Justine -The 10^th of April, our set off date is approaching far too fast. In an ideal world, we would be doing a few trial runs with everything packed up and ready to go, checking life in Kabylie works. Sadly there has been no time for our planned shake-down and the closest we have got to it was sleeping in the vast and beautiful roof-tent in the garden this weekend. We were all very excited to try it out and check our bedding .

The verdict was A+ for comfort, A+ for darkness, C for bedding fold-ability, E- for loo options. We still have not come up with a good loo option for the girls. Petra has declared “she cannot go in anything that is not porcelain”. Hector on the other hand is longing to deposit in anything he can lay his hands on.

Our trial night was short. After two hours of cars and motorbikes zooming past us, and sleep being impossible, we returned to our comfortable beds indoors……hummmm not sure how well that bodes!

There is still much to organise and pack and where Tom and I should be beavering away in Biarritz, we are in fact, sitting in Charles de Gaulle airport hoping to get on our plane back to Biarritz with no passport. As we waited in the 4 hour queue at the Iranian embassy this morning, it suddenly dawned on us that if we were leaving our passports how were we going to be able to get our flight home to Biarritz? Not only that, but when we were finally seen and had our fingerprints taken, we were informed that the passports would not take a week as stated but 10 days. Thus our departure date is now looking like the 14^th April. So probably time for Tom to address the oil leak under the car that is particularly concerning Hector. Apparently “its normal”