Moose on the Move!

We were both very excited (and relieved) about Chris finally getting a call for an interview! We needed to head to an Internet café for the recruitment agent to forward through all of the details of the interview, but we knew it was for the following Thursday in a place called Exeter on the south coast. That was good news as it gave us some time to prepare (buy Chris a new clean shirt) and maybe check out a few things on our way down there. Taking a closer look at our map to work out where exactly we needed to go, and work out what we could see on the way there, we decided to on a few stops we wanted to make.

First on our list of things to see was yet another white horse. The White Horse of Uffington was carved into a hillside about three thousand years ago during the late Bronze Age. It has a different look about it to the rest of the ones we had seen. It seems to be a little sleeker and carved in such a way that it looks as if the horse is in motion. On a little mound nearby there is a bare patch of white (chalky) ground. Legend has it that this is the spot where St George slay the Dragon and that as the dragon's blood was spilled on the ground, it seeped in and poisoned the soil, meaning nothing ever grew there again. The valley below the horse has a very distinctive shape, which they believe was created during the last ice age (and apparently it is where the white horse goes to graze at night). This area is also where Uffington Castle used to stand. Like so many of the castles around England, there is not a lot left of this one.

Next on our list of things to see was a town called Swindon. I had heard quite a bit about the town from some of Chris' work mates who had been on assignment there. They didn't have a lot to say about the town and I would have to say it isn't the nicest place we have visited since being here. It's not terrible, but it's not fantastic either. We stopped in at a little pub, had some lunch and then decided we needed to leg it to our last stop for the day - Bath!

It was great heading to Bath again. We didn't get a lot of time to explore it last time we were here as we took off to Basingstoke to meet up with some of Chris' work-mates. This time we had a good few days to look around, take in the sights and relax a little. We drove into Bath from the Motorway this time and had an awesome view of the town. It was late afternoon and the setting sun just lit up the scene of the hillside houses sprawling out from around the town centre. We headed straight back to the campsite we were at the last time we were here. It was getting late, and as usual, we hadn't planned ahead and booked anything. We made it with time to spare however, and ended up booking in for a few nights.

The following day, we headed into the town centre to have a look at the Roman Bath's for which the town is famous. The natural hot spring has existed there forever and was considered a sacred place by pagan locals. When the Romans turned up later they too recognised it as a sacred place and referred to the deity who resided there as Sulis-Minerva, a combination of the local pagan name and their own interpretation. They built a huge temple around it where local Romans could come and sacrifice goats in the hope of their wish being granted. Many people also tossed curses into the waters, scratched onto small pieces of pewter and often written backwards so that only the god could read it. Modern archeologists have recovered a huge number of these curses form the waters and some of them are quite amusing. Since then many people, Romans, monks, aristocracy and so on, have used the healing mineral waters. In more recent centuries the water was often prescribed to drink as a cure for various ailments - although in some cases the amount prescribed (5 litres before breakfast) was probably enough to scare patients into getting better! Today, for a small fee a man in tights and a wig can serve you a glass of the strange tasting water!

On our last evening in the campsite outside Bath we headed down to the little pub on the site for a quite drink and a game of backgammon. It was meant to be quiet! There was a group of (mostly) retired firefighters from South Wales filling most of the pub, chatting to other customers and trying to sell copies of their home made pub quiz. (This quiz had a difference, you could take it home and then send it in when you were done - one of the guys later admitted that they didn't usually get very many returned). Each year they do something outlandish to raise money for a charity that one or another of the group has a connection to. This year? They were cycling from their home in Wales to London - quite a distance.
Anyway, before long the guitars, banjo, washboard, spoons, wobble board, tambourines and (all important) the triangle, made their appearance and the rest of the evening was spent singing along to a whole range of folk songs, or at least making a lot of noise in time with everyone else. There was even a little Rolf Harris section with a rendition of 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down' and 'Jake the Peg' (deedle dee) in honour of us and the other Australian family in the bar. Hours of riotous laughter!

From Bath we headed into Bristol for a day to check it out - it seems like a nice town (the accents wern't as extreme as we had imagined from what Stu had indicated) and I was able to find some small badges for Leia's nephew Tim.

Then it was down to Exeter to get Chris ready for his interview on Thursday. We tried the YHA but it was fullt booked and then some. So we followed the advice of our lonely planet and made for St David's Hill Road. Where all the best B'n'B places are.

