Full steam ahead!...

This is it! Get excited cos it's happening!
Following the My world is in your hands... post I made a couple of weeks ago I finally have a response. The mortgage company were very easy to work with. Their response was swift and concise. (I think the 1.5% they load on my mortgage is their motivating factor!)

Housing associations on the other hand are another story all together. Don't get me wrong. They were quick to cash the cheque I sent them to pay the administrative charges but after that communication seemed to cease.

Phone call after phone call drew up nothing but dead ends. The lady I had addressed the permission to sublet form to was on maternity leave, yet her mail was not being read!

Then the forms had to be scanned and submitted to a different lady in the same office, electronically. Unfortunately she was struck down with illness for a week and her colleagues were unable to log in to her section of the computer system.

Well I rang the number for the umpteenth time this morning and she was better! But out of the office. I pleaded that someone please phone her and ask that she contacts me today. 16:45 arrived and I made a last ditch attempt and rang again.

She was back! And had been all afternoon. However, she was now on the phone and couldn't take a call. You can sense my frustration. I waited for 24 minutes with Shania Twain trying desperately to sooth my temper on the hold music.

We now have permission to sublet! The mortgage company are on board, the housing association are on board. I rang Jill at Pinnacle Letting Company and must have sounded like a small child. I was so relieved and excited all at the same time.

Some of our stuff has already gone through various means. Freecycle, as always, has come up trumps. I get most of my furniture from freecycle and now I've sent it back to the freecycle ether. Bonus being I don't have to hire a van to get rid of stuff!

One last push and I hope to be out by next week end. After throwing a feather duster around for a bit and drafting in a carpet cleaning friend, I should be ready for pictures to be taken and the property finally on the rental market by the end of the month.

Emotions are running high at the moment. Relief, anticipation, excitement, fear ... Everything. But it's all moving forward!

Train me up Scotty!...

The first 6 months of our Vagabonding adventure will (hopefully) be a slow introduction to travel and adventure.

Kerry and I have been skiing and snowboarding for the last two seasons, but we always feel that a week is never enough. We love nothing better than that feeling at the beginning of the week when you grab your gear and head off to the lift!

So we have decided to start vagabonding up in the snowy French Alps. And be gainfully employed! Applications for chalet hosts are taken all year round and in preparation we booked on the Natives Chalet Cookery Course last night.

The course helps to prepare hopeful chalet hosts with, not only general cooking skills, but more specific tasks and problems that occur on a Ski Season. From the differences in cooking at altitude (Water may not boil at some heights!) to laying a table or cooking a fabulous afternoon cake. All the while making sure the work is done efficiently and effectively to enable more time on the slopes without compromising service.

With no official service work (Waiting tables, bar work, hospitality etc) on our CV's we both felt that we would need to complete a chalet course to prepare us for the potential season ahead. Having stayed in a Ski Chalet before we kind of know what to expect but I'm sure when it comes down to the nitty gritty we will thank the course instructors after!

We are now £1000 lighter and will be taking a week out of work in July to spend the week at St Teresa's School in Dorking. The course is instructed by past Seasonnaires and if I know anything about seasonnaires its that the evenings will, undoubtedly, be ladled with mulled wine and Camel cigarettes.

Natives also offer a very good support system to help us gain the vital chalet host place we are looking for and will help with everything from CV structuring to introductions to recommended companies.

We've now got a mini Holiday booked which will hopefully be useful and fun as well as us gaining a new 'string to our bow' as such.

My world is in your hands...

Not all letting agents are bad guys after all! I had a few agents round earlier this week with mixed impressions. Some just didn't seem interested in what I had to say. As if they were going 'through the motions' with it all. This isn't a good way to start, considering how scared I was about letting her out. I think anybody would be pretty scared about letting complete strangers come and stay in your house ... or more aptly your home.

One evening I was minding my own, trawling the internet with the obligatory Facebook page open as the first tab. I was flitting back and forth reading travel blogs, twitter posts and generally surfing when a notification popped up on Facebook. An old friend had messaged me a whole ream of paragraph upon paragraph of text!

He went on to say that he didn't usually read blogs but mine took his fancy, he had travelled for 6 months in his late teens and 'loved the word Vagabonding' (I do too!) he really enjoyed my writing (which I think is terribly lumpy!) and it was a big compliment to hear that he was eager for more.

Then the surprise. He had worked in lettings and was willing to exchange some advise and information in exchange for me continuing my blog (more compliments). But then he noticed that his firm were already coming round to meet me. Not just his firm but his Mum!

