Blog

Hello! – Thanks for taking the time to catch up with what we have been up to recently. A disappointment, Two house-sits, one Airbnb, and a flight to sunny Spain has made November another busy month for us.

The Disappointment

The month did not start well. We wanted to try some house-sitting abroad so I’d been keeping an eye out for foreign house-sits that looked interesting. I spotted one advertised for the month of December in Basel, Switzerland.

Normally, you see the listing, send off an application then wait for the home host to decide which of the applicants they want to sit for them. The number of applicants varies from sit to sit. This is shown on the listing so you always know how fierce the competition is. There were 7 applicants for this one so not too bad. (some can be 50+)

Once the home host has decided on their chosen sitter, they usually ask for a video call. This helps them as meeting the prospective sitters ‘in person’ gives them the opportunity to ask any questions they may have and to get an idea of their character and personality. The video call is normally a formality and being asked to do a video call is a good sign that you will be accepted to sit.

This time, however, it didn’t go our way. We were invited to do a video call, the home hosts were friendly, showed us around their home and asked all the right questions. However, at the end of the call they surprised us by telling us that they had whittled it down to two potential sitters and they still had to chat to the other candidates – they would let us know tomorrow.

Tomorrow came and unfortunately it wasn’t good news. The other candidates had pipped us at the post!

It was not all bad news though as we were really looking forward to our first house-sit in November – back home to Manchester!

Salford, Manchester

Two of our friends, Michael and Simon had asked us to look after their house, and one of their dogs, Freddy, whilst they went on holiday. We haven’t been back to Manchester since we left in September 2020 so it was nice to get the chance to visit again.

Their house in the city of Salford . It is a great location, only a 15-minute walk to Manchester city centre. There is an abundance of canal walks in the area and Peel Park , just 10 minutes walk from Michael and Simon’s house doubled up as a great walkies and running destination during our stay.

Freddy is a 10 year old Schnauzer. We’ve known him since he was a pup but have never spent any length of time with him before now. We really loved spending a couple of weeks getting to know him properly.

As he is getting older he was very easy to look after – eat, walks , belly rubs, and sleep is all it takes to make him happy – some would say not dissimilar to me!

Freddy has such a lovely character and definitely is a creature of habit. We found his little quirks very amusing. Always doing a lap of the armchair before going to his food bowl and refusing to walk on the left to name just a couple!

He is not keen on the rain either. However did love the fuss of a towel dry when we got home.

A fortnight with Freddy, plus getting the chance to visit our friends again made this a great couple of weeks that we enjoyed immensely.

Trafford

When we thought we had been accepted for the Swiss house-sit, I applied for a short ‘filler’ house-sit in Trafford. The Swiss house-sit was due to start on November 24th and Salford ended on the 17th so Trafford was meant to nicely fill the few days in between.

As we know, that didn’t quite go to plan. We had promised though, and so, for our second sit in November, we headed a few miles south to the area of Trafford. Best known for being the home of Manchester United football club.

Here, we were looking after Peanut, an independent cat that basically did her own thing. She wasn’t a lap cat and came and went as she wished.

The only problem with outside cats is that they bring home ‘gifts’. One evening, true to form, Peanut brought us one thing worse than a dead mouse – a live mouse! She dropped it at our feet. Unfortunately, by the time we’d realised it was alive the mouse also had realised the same thing and made a run for it.

The next hour we spent chasing the mouse around the living room. Eventually, it disappeared behind some furniture and we were forced to give up the chase. It had out foxed (moused?) us and evaded capture. Unfortunately, for the mouse, this turned out not to be a good move for its longevity.

The next morning Peanut was proudly waiting to present us with something thing worse a live mouse, or a dead mouse. Half a dead mouse! We presumed it to be the same one that had outwitted us the night before. To be honest, it was hard to tell without a head to help formal identification.

A wave of sorrow came over me for Mr(s) mouse. Admittedly, mixed with a dollop of delight knowing that it was no longer scuttling freely around the house.

If I told you that I gave it a good send off I would be fibbing . Truth be told, It went in the bin. Don’t judge me!

December booked

Our nomadic lifestyle means that we have to always be on the look out for our next accommodation. After Trafford our diary was empty. In a few days time we would be homeless. An Airbnb in Manchester now seemed our best option for after Trafford as we wanted to stay near the airport. We knew that we wanted to leave the UK for a couple of months and I had already applied for a few sits abroad. It was just a waiting game to see if we were successful with any of the others. The Swiss one had declined us but, with more in the pipeline, we were still optimistic.

As it turned out, we didn’t have to wait long. On the first day of our Trafford house- sit, my phone pinged…

I put the arse end of a mouse I was holding in the bin and checked the message. It was confirmation of a house-sit that we had applied for. Even better – It was for almost the whole of December – in Girona, Spain!

This was excellent news. A new destination for us, a 4-week booking, and we get to spend December in a warmer climate – Bingo!

We now just needed to find some accommodation for the last few days in November.

An Airbnb

I made a quick call to our good friend, Alain. He is an Airbnb host in Manchester and was able to book us into our 14th Airbnb accommodation since leaving Manchester. He offered us his apartment which is just a stones throw from the apartment we have lived in for 15 years so it immediately felt like home – and it felt good to be ‘home’ again even if it was just for a few days.

We had loved our time in Alain’s Airbnb living in Manchester city centre. However, that chapter in our lives is now well and truly closed. It is highly unlikely that we will ever go back to Manchester to live permanently but we have great memories of our time living there and look forward to the opportunity to pop back occasionally to see friends.

Goodbye Manchester!

November has felt like a really busy month having moved three times in four weeks so we are now looking forward to the relaxation of staying in one place for the whole of December.

..and that brings us to this moment in time. It is 7am on the 27th November and we are at Manchester Airport waiting for our Ryanair flight to Barcelona. From there a one hour train journey will take us to Girona, our home for the next four weeks. so far everything is going smoothly, fingers crossed for the rest of the journey. I’ll let you know how we go on next time..