Nearly away

Anastasia
Phil May and Andrea Twigg
Tue 4 Oct 2011 23:24
After some increasingly frantic packing over the weekend, to get the house into a rentable state, we finally got on a plane for France.   But not before the Ryanair checkin girl refused to accept my 25 kilo bag.  The problem was that I had 10 kilos of watermaker parts and 4 kilos of DVDs which didn't leave me with much free for my clothes.  I was resigned to paying the £100 excess baggage fee, but the girl practically insisted that we go and "re-pack", as if any amount of re-packing would reduce the weight.  Re packing is apparently a euphemism for wearing everything.  In the end I had to check in wearing six pairs of shorts, five shirts and a hat, which was uncomfortably warm.
 
To make matters worse, when we were unpacking in France we discovered Bertie had included a "special" bottle of wine in his baggage allowance.  Apparently a New Zealand wine, not just one he could have picked up at Carrefour.  It had better be a good one.
 
It was touch and go that we caught the plane in the first place.  We were booked into an airport hotel the night before, because we would not have any beds to sleep on at the house and we wanted a relaxing time before the flight.  Ha. Midnight was the last check-in time, so when that had passed we resigned ourselves to spending the night on our one remaining mattress.  Bertie slept on the couch.  We finished clearing the house the next morning, with the final box being filled while the taxi driver was waiting outside.  We were lucky that Pete (Andrea's sister Sue's husband) stopped by in the morning to pick up some stuff and so was there to help us move the remaining boxes into storage.  Thanks Pete. 
 
Anyway, here we are in Canet en Roussillon.  All  we have to do now is finish off the boat fixing, stow everything away, do the food shopping and hopefully set sail on Thursday.  Looks like the wind will be force 7 in the right direction, which will be good if it happens.