A bit remiss of me to not re-post here!
Thanks for your help.
The wind down went OK, despite my fears, and Brian went in the bottom draw of the fridge (which I have been monitoring at between 3 and 5 degrees) at the end of the 4th week.
My first surprise was that he was still moving after a week in the fridge! Thought make sure the temp is a bit lower and see what happens. Well, he kept moving! A bit of investigation on tintertweb found a comment "if you hibernate them in a box you will not know if they move HOWEVER tortoises remain active, albeit very slowly, throughout hibernation"
Kind of stopped worrying as he looked OK at his weekly weigh-in and weight loss was/is less than 1% body weight per month. The fact that he twithces (slowly) encourages me that he is still with us
Anyway, he has been sleeping with the veggies for 6 weeks now and I am starting to wonder how long to leave him. I started out at 8 weeks but I am wondering if I should leave him longer as he seems OK. Any advice?
He lives indoors, unless its summer and nice outside, so I can wake him up at any time. Should say he is about 5 and this is his first hibernation.