Bonus & Wendy's Big Adventure . . . .

[Bonus]

As some of you may know, myself and "Wendy" have been talking about moving from SA back to Europe for quite a while now.

 

Our "dream" is to run a B&B / Guest House somewhere near the Pyrenees mountains, either in North Eastern Spain or South Western France. We will cater for anyone wishing to stay, but plan to offer extra services that make us especially appealing to fellow cyclists from around the world.    

 

Given our limited budget (and our love of hard work  ) the intention is to buy a reasonable priced property in need of renovation that we can tailor to suit our needs. We will then carry out the necessary work and, hopefully before we starve to death, open our doors to the paying public.

 

Our friends & families, our ex-colleagues (some of them anyway) and lots of Hubbers have asked us to document our progress so that they can see how we're progressing. The next 6 months are going to be interesting (and more than a little bit nerve-wracking!) to say the least.

 

To that end (and hopefully with the Site Admins permission!) I am going to use this thread as a "Blog" to post our progress. We would welcome any warnings or advice Hubbers may have, we will answer any questions we can and, of course, you can take the mickey out of me when I get something silly wrong. (I say "me" because Wendy doesn't make mistakes)

 

We will also be documenting our progress using a "Facebook Group". It is a closed group at the moment but if you have FB and want to follow us, just PM me on here your FB email address and I'll add you to the group. Not everyone likes FB but for us it's an easy way to post pictures and keep in touch with lots of people all over the world at the same time. It's almost as if that's what FB was designed for . . .

 

Wish us luck :-)

 

B&W

 

 

 

The original "moving to Spain" thread is here:

 

https://community.bikehub.co.za/topic/141705-one-of-the-reasons-were-looking-forward-to-moving-to-spain/

 

 

[NixM]

Good luck!

Maybe we will come visit when its done

[Gen]

All the best.

[BenReaper]

Good luck with youre venture Bonus and Wendy.

[Mntboy]

Good luck guys! Hope you and Wendy have loads more fun times on this adventure than difficult ones.

[Imploder]

Good Luck and everything of the best. Your courage and adventurous spirit is an inspiration.

[UpShift_Cycles]

Did I miss the part of the date you are leaving our shores?

[WrightJnr]

One less cycling in my street now. Not cool. LOL, only joking. Wish you and Wendy all the best!!!

[Chro Mo]

   Good luck!

[Ispeed_V]

Good luck and all the best.

[Tubehunter]

Whatever happens it sounds like an exciting adventure! Enjoy every step of the journey!

[Bonus]

Cheers guys. We're looking forward to it!

 

As far as the time-line goes, at the moment it looks something like this . . . .

 

We will be here for a few weeks yet sorting bits and pieces out and just generally enjoying "being off work". Plan to do plenty of gym and weekday riding, Heia Safari, Avianto and road riding in the Cradle etc - something which we don't generally get to do when working.

 

Towards the end of May we will fly to the UK. By then my son (in the UK) will have bought, taxed & Insured a cheap second hand station wagon for us to use. (I suppose I should tell him about this really) We will spend a week or so touring the UK catching up with family and friends.

 

Mid June'ish we plan to take the car on the euro-tunnel train and then drive/tour down through France, over the Pyrenees and down to meet our friends in Zaragoza, Spain. He is an ex-colleague who has become a good friend. We stayed with him and his fiancee last year when we were on our initial reconnaissance trip - they are helping us find our way around :-)

 

Then it is just a case of finding a suitable property in need of some TLC that we can work on.

 

Once we have found a property and made an offer it will take a while for the purchase to go through. During that time we will come back to SA, via the UK and, all being well, pack up our stuff and put our house here on the market.

 

Luckily we don't need to sell our house here before we can buy in Spain. But we will need to sell here before we can spend too much on renovations in Spain. That takes some of the critical timing out of the equation . . . .

 

Later on I'll tell you about "Plan B" - (what happens if we can't find a suitable property . . .)

[Bonus]

We're comparing the pros & cons of selling our household belongings here and using the money we make to buy replacement stuff overseas, versus packing what we have here into a container and shipping it over for us to keep.

 

The poor exchange rate and the probable low resale value of our existing furniture etc probably means a container is the way to go - our stuff is worth more to us than it is to anyone else!

 

If you do go the container route you have to declare that you are actually immigrating, otherwise they consider that you are "exporting" a container of goods and there will be tax costs involved.

[Uni]

How exciting. Enjoy the ride!

[DIPSLICK]

Going to def follow this one, good luck as said above sadly another family on the way out

[Jacques@ACT]

Good luck Bonus. Big decisions, thats for sure. We've moved a lotnin the past too. Originally from SA to UK in 1996, then UK to OZ in 2006. Spent 2 years travelling overland from OZ back to SA. SA back to UK again, and now we are back in Cpt again. We have shipped belongings before in a container, but think it will be better to sell up if we go back again. The only thing we've found with the shipping/buying there saga, is that even though you will be shipping, you probably will buy a load of stuff while you wait for containers to arrive, unless your timing is perfect. Having to buy everything all over again will cost a lot though. Probably much more than shipping. Difficuly choice.

If you do decide to ship, make sure to get a quote from Brittania, they were by far the cheapest to the UK for us. Not sure what the rates would be to mainland EU.

Edit, spelling

Edited May 8, 2015 by Jacques@ACT