Hi everyone! Thanks for reading, here's the story of why I'm trying to raise money. 

In September, after a difficult couple of years for us both, my boyfriend and I finally moved to Spain to start a new life together.  We were really excited about moving to Valencia and getting our first home as a couple. 

I hired a company, Silver Bullet Couriers, to bring all our belongings over from London to Valencia. I found them advertising on an Expats in Valencia facebook group, called the owner, Christian Buxton, and arranged it all. He seemed like a really nice guy and has apparently been doing this for years. However, when the driver arrived he told us the van had been robbed and most of our stuff was gone. He told us not to worry because Christian had insurance and would make sure we got money for everything. We called Christian and he reiterated that he could claim it on insurance and that we just needed to send through a list of everything that was lost. It took a couple of days to get it together, particularly because we were so upset about losing all our possessions. But once we sent it over, we never heard anything back from him. After a couple more days I tried to call him but it seemed that his phone was not connecting. We left voicemails, emailed again, messaged on facebook and kept calling but we never received a reply. It's now been almost three weeks and it's clear that he is doesn't want to claim insurance so has blocked my number and has no intention of helping us get compensation for what we've lost. 

And what we've lost is everything. Neither of us owned a lot and almost everything we had was in the bags that were taken. We lost almost all our clothes, all our climbing gear, all our camping and hiking gear. We lost everything Huw had of sentimental value. All the jewellery that my stepmum and my friends have ever given me. Souvenirs that I've bought on my travels and I was saving to make my first home in 5 years look nice. Toiletries, perfume, my doc marten boots, all my teaching materials, even things like my spare pair of glasses and my contact lenses are all gone. 

In total, we think we've lost between £5500 and £6500 worth of our belongings. Honestly, for both of us, it has just been devastating. I know it's just stuff but when we had so little anyway it feels really really gutting. We both came over with a small bag each with clothes to last a couple of weeks and fairly little else. We've got a flat now and got a few things together but we spent pretty much everything we had coming over here so we have nothing left to replace anything. 

So if there's any way you can help us to try and buy back some of the things we lost we would be incredibly grateful. Some of our new workmates suggested we try doing a GoFundMe to try and help out which is why we're on here. There's really no other way we're going to be able to replace things and I just feel so terrible that I put us in this situation by trusting someone who wasn't trustworthy and I jeapordised our future. If there's any way our community can help us out it would be amazing. 

Thanks so much for reading guys!