Monsieur Noah, Bonjour
Moving to Spain
By Richard & Susan Lust
www.viva-iberica.com
'Monsieur Noah, Bonjour' . . . Our greeting when arriving at St Malo dock, about halfway through our move from England to Spain. To use a cliché, it was a life changing experience.
Owners of a successful Spanish Horse stud in England, good jobs, a large house and everything that denotes success in 'English' terms, but something was missing from our lives; 'quality of life'. Once you have experienced it you will give up many things for it - this is our story.
For 20 years we visited Spain, coast to inland, going all over the country trying to find the perfect place to live. We bought 'perfect places' only to find a few years later that perfection was a transitory experience and with the increasing burden of building in Spain, particularly in the coastal areas, perfection was short lived. We both had successful jobs, at the same time running our horse stud, working 10 hours a day at the 'day job' and then 6 hours with horses was a recipe for disaster, something had to give. We needed a serious talk.
Our talk was to change our lives forever and has led to our regaining our appreciation for life itself - yes there will truly be no going back.
One day in September 2003 my husband, Richard, said to me 'Let's move to Spain'.
'When?' I said.
'Now,' was his reply and we duly put our home on the market.
We had some land in inland Spain and so we arranged for builders to put up the minimum of fencing and a shelter for our mares - sorry I'm jumping the gun here, of course you don't yet know the logistics of what we were moving, just read on . . . The house, OK it wasn't habitable but it had been there over a 100 years. There should not be much needing to be done to it, (apart from electricity, water, partial rebuilding, etc) - in the meantime flat rentals in the local village were cheap!
So we made our plans and started to arrange our paperwork to set off into the blue.
We decided to move everything ourselves - the merits were that we were in charge - to keep costs down and everything went, mostly, according to our plans; demerits were that Richard had two and a half months of truck driving to move 50 horses, 2 ponies, 32 chickens, 11 geese, 6 peacocks, 6 cats, and 2 dogs, (the contents of our home, farm and stud) - never again!
As D day approached, we both got more and more irritable. We had bought an articulated truck and packed it with household items, horse tack (we also operated a tack shop), farm and stud gear etc, etc. We had a succession of skips on the front lawn - 'Do you think we'll need this' one or other would call, 'No skip it' was the response, heard more and more frequently as our load got nearer the back doors of the truck. We had vowed that what we could not get on the truck would not go with us. We each had our own formulae - if it has not been used in six months then throw it out, then three months, then one month.
The paperwork necessary to move our livestock was formidable. It was a good thing that for many years we had been involved in transporting horses between England and Spain. Without this fore-knowledge, we would have missed our deadlines, as deadlines we indeed had. We had finally sold the house, with an agreement that we could keep horses there until the end of January, only to be held to ransom at the point of signing, with an ultimatum that unless everything was out by the end of December, we would have to pay £1000 per week to keep anything at our former home, so everything had to go and go quickly.
We drew up a plan which involved 11 trips with our horsebox, 2 with the articulated tractor/trailer unit and then two cars travelling separately. The trips were planned down to the last minute. We had lists of livestock going on each load. Health and travel documents were applied for from DEFRA and the vet had to be present to examine each animal and give a certificate of health for transport. That was the easy bit; unfortunately some factors made the process more complex.
To start with of course, our dogs and cats had to have their normal vaccinations, plus rabies - no problem with normal dogs and cats, but unfortunately four of our cats were feral stable cats. We decided to take them with us as no-one would take them on and our local gamekeeper warned us that if we were not there they would probably be shot. Have you ever tried to vaccinate and micro-chip a feral cat? Not easy is an understatement. We managed to bribe the cats into a room. The vet duly arrived with vaccinations clutched in one sticky paw and informed us gratefully that we did not need microchips, just a description and vaccinations, so great, get out the welding gloves!. We spent the next half hour wrestling bits of fur covered rubber so the vet could stab them and describe them 'black cat, short hair, no distinguishing features' - 'Are you really sure that's enough?' I gasped, as I avoided said black cat who was running up the wall with enough speed to make it halfway across the ceiling before slamming down onto the floor.
'Yes' said the vet.
'No' said DEFRA.
Stage two was similar, the only problem was that the cats were wise to us and didn't want to be pinned down to have microchips inserted and then scanned, still, an hour and a half later and all was well - at least it was with the cats, the vet and I both had battle scars.
Chickens - 'Easy!' said I. 'They are just pet chickens, home bred and not for commercial production.'
'Not easy.' said DEFRA. 'They all need to be tested for Salmonella'.
