Hopefully we will be moving to Southern Spain in the next few months. Just waiting for one or two loose ends tied up.

For those already there, how did you find the logistics of moving and how did you decide to do it? For me there are two possibilities:

1. Hire a removal firm.

2a. Hire a Luton van and do it yourself. (From UK)

2b. Hire a Luton van and do it yourself. (From Spain)

Cost is an obvious factor but there's a chance that we might not actually have a great deal to move as the new place is already furnished. (Although we will probably replace a fair few things once there). But even so we will probably have a fair few things to move over which won't fit in the boot of a car.

Problem with number 2 is that unless you get one way van hire, it's going to cost double in fuel and ferry costs. Also, our contents might not be insured for the trip so if there any mishaps, there could be problems. Also, a right hand drive panel van is going to be a nightmare to take all the way down there and I suspect there would be very few, if any, left hand drive vans to hire in the UK.

With all this in mind, could you guys advise/share experiences with the logistics of moving? For information I'm in the North of England.

How about buy a big car from AutoTrader and big box trailer from Ebay?
Drive your stuff over yourself then take the car and trailer back to the UK and stick the car back on AutoTrader and the trailer back on Ebay.

As long as you get close to the price you paid you won't be too much out of pocket.
You might even make a profit.

Your entire removal can then be done at your leisure without having to keep to hire agreements and someone else's timetable. And it might even be fun.

When we moved out we just used Google to search for removal firms, then asked a few for quotes. Remember that if you pack things yourself, then you will NOT be covered for breakages on the firms insurance, something we found to our cost. You need to look at costs, and the pickup/delivery timings as well, and, speaking from experience, you should get something in writing to guarantee compensation if they are late delivering, again from experience, although we did manage to get the delivery firm to pay for the extra 2 nights accomodation due to their tardiness.

We moved from the North of England just over six years ago, and like yourselves we debated the best options for getting our stuff over there. We were moving into what had been our holiday home for a few years so again like yourselves, we did not need to move any furniture - however we still ended up with 63 boxes full of stuff even after doing a huge amount of decluttering, a car boot sale and numerous trips to the local tip (and I didn't think I was a hoarder!).

We considered hiring a van or even buying one and reselling it after a couple of months, but decided that the cost including fuel, insurance, tolls, ferry crossings and an overnight stop (we would have had only one driver as only my OH drives), plus the chance of having to deal with potential mishaps like a breakdown, robbery or whatever en route just wasn't worth the hassle.

We got a few quotes via the internet for a part load to be collected from our UK home and delivered to the door in Spain (no easy task as we live in a historic area with no vehicle access closer than approx 200m away). We did the packing and labelling ourselves and I made a list of each numbered box and a brief description of the contents, so I would know which room to put them in when we arrived. The removal company got a copy of the list and I kept another so I could tick off each box as it was carried in to make sure there was nothing missing. From memory I think the cost was around €1300, and everything went very well, nothing broken or lost. The only slight hitch was that they rang us the day before the scheduled pick-up date to say that they had arrived in the UK a day early, so could they collect ahead of time. As we were still packing the last few boxes we had to get them to wait a few hours!

Having moved more times than I can remember.I wish I'd sold everything that wasn't of any real sentimental value and bought new/second hand.I'd have saved a small fortune.

We sold our house in the UK complete with everything in it, even down to the pots & pans, knives & forks etc.

The only thing we brought with us was one box containing our photos and a few other personal bits.

We left all our pots, pans and cutlery behind too, and threw away about 99% of our photos - and still ended up with 63 boxes.

OH wanted to keep all his tools (and a good thing he did!), 2 lots of hi-fi separates and a set of very heavy glass shelves to put them on, speakers, boxes of vinyl albums (only part of his massive collection, it broke his heart to pass on the greater part of it to a nephew), CDs, my 2 very large dolls houses and all the furniture from them very carefully packed, boxes of books, all our clothes and some bits and bobs for the Spanish house that we'd been buying in UK and waiting until we moved to bring them over. It would have cost us far, far more to replace it all, and some of it had been amassed over years so would have been impossible to replicate anyway.

I moved here in 2000 with just a rucksack and a guitar. Life was so much simpler then ... these days I'd probably need a suitcase as well.

Take a look at http://www.shiply.com

Hauliers bid for your custom kind of like a reverse ebay auction.

You also get to check the feedback and reviews for the hauliers.

I used them to ship a few large items over here and the haulier that I selected was first rate.

If you look for a local forum of the area that you intending moving to, you will find lot's of firms that are taking people back to the UK and would love to transport your stuff rather than coming back empty. We paid €100 for a cubic metre which seemed like a good deal.