Anyone who hasn’t been to the Efteling should go. Immediately. What a fantastic, magical place for children and the grown ups who accompany them. The fairytale forest; the rides; the characters, the music, the Frikandellen, the light show on the lake. We rode our bikes there. Enough said.  

  

  

  

 

Okay, so we needed to pack the car first. Would it all fit? Is that the kitchen sink? We’d been providing plenty of free entertainment for our street over the past few days and departure day was no exception as we struggled to fit all our camping gear in the car while the children got increasingly irritated and hungry. Oh dear. We were obviously amateurs at both packing and parenting. Finally we were off with a flourish, but much later than planned (thanks for the lovely wave, dear neighbours at no. 26!)

Would we make our ferry to Hoek van Holland? Yes, we jolly well would. Despite our Sat Nav, which determinedly sent us in the opposite direction to Harwich and was still insisting we had 30 minutes left to drive while we were boarding the ferry! Garmin, we now have major trust issues.

We can recommend the ferry. The cabins are surprisingly comfortable and the whisky in the lounge is quite adequate for soothing frazzled nerves.

On 20 July 2015 the lovely people at Anglo Pacific managed to dovetail our worldly goods into one 20 foot shipping container… so, our epic journey from London to Sydney began. At this point we had lost the will to live and couldn’t remember why we had decided to move back to Australia nor spend several months camping in Europe along the way. Lots of people had been asking us why we decided to go and right then we couldn’t think of any good reasons

We loved our neighbourhood, friends and work colleagues in London and both ourselves and the Wild Berry Boys were very happy. They had been offered places at an excellent local school and nursery for September. Yet we missed the warmth, outdoor lifestyle and relaxed pace that we remembered from our former time in Sydney, and wanted to be closer to family.

Off we go. Goodbye, lovely Winston Road. Goodbye, neighbours and friends in London. See you all for a few days in November.