'OK' said the vet who duly arrived for another day of chaos. 'We need to identify them so that if one proves positive we can despatch him/her, so we will put a sticky tag on the leg of each chicken with a number on and have a master list with descriptions etc'.
32 blood tests and tags later, everything was done. Chickens put to bed, vet gone. The next day we opened the chicken houses and let 32 chickens out, 20 of which still had sticky tags on one leg, the other tags had all been picked off overnight - luckily no chicken tested positive.
Paperwork all applied for. DEFRA and the vet had our lists of ferry timings (you cannot get papers more than 48 hours in advance of travel), everything was semi-fine.
'You have ponies' DEFRA said.
'Yes' we replied.
'Have you had them valued?' - we were nonplussed. Why did we need the ponies valued? 'You cannot transport them unless their value is over £300' announced the lady from DEFRA. 'It's because of the meat trade'.
'OK, how do we get them valued?'
'Get a valuation officer to inspect them and then send us a report.'
These elusive individuals of which, at that time, there were a total of 5 in England, Scotland and Wales were difficult to get hold of, but we eventually pinned one down and eventually paid them more than what the ponies cost!
Finally D Day had arrived and we set off, Richard driving the horse truck - contents 11 horses, 2 dogs, 6 peacocks and I had a car with 13' of trailer behind loaded with carriage and many, many other bits and pieces plus a groom to help with the move. Tarpaulin over the top, everything secure. We were away, to Portsmouth to meet the vet for the next inspection.
Great! Arrived in plenty of time. Went to check in and a small voice beside me said 'My passport's not with me it's on the trailer,'
'No problem' said I (through gritted teeth, meaning 'Why on earth is anyone stupid enough to put their passport in a trailer?')
'Whereabouts did you put it?' inwardly praying as I looked at all 13ft of perfectly loaded trailer. Yet again my prayers were unanswered as I heard the reply 'I don't know'.
Did I really hear laughter from above!!!
We landed in France and felt we were at last on the way. The customs inspectors were interested in our loads and incredulous that English people were moving to Spain, with what appeared to be a zoo, plus everything bar the kitchen sink - should have thought of that, we didn't have one in the new house! Animals were inspected; papers not inspected. Cigarettes offered by them and refused by us. Our little convoy duly set off through France.
To be continued next month........
Moving to Spain
By Richard & Susan Lust
www.viva-iberica.com
'Monsieur Noah, Bonjour' . . . Our greeting when arriving at St Malo dock, about halfway through our move from England to Spain. To use a cliché, it was a life changing experience.
Owners of a successful Spanish Horse stud in England, good jobs, a large house and everything that denotes success in 'English' terms, but something was missing from our lives; 'quality of life'. Once you have experienced it you will give up many things for it - this is our story.
For 20 years we visited Spain, coast to inland, going all over the country trying to find the perfect place to live. We bought 'perfect places' only to find a few years later that perfection was a transitory experience and with the increasing burden of building in Spain, particularly in the coastal areas, perfection was short lived. We both had successful jobs, at the same time running our horse stud, working 10 hours a day at the 'day job' and then 6 hours with horses was a recipe for disaster, something had to give. We needed a serious talk.
Our talk was to change our lives forever and has led to our regaining our appreciation for life itself - yes there will truly be no going back.
One day in September 2003 my husband, Richard, said to me 'Let's move to Spain'.
'When?' I said.
'Now,' was his reply and we duly put our home on the market.
We had some land in inland Spain and so we arranged for builders to put up the minimum of fencing and a shelter for our mares - sorry I'm jumping the gun here, of course you don't yet know the logistics of what we were moving, just read on . . . The house, OK it wasn't habitable but it had been there over a 100 years. There should not be much needing to be done to it, (apart from electricity, water, partial rebuilding, etc) - in the meantime flat rentals in the local village were cheap!
So we made our plans and started to arrange our paperwork to set off into the blue.
We decided to move everything ourselves - the merits were that we were in charge - to keep costs down and everything went, mostly, according to our plans; demerits were that Richard had two and a half months of truck driving to move 50 horses, 2 ponies, 32 chickens, 11 geese, 6 peacocks, 6 cats, and 2 dogs, (the contents of our home, farm and stud) - never again!
As D day approached, we both got more and more irritable. We had bought an articulated truck and packed it with household items, horse tack (we also operated a tack shop), farm and stud gear etc, etc. We had a succession of skips on the front lawn - 'Do you think we'll need this' one or other would call, 'No skip it' was the response, heard more and more frequently as our load got nearer the back doors of the truck. We had vowed that what we could not get on the truck would not go with us. We each had our own formulae - if it has not been used in six months then throw it out, then three months, then one month.
