The best laid plans...

It's our last night before we set off on our big trip. Except it isn't. Well, it almost is. Everything was on track until 9.30 this morning when the gas man arrived to do the gas safety check on our house before our tenants moved in. All our appliances passed with flying colours. Except for one. The gas man wasn't certified to check our gas tumble dryer. And neither was his boss. And neither, it seems, are any gas engineers in the North West. 

At first we thought this would be something which was easily resolved. Surely we'd find someone, they'd come and check the dryer, and all would be fine. But we didn't find anyone, and neither did our letting agents. 

Slowly it began to dawn on us that our highly valued, green, very economical, and extremely clever tumble dryer was going to be a casualty of our trip. No gas safety check, no tenancy. It had all seemed like such a good idea when we moved to Darwen nearly eight years ago. A gas dryer uses a fraction of the energy of an electric one. And when you live somewhere which was a weaving boom-town because a damp atmosphere reduces the likelihood that cotton will break, you need a way to dry your clothes. 

As we walked the spaniels I googled electric tumble dryers, next day delivery. Okay, that much was possible. Next we had to figure out how to disconnect the dryer, which led to me wriggling behind the appliances to inspect the pipework. A simple bayonet connection. A lay person can disconnect it. Oh, except they can't anymore. An unused bayonet connection has to be sealed by a gas engineer. Cue more phone calls. Gas engineer booked for tomorrow morning. Back to John Lewis website to order a new dryer for next day delivery. The dice is rolled... the dryer will be delivered between 11am and 9pm. A text will arrive sometime during the evening to tell us when. Will we get away tomorrow or not?

We decided last week that tonight we would sleep in the van and eat in town so that everything in the house could be packed up ready. The attic is now full. Very full. So full I was googling the weight load of waterbeds, just for comparison, to confirm we were still likely to be on the right side of the weight bearing load of our beams. Oh come on, these are oak beams dating back to pre-1675. They're like iron!.

So there we were, drinking an obscenely cheap bottle of Villa Maria and deciding today had been the most stressful day yet, when the text arrived from John Lewis. Your order will be delivered tomorrow between 17:48 and 19:48. Not much chance we'll be in Staffordshire tomorrow night then!

The good news is we had allowed ourselves four days to get to the Channel Tunnel, so that we had a margin for error, and could recover from the frantic preparations. But do we really want to spend another night camping outside the front door, when we were due to be on our way? And could we take the risk that our tenants would arrive to find us on the doorstep like a guest that doesn't realise the party's over?

So the new plan is to leave tomorrow, as soon as the new dryer has been delivered. But to drive about five miles over to the other side of Darwen Moor and stay in the car park at the Royal Arms. We'll have started our journey, we'll be a step nearer the first stop in Staffordshire, and we'll be able to take the spaniels on their favourite walk in Roddlesworth woods before we set off.

If this is the biggest hurdle we have to leap before we can set off for more than a year's travelling, we'll consider ourselves pretty lucky. Meanwhile, Elsa is just wondering why her view tonight looks so familiar.