Onward christian soldiers

Progress report. Gemma handed her notice in today. We told the landlord that we are leaving, and he said, "I heard you were going travelling". Small towns will be the death of me. I suspect Nicola's Mum for letting slip to him.

We should have our final flight in reserve now and ready to book when Nicola gets back to work on Monday. I think our flights will earn us lots of frequent flyer miles (on Virgins scheme), which might mean we can get a freebie of some sort at the end of the trip.

Jabwise we have our Rabies/Japanese B Encephalitis jabs booked at North Sea Medical Centre in Gorleston (urk) over the next month, which will neccessitate a couple of afternoons off work. I have worked out that I should get paid for 10 days of leave after my last day, which will effectively mean that I will be paid for my flight and my first day in South Africa. This is something that appeals to me in a peverse sort of way.

Left to do is sorting out insurance (we have spent many hours trawling the net for the best deal), storage for our stuff (we're thinking Big Yellow in Norwich) , packing the house up (sob) , booking the tickets and buying anything we need for the trip.

We have had the thought that we may try to leave with carry on luggage only. This will mean a fairly large daysack each. Looking back on our time in Australia we took way too much stuff with us, and continued carrying it round with us too. I think I have learned some lessons from that trip. Light is the way to travel. If it is not working out for us having such a small amount of gear we can always just buy bigger bags and more clothes and stuff when we are on the road. I'm not going to be carrying presents and keepsakes around with me either -they're getting mailed home at the earliest opportunity.