The paperwork necessary to move our livestock was formidable. It was a good thing that for many years we had been involved in transporting horses between England and Spain. Without this fore-knowledge, we would have missed our deadlines, as deadlines we indeed had. We had finally sold the house, with an agreement that we could keep horses there until the end of January, only to be held to ransom at the point of signing, with an ultimatum that unless everything was out by the end of December, we would have to pay £1000 per week to keep anything at our former home, so everything had to go and go quickly.
We drew up a plan which involved 11 trips with our horsebox, 2 with the articulated tractor/trailer unit and then two cars travelling separately. The trips were planned down to the last minute. We had lists of livestock going on each load. Health and travel documents were applied for from DEFRA and the vet had to be present to examine each animal and give a certificate of health for transport. That was the easy bit; unfortunately some factors made the process more complex.
To start with of course, our dogs and cats had to have their normal vaccinations, plus rabies - no problem with normal dogs and cats, but unfortunately four of our cats were feral stable cats. We decided to take them with us as no-one would take them on and our local gamekeeper warned us that if we were not there they would probably be shot. Have you ever tried to vaccinate and micro-chip a feral cat? Not easy is an understatement. We managed to bribe the cats into a room. The vet duly arrived with vaccinations clutched in one sticky paw and informed us gratefully that we did not need microchips, just a description and vaccinations, so great, get out the welding gloves!. We spent the next half hour wrestling bits of fur covered rubber so the vet could stab them and describe them 'black cat, short hair, no distinguishing features' - 'Are you really sure that's enough?' I gasped, as I avoided said black cat who was running up the wall with enough speed to make it halfway across the ceiling before slamming down onto the floor.
'Yes' said the vet.
'No' said DEFRA.
Stage two was similar, the only problem was that the cats were wise to us and didn't want to be pinned down to have microchips inserted and then scanned, still, an hour and a half later and all was well - at least it was with the cats, the vet and I both had battle scars.
Chickens - 'Easy!' said I. 'They are just pet chickens, home bred and not for commercial production.'
'Not easy.' said DEFRA. 'They all need to be tested for Salmonella'.
'OK' said the vet who duly arrived for another day of chaos. 'We need to identify them so that if one proves positive we can despatch him/her, so we will put a sticky tag on the leg of each chicken with a number on and have a master list with descriptions etc'.
32 blood tests and tags later, everything was done. Chickens put to bed, vet gone. The next day we opened the chicken houses and let 32 chickens out, 20 of which still had sticky tags on one leg, the other tags had all been picked off overnight - luckily no chicken tested positive.
Paperwork all applied for. DEFRA and the vet had our lists of ferry timings (you cannot get papers more than 48 hours in advance of travel), everything was semi-fine.
'You have ponies' DEFRA said.
'Yes' we replied.
'Have you had them valued?' - we were nonplussed. Why did we need the ponies valued? 'You cannot transport them unless their value is over £300' announced the lady from DEFRA. 'It's because of the meat trade'.
'OK, how do we get them valued?'
'Get a valuation officer to inspect them and then send us a report.'
These elusive individuals of which, at that time, there were a total of 5 in England, Scotland and Wales were difficult to get hold of, but we eventually pinned one down and eventually paid them more than what the ponies cost!
Finally D Day had arrived and we set off, Richard driving the horse truck - contents 11 horses, 2 dogs, 6 peacocks and I had a car with 13' of trailer behind loaded with carriage and many, many other bits and pieces plus a groom to help with the move. Tarpaulin over the top, everything secure. We were away, to Portsmouth to meet the vet for the next inspection.
Great! Arrived in plenty of time. Went to check in and a small voice beside me said 'My passport's not with me it's on the trailer,'
'No problem' said I (through gritted teeth, meaning 'Why on earth is anyone stupid enough to put their passport in a trailer?')
'Whereabouts did you put it?' inwardly praying as I looked at all 13ft of perfectly loaded trailer. Yet again my prayers were unanswered as I heard the reply 'I don't know'.
Did I really hear laughter from above!!!
We landed in France and felt we were at last on the way. The customs inspectors were interested in our loads and incredulous that English people were moving to Spain, with what appeared to be a zoo, plus everything bar the kitchen sink - should have thought of that, we didn't have one in the new house! Animals were inspected; papers not inspected. Cigarettes offered by them and refused by us. Our little convoy duly set off through France.
To be continued next month........