BYE BYE BRISTOL

  The last few days of packing and moving came and the cleaning and sorting seemed like it would never end. The mess of boxes, packed and half packed and then the empty rooms, stripped of the last two years of our lives. It felt very sad but toward the end the sadness was overtaken by a frantic desire to finish, finally. As if leaving our home wouldn't be task enough the minibus packed up, guzzling almost two litres of oil in a twenty minute journey (that's another story) and thankfully friends came to our rescue. 

On our last day, after sleeping in the empty house, we took a last wander to the local park in the most beautiful of early summer sunshine. It was blissful and heart wrenching all at the same time.

There wasn't room for the girls and I in the car for the final trip out of Bristol to my Mum's. We walked down to the station, me feeling choked up and slightly hazy from our neighbour's farewell gin and tonic. The girls smelt warmly of wood smoke from the fire pit's final fire that morning and their hands and faces grubby from final forages in the garden. Linny chatted and Ira smiled out at the world. 

Everything for a few minutes seemed to fit perfectly. We boarded the rail replacement service (a strangely regular feature in my life of getting places...) and the bus wound it's route through familiar streets and the girls squealed in delight at Ira trying to press her apple core through my lips and into my mouth. Finally on the train, it pulled out of Bristol, southwesterly, with the view on the Suspension Bridge and the brightly painted houses and then the lushness of Somerset in May, green deep grass and hawthorn and blackthorn blossom weighing down branches. I said a quiet thank you to everyone and everything that has made Bristol our lovely home for the past three and a half years. Something in that little journey, the first towards France, ignited that fluttering feeling I have inside when an adventure in underfoot. It felt decidedly right and perhaps the girls felt it too.

 Now we are at the farm. Unfortunately looking for a new van but fortunately enjoying early June in one of the most beautiful places I know. We are delaying the sailing to France until we have a new van so things are feeling a bit stressful at times but the recompense is that it has afforded the girls a little longer with their English side of their family: Sheep shearing, Three Cliffs Bay on the Gower, wild flowers and finally finishing the play house that was started for Linny's second Birthday.