Jill from The Pinnacle Letting Company was the last of the agents I'd scheduled in for that day and I was pretty on edge after the other firms performance, but Jill was brilliant. We spent a good 45 minutes chatting and discussing all of the questions I had. It felt like nothing was too silly or complex to ask and I knew there and then that, however hard the others had tried (or not!), I would definitely leave my flat in Jill's care. 

She was able to give a brilliant rate and a massive flood of relief washed over me. It was on! Any doubt I had about letting my flat out had gone. The race has started! I hope to have tenants in there by 1st May 2012. Only 2 months! And there is still mountains of things to do.

Jill emailed over the proposed Shorthold Tenancy Agreement (which the other agents still haven't done 2 days later!) and all of the other documents so I could compile a 'Permission to Let' proposal to both the Housing Association and Mortgage lender. And here I am, tired but every i has been crossed and every t dotted. All I need now is a couple of stamps (The one thing you miss most from your Mums purse when you leave home!) and I am done.

Then this whole thing is in someone else's hands. I have done my best. Put together comprehensive proposals, sourced the best letting agency in Horsham if not Sussex and paid (admin fees for Housing Association) for the privilege of them to make the decision.

Either the Mortgage company or the Housing Association could say no. The only option then is to sell her, which I'm really not keen on. But there we go ... C'est la vie.

A Sense of Adventure - Mileeta

Exploring the unknown. Christopher Columbus stylie! There is something very mystical about adventure. Adventure, to me, implies different. Be it a different scenery, different social context, different activity or simply a different day!

And people adventure in different ways. I know I've been on vastly different 'adventures'. From climbing down caves barely big enough for a child let alone me! Reaching the summit of my favourite mountain. Beginning the process of buying a house. Attending my first fencing (sword fighting not shiplap timber!) lesson.


In 2011 my Dad set out on a 3 week long adventure with his beloved BMW GS1200 motorcycle. His trip spanned the breadth of Europe starting from England and covering 5715 miles to Turkey.

I can only imagine what a trip like his is like. Whilst the first 3 days were spent riding alongside fellow Mid-Life Rebels MC members, Dad spent a long time riding solo for hundreds of miles a day.

As a fairly sociable person I think I would find this quite challenging. I look to share experiences with people and love nothing better than to recount those experiences over a beer or two in the pub!

Not all of this trip was spent alone though. He was able to meet Sergio, a good friend and work colleague, in Brindisi, Italy on his BMW R1100R motorbike after making quite an eventful journey up from Sicily.

Their most Easterly point was Istanbul and from there Dad made the two and  a half thousand mile journey back to work and the norm.

Setting out...

Setting out on an adventure. Probably the scariest thing I've done. The decision to drop everything I currently know, to fulfil this insatiable desire to travel.
I hope to leave during November 2012. So why have a 'Setting out' post 9 months before?!
Because there is so much to do! In preparation for any trip people must plan. Its liberating not having a plan, and I hope at some point I do have that unadulterated sense of 'I don't know where I am going to go tomorrow'. But for now, I need to plan.

I worked very hard to buy the 30% share I have in my apartment. I've nearly lost it on one occasion and I don't intend on letting it go lightly.

Initially I had two options. I knew I could sell up, stick the money in the bank and have that money for when I returned from our vagabonding trip. This, however, threw up a lot of problems. Having already used the scheme I would not be eligible for the Homebuy Shared Ownership Scheme again. This scheme was the key to me being able to afford a part of my home. Without it I would have needed a minimum of a 10% deposit for a property worth £180,000 which I could not have done.

With the property market now a lot different, banks have more stringent lending criteria and typically ask for 20% deposits. God knows what they'll ask for when I return from vagabonding! So I quickly ruled out selling my place. I need to rent it out. The potential rental income is very close to my expenditure with mortgage, rent, service charge and insurances. I didn't particularly want an agent taking their 10 - 15% fees so looked to rent privately.

Ideally I wanted to let her out to friends. Having worked in a house insurance company years ago, I had heard many a horror story of unscrupulous tenants growing tons of weed or simply trashing the place and leaving without paying. Both of these situations would be hard to deal with when living nearby, let alone thousands of miles away.

A few people expressed interest in renting her from me, but for valid and honest reasons were unable to commit, so it leaves me at the mercy of Letting Agents.

I have 2 companies coming next week to have a look at the apartment, evaluate its potential rental income, and hopefully answer some of my questions. There is a lot to think about when becoming a landlord. Not only worrying about who is going to be your tenant and their intention with your lovely home, but also administrative things such as dealing with the deposit agencies, holding money in trust, Energy Performance Certificates and Gas Safe Certificates.

So fingers crossed the letting agents can quell my fears and shed a little light on the matter. Then I can crack on with the usual travel preparation of booking flights, planning accommodation, finding work ..... etc ..... etc

One step at a time!