The only one that wasn't fully booked claimed to be a B'n'B but didn't include the second 'B'. So sleep we could have but no sustenance come the morning.

As part of the interview proccess Chris was required to complete a 'Brain Bench' test online. I was quite excited to see what it was, thinking it might be an aptitude test including various logic problems that I might also be able to have a go at in the background. Unfortunately it was much more tailored to the job than that and was just a lot of silly programming questions that Chris seemed to understand but were in a foreign language to me.

At the library, where we went to print a fresh copy of Chris' CV, we discovered that despite all the help available, there are still some people who can't handle all the technology now available in libraries, and have to have special instructions left for them.

We elected not to stay in the breakfast-less B'n'B that night and instead moved up the road by a couple of doors to a place that did include both. The lady owner was a sweetheart the following morning and actually ironed Chris's shirt and pants before he headed off to the interview. He looked super smart in a new shirt and crease-free pants.

Chris came out of the interview feeling pretty confident and much relieved about an hour after he went in. By all accounts it had gone well - so began the bidding wars over salary...

I had earlier ogranised an interview with a second teaching agency in London for the following day (the Friday) but we decided it was silly to be so far out and not explore it any further. After all, Chris may not get the job and who knows when we might be back this way.

So I put the interview off until Monday and we spent the weekend exploring the area surrounding Exeter. Our budget didn't allow for a further three nights in a B'n'B so we moved to a campsite for the weekend. It was a nice looking site with a donkey padock (yes there was a donkey in it, and two little ponies and three goats - all of which seem to be ceaselessly hugry). However, despite the good looks we noticed that the site we had been allocated to set up camp on seemed to be on a slight slope. We discovered later on in bed just how slopy it was as the two of us struggled no to slide off the end of the mattress and out the door of the tent. Each and every move was risky!

We took the opportunity that weekend to visit a few of the towns surrounding Exeter. We went to Beer where, apparently, ocean watching is a popular pass-time. This was deduced from the rows and rows of deck chairs assembled on the beach all facing neatly out to sea. I know it is silly and immature but still, we giggled at that and were sure to send home a couple of postcards to friends who we thought might also appreciate the name. We also went to Dawlish and Torquay and Teignmouth and Sidmouth.

It was a bit of a tense weekend in that we didn't find out about the job on the Friday as we thought we might. Weatherwise it was also a bit miserable - it rained a lot that weekend and as we tried to reverse Rosie up the hill from our camp site on our last moring Chris left some huge rip marks on the grss and was only able to leave eventually by turning the wheel sharply and heading down hill, only narrowly missing the corner of the donkey padock.

That night we stayed in a B'n'B in Guildford and headed into London on Monday morning so I could attend an interview with a second teaching agency. It went well and from there we headed back to Leia's to get our mail. We stayed that night with Michael (a work-mate of Chris') and Tania and their two lovely kids in Guildford.

Very exciting!! We found out on Tuesday that Chris had got the job for sure in Exeter!!! It was such a relief and felt great to have that assured! We were both grinning like mad and I think I was very close to tears once or twice that day (bloody emotional genes)!!

So that meant that we had a few more things to organise in London. We had to set up a Limited Company for Chris (he is now managing director of Summerdale Contracting - daggy name I know, but we had to pick one of the ones that they had there already and the others were bizare). We went back to Leia's to pick up two cases we had left with her (thankyou SO much Leia) and we had to open another bank account for the business.

We got it done and were back in Exeter within a day or so. It felt different being back there and knowing that it was the place where we would be living for the next few months. We were looking at it with residents' eyes and we liked what we saw.

We booked ourselves into a different campsite (with no donkey paddock and no hills) and bought the local paper with the housing section in. We found a few properties that we were interested in having a look at and organised visits for that Friday/Saturday.

We had a few criteria that we were trying to meet. Fully furnished (or partly at a pinch), allocated off street parking, walking distance to quay or town, with public transport nearby.

The fourth and last place that we looked at was the one that we decided we had to stay in! It was great. Fully furnished? Yes! With everything! Off street parking? Yes! Walking distance to the quay or town? Yes yes! To both! Public transport? Yes! Hooray! Also it was only a block off one of the main roads in town but was somehow really quiet. It was bright, lots of natural light. It had a small backyard. Central heating. And three double bedrooms! I know that sounds really silly but the rent wasn't much more than the one bed/two bed places we looked at and it was just nicer all over!!

So First thing tuesday morning (monday being a bank holiday) we put in an application and crossed our fingers.