Most of you will have seen me mention on the Forum our intended house move to the Norfolk/Suffolk area.
Our intended location to move changed after we had a week's holiday last month in the New Forest. This being our first visit here we instantly fell in love with the area.
On our return home Kathy then started to look for property in the Hampshire area. She found some lovely detached bungalows, which was our preferrence, and at prices that were very reasonable.
Last weekend we had our very first person viewing our house, who put an offer in to the Estate Agent 2 hours after the viewing. We accepted the offer.
Kathy made a short list of bungalows in the Hampshire area and we booked into a local hotel in that area as our base.
We'd pretty much narrowed our choice down to one particular bungalow in an area in the south part of the New Forest. We arranged to meet the Estate Agent on Monday 4 October.
Unfortunately, the owner of the house was not there so we could only see the outside. However, we loved what we saw. We then arranged to re-visit on Tuesday at 10.30am, by which time the owner could let us inside. It turns out that the Estate Agent rep (not the one that did our viewing) that Kathy had arranged the viewing with before we'd left home got his days mixed up and made the booking with the owner for the Sunday and not the Monday as he should have done.
So, on Tuesday we set off from the hotel at 8.10am for a drive of about one hour, with me doing the driving.
This is when disaster struck. We were west-bound on the M27 at juction 4 following the Bournemouth signs. At this point the road was splitting into two lanes which went off to Rownham Services and the M3 and just past that a lane was then joining the M27 from the M3. I was correctly in the middle lane at this point doing 55 mph, intending to move into the slow lane once we were clear of the slip road that was joining. I checked my rear view mirror before attempting my lane change and saw a car approaching in the same lane at a very fast speed. I waited where I was to see what he was going to do and saw him swerve towards the fast lane then immediately swerve back into my lane. In that fraction of a second I knew he was going to hit us, but I had nowhere to go, as the slow lane still had traffic in it and it was too fast to warn Kathy. The car hit us on the rear offside, spinning us round into the crash barrier on the nearside and then bounced off into the carriageway again finishing up just short of the fast lane. We were then facing the nearside crash barrier side-on to the motorway traffic. Kathy later said she was waiting to be hit from the oncoming traffic. Fortunately though, all the other drivers had seen the accident and had managed to stop in time.
Kathy and I checked we were unhurt and got out of the car by ourselves. Lots of people rushed up to us to ask if we were okay and did we need an ambulance. Apart from me being aware of a pain in the right hand side of my back and Kathy had a cut on her right wrist, we had pretty much come out unscathed.
The police and ambulance quickly arrived at the scene. Our car was a write-off. The car that hit us, a BMW 1 series had very little damage. The driver and his three passengers were trainee airline pilots and they were late for a training course.
There were several witnesses who said the driver who hit us was driving like a maniac.
The police officer who was dealing with the incident rang us the next day to say that the offending driver had been formally interviewed, who had admitted he was in the wrong and had not checked his blind-spot in the fast lane where a van driver had been travelling fast that he had swerved to avoid. The driver was to be prosecuted for dangerous driving and 'other' offences, and that I had done nothing wrong.
All that was in our minds at the time of the accident was that we didn't want to miss the appointment with the Estate Agent. Once we were sorted out at the scene, we collected most of our belongings from the car and rang for a taxi from a nearby garage.
We got to our appointment on time and viewed the house with the Estate Agent and the owner of the house. We put in an offer right away which was accepted.
The next day I was in such agony with pain from muscle spasms in my back that I had to go to the A & E Department at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital.
The doctor I saw did a thorough examination of my spine, neck and kidneys and said that they were alright and that I had torn muscles in my back. He gave me some strong painkillers in the hospital and a prescription of some other painkillers to take away with me. He also checked Kathy at the same time as she was experiencing pain in her neck and shoulders. After a thorough check, similar to me, he said she had whip-lash injuries, which were slightly milder than my back injury.
The down-side to all this was that we were unable to travel back home as we had intended, so had to arrange for further accomodation in the hotel.
I contacted the insurance company and gave them all the relevant facts, and they said that I should keep a receipt for all the expenses we incurred and they would be re-imbursed later.
As regards our car - this had been towed away from the scene to a local garage and arrangements made to have it transported to a local Renault dealer in my home town. We'd been given free 'GAP' insurance when we first purchased the car two years ago as part of a special deal, which meant that in the event the car was an accident write-off we would get the full replacement of a brand new car.
We could have been given a loan car by Renault within two-and-a-half hours of requesting one, but as the pain in my back prevented me from driving back home, and it was too far for Kathy to drive with her whip-lash injury, we had to make alternative arrangements to get home.
Enquiries with the train company revealed that our tickets did not guarantee us seats. We could sit in any vacant seats but if ticket holders arrived for reserved seats we would have to give them up. And depending how busy the train was, we could end up standing all the way home. There was no way we could stand for any length of time so that was totally unacceptable.
We finally managed to get a booking on a National Express coach for Friday 8 October, which would take us 11 hours to get home. It left Christchurch at 8.45am with a 4-hour journey to London Victoria Station, where we would have a 45 minute wait before taking the next coach from there to our home town in a 7 hour journey.
The coach seats were very cramped so it wasn't a particularly comfortable journey, but it was the only option we had to get home.
Anyway, we got back at 7.30pm and breathed a big sigh of relief.
We had heard that the Renault Clio (our crashed car) had a very good safety record for accident protection. From our experience we would say that was definitely true, and would certainly recommend this vehicle to anyone. It saved our lives anyway.
The only thing that had kept us going through this nightmare experience was that we had finally got the home we had wanted.
Now we're home again, we can start to get down to business and get set for the move. It's estimated to take between 4 to 6 weeks. There are no chains involved, which is a big plus. The lady buying our house is in rented accomodation, and it will be a cash sale. The lady we're buying our house from is going to Australia and can move out immediately. Our house is mortage free and we can move out quickly.
So, we're probably looking at around mid-November for the move to happen and we should definitely be settled in our new home for Christmas.
Our new house has a lovely front garden, not too big to be unmanageable, and it goes around the whole of the house. The rural location is so quiet that you can hear the birds singing nearby. No sounds of traffic or anything else. Marvellous. A few seconds walk from the front door are fields and woodland, and being part of the New Forest the area is protected and will never be built on. This is such a change from the main road we currently live on, where the drone of traffic noise is pretty much constant and very irritating.
Once we get settled in I'll post some photos of our new garden and the surrounding area. The garden is currently well established with shrubs and flowers, so we'll need to identify these where possible and see what else sprouts up.
Laurie.
