The last week has been extremely strange. Last Friday was my final day at work, this Friday we are handing over the keys to our flat, which is now completely empty.

My last day at work is something I've been looking forward to for a long time, but when it actually arrived it was a bit of an anticlimax. It had been very busy the last couple of days, because we were a bit understaffed, so no rest for the wicked.

It's also always slightly embarrassing to be stood in front of loads of people and have the big boss make a speech about your time there, however good the intention. I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door but that was obviously not going to happen. That said, I was very pleasantly surprised with my present, a digital camera.

I played with my new toy all evening, because Keiron was off in the Peak District, meeting up with some of his travel companions from the volunteering project.

The rest of the weekend was spent packing more stuff in boxes and on Monday, we picked up the van to start the big move. Moving everything out of our flat went quite smoothly, but moving all my stuff into Keiron's mum and dad's house proved a bit trickier, because as I've said before, it's amazing how much stuff I've collected over the years. So their house is now a hybrid between 70's floral furniture and 90's Ikea designs... well, lucky for them it's only temporary and lucky for us they don't mind (too much).

I'm beginning to understand why this is called a 'gap-year'. It feels like I'm standing on the edge of an abyss with nothing to hold on to, no fixed points to focus on. And while that is exactly one of the reasons to do a trip like this, to open your mind and not be stuck in a daily routine, at present I feel a bit daunted by the whole thing, rather than excited.