to find that groceries were generally more affordable in the UK than France. The decline in the value of the pound will make this even more pronounced back in France for the winter, but at least we can bulk-buy a bit more in the house, something we can't often do in Bokkie. There is also all the amazing produce from the garden which (with the owners' permission) will be enjoyed.
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| One of the two vegetable gardens, bursting with produce |
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| Saucy French carrots |
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| Jess with her lovely golden eyes |
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| Jasper deciding to go to the source in his hunt |
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| The cutest little bat outside my window |
All in all, it's lovely to be doing the pre-sit in the Brittany house as we are enjoying the gardens in summer, and it gives us the opportunity to see what we might need for the long sit and get ourselves set up for the winter.
Now I just need to shake this throat infection - the garden and surrounding countryside is waiting...!
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