Officially 16 days (its the middle of the night lol)

We have spent the day packing up clothes, ornaments, DVDs anything really. Someone came to pick up a trophy cabinet and a DVD storage unit that we managed to flog on EBay. On thursday someone else is coming to collect two of our leather sofas and by next weekend it is a distinct possibility that we will have no living room furniture left at all. I think we are going to be living out of suitcases before we have even left the house.

On the subject of the house, I cant believe that there are such time wasters about. On Friday morning at about 11 oclock someone knocked on the door saying that he was down from London and had heard our was for sale on 'the grapevine'. Lorna said I was in the shower and could he come back around 1(giving us a bit of time to tidy the place up). He agreed, and went off, having a good scout around as he went.

As it was our first sniff of anyone coming to have a look at the house in weeks we went absolutely mental tidying up for 2 hours solid, and at 1 oclock we had just finished, so we sat and waited for him, and waited. At 3 oclock we decided he wasnt coming. How annoying is that, if nothing else its just plain rude.

If you are wondering why its gone 1 oclock in the morning and I am writing this its because I seem to be the only person who is stressing about this whole moving to Spain thing. I can lie awake for most of the night thinking of depressing and stressful things, interspersed occasionly with new and exciting stuff, then when I eventually fall asleep I have to sleep till 11 to make up for the night lol.

Im not really sure which is the best picture of the house we are buying to show you, but this is from the estate agents web site. It is an old olive mill, currently has two self contained apartments, room for another and also a large area which could be made in to a house or anything else we fancy. It is quite remote, it takes about ten minutes of driving on a track to get to the house once you leave the road, but it really is worth it, peace and quiet, wow! There are about 300 Olive trees that come with the land, but at the moment the farmer who used to own the mill still farms the olives, as that makes things easy, keeps them tidy etc, although Im sure if we want a go we will be able to, although I believe its hard work for not a great deal of money. He actually farms 300000 trees, it takes 4 months.

It is my pleasure to introduce you to MaryBelle, she is the Vietnamese Pot Bellied Pig, that I managed to negotiate in to the deal when we agreed to buy the house. I think you will agree that if we are going to keep animals and be farmers we might as well go the whole hog(gettit?). Isnt she wicked, she is going to help us with waste disposal, as there is not a rubbish collection where we will be living she will devour the food rubbish for us.

18 Days to Go

Right, these four gorgeous girls are our Alpacas, from the top down, they are Lima, Cassandra, Black Dancer and Bermuda. Our first baby(cria) is due at the end of February, with Bermuda, but as she will be close to her due date she wont be able to be delivered to us until after the birth. We hope to be able to visit her on the day the baby is born. Cassandra and Black Dancer are due to give birth in July.

Our herd name is going to be Alpacas el Sol, which is the closest translation I can find of Alpacas in the Sunshine.

Alot of people dont know very much about Alpacas, they are part of the camel family, and are primarily raised for their fleece, although as the industry in Spain is in its infancy we won't be making any money out of that. We will hope to sell the animals on to other potential breeders or people that want sheep guards or even just great pets. They get sheared once a year, before the summer.

We hope that they will be a welcome addition to our lives. They are so relaxing to just sit and watch, you can while away hours without even thinking about it. We also hope that when we get some accomodation up and running for guests that the Alpacas will be as relaxing for them too.

I hope our dog, Geri is not too frightened of the Alpacas and I hope that she doesnt frighten them. Although when they are scared they do make strange and funny noises to alert the others to the dangers.

First post - 19 days to go

Hi, I have decided that it would be a good idea to start a blog, to chronicle the (possibly) many ups and downs of our impending move to Spain.

As most people who know us know, Lorna had some health problems late last year, and whilst undergoing many tests and hospital visits continued to struggle on teaching dancing for about 20 classes a week. Just before the summer holidays, about June, I came up with the hairbrained idea that we should consider moving to Spain, maybe try and find somewhere with a bit of land and possibly build a couple of log cabins for people to holiday in, self catering but maybe a bit like a luxury getaway. On top of that, and I truly don't know where it came from, I suggested we could keep some Alpacas...

Now to be honest I didnt really know anything about Alpacas, only seeing an ugly one at a zoo in Prague and what I'd seen on the internet, but the idea had come from somewhere. Lorna kind of laughed it off, and just kind of said 'maybe in a few years' but it must have stuck because a few days later she wanted to know more about the idea and we have gone from there.

In between those few days and now(19 days away from the move), it has been a bit of a crazy time, we have decorated our house from top to bottom to go on the market, been away for a weekend checking out Alpaca farms, I had two viewing trips to Spain on my own, to stop Lorna falling in love with everything, then we went over together in August and agreed to buy the place we found. It is a rural property, close to a town called Montoro(above right), Lorna announced to the school she was to stop teaching, then she has still had to organise exams, presentations and comps. The weve just had Christmas, its been mental to be honest.

On my first trip to Spain, I had met up with a couple I had been put in touch with, Nigel and Ginny Cobb, who are trying to establish an Alpaca farming industry in Andalucia, hopefully growing outwards throughout Spain. Their enthusiasm and love for these rather lovely animals is infectious, and the next time I went out, this time with Lorna, we stayed at their place for a night and discussed our requirements and the way forward.

Nigel and Ginny put a package together for us, and we have now put down deposits on four Alpacas, Black Dancer, Cassandra, Lima and Bermuda. Bermuda is already in Spain with Nigel and Ginny, and the others will be shipped over from the UK in January after being in quarintine.
We hope the first two, Cassandra and Black Dancer will be delivered in February providing our land is ok for them...how scary.