Ok so it's going to be huge. We're not moving earlier than expected. Nor have we come into a tonne of money. Instead, our mad cap adventure has been simplified and streamlined.
Harley the Saab 9000, and our transport to Vienna?
So, yesterday, having dropped Lynda off for work, I happened to pass Enterprise car rental. Now many years ago, whilst working out the logistics of moving in the first place, I looked into hiring a big van and loading up everything into it. The costs at the time were high, and the thought of carrying all those heavy items (our bed for example) up several flights of stairs didn't appeal.
Since then of course, we've streamlined our plans, cut the amount we're planning to take with us and we've gotten the plan sorted on the cheap. Or so we thought.
As much as I love Harley, my faithful Saab 9000, it's difficult to work out what you can fit into the old girl. She's not really built for it. That's where Enterprise came it. Whilst the costs of hiring a big van were expensive, what about something like a ford transit connect? It's basically nothing more than a small car type van. Well I thought I'd check out the price. The van would allow for us to carry much more than Harley, potentially swapping three trips across Europe to just two or even one.
Checking the price, I wasn't expecting good things. However, I was wrong. Hertz offers a small van for just £120 for the week! Checking around with a few others, the price is similar. Then things got weird. For £175, we could get a standard transit which would allow us to do the whole move in one. At this point we were starting to foam at the mouth. A quick check of the T&C's though told us the van wasn't allowed out of the country. Sigh. Europcar however does offer out for the country rentals. However, it comes with a catch. There was an extra fee on top of the rental cost. That was fine since there are extra items required to take the van on to the continent, and it wasn't a great deal on top. It was the limited mileage that really chaffed though. Adding nearly £200 extra because we'd exceed the mileage limit of 90 miles a day didn't seem fair. Hertz had unlimited mileage. So, hopeful that the website T&C's were wrong, we rang hertz. It turns out that we just had to tell hertz that we wanted to take the van out onto the continent, pay the extra fee an that was that.
Head buzzing, we ran the numbers. With the van, eurotunnel costs and bits and pieces, the cost of the single trip would be just around £800, or the cost of two trips in the car. So it's a no brainer. The van wins. So it's booked.
There is a downside. Originally , I had around a month to relax after arriving in Vienna before I had to take Harley back to the UK to load up for the return trip. That's not going to happen now and the leisurely three day journey from home to Vienna has now become a two day trip, and that all down to us bringing the star of the show, Geri the parrot. In order to minimise his discomfort we're doing the trip In two days. I also only get one day's rest before I have to set off and get he van back to Cardiff. So I'm going to be knackered. Oh and then I have to get back to Vienna.
The van presents us with new issues though. So far, with the three trips originally planned, we've been itemising our possessions for either the first, second or third run. This has made it easy to pack up the things we need on arrival and earmark the items we're still using to be packed up wished we started the first run. That's all gone by the by now and it'll be a case of 'pack it all'. So next year, a month before we leave, we'll be packing it all up. It's going to be manic.
No comments:
Post a Comment