Well, we’ve emptied our flat and done the cleaning. It must be time to leave. It’s been a little bit odd spending the last two days ‘camping’ in an empty flat, but it's gone a long way to showing us how little we do actually need. A few saucepans instead of just the pots from our trangia to cook with would’ve been nice though…



The allotment is now three quarters covered in black plastic mulch, which should hopefully go a long way towards stopping the weeds from taking control while we’re away. We’ll be planting quite a few things too. We’ve sown a few seeds, mainly brassicas (purple sprouting, sprouts, kale) and squashes which we will be planting out when we come back at the beginning of May, so rain permitting we should have some good crops next autumn and even next spring. Alex and Stu are very kindly looking after the brassica seedlings for us, and the squashes will be travelling with us for a while!



Tonight we will leave Bristol and head to Shropshire for pretty much the next two weeks before returning to the South West for two weeks in North Devon. We’re house-sitting for my Mum and Dad for the first few days, then staying with Greg, Kath and Tilly over the weekend before we have our first proper week of WWOOFing at Smiling Tree Farm in South Shropshire, starting on Sunday.

In some ways its a real shame to be leaving Bristol, we've been lucky to have met some great people here and also lucky to live in such a lovely flat in a great part of Bristol, but I think its good to be sticking our necks out and making such a radical change. (We'll probably be back anyway!) Who knows what we'll experience over the next 12 months? It’s really rather exciting!

Matt