Travel requirements

[Shmoo]

I am applying for ILR from HSMP (after 2006) -> Tier 1 General (before 2010). I happen to be recently unemployed but hopefully this will not be an issue as all my points are sorted. I spoke to the helpline and got the impression that I would be OK. However, this was before I started reconstructing my travel history. Over the past 5 years, I traveled about once a month, half for work and half personal trips. The trips were short - mostly 1-4 days. My longest stay out of the UK was less than 3 weeks. But I have 2 problems:

1. I have several stamps in my passport for return trips to the UK, and I have no idea where I was coming back from, and how long I had been there. I can find no 'partner stamps'. What do I do about this? Leave the trips off my trip summery on the SET(O)? Offer my best guess? ...or explain the situation in my cover letter and hope I'm not talking my way into a rejection?

2. The trips that I have confidence where I went (I did have to infer 2 or 3 departure dates that I didn't know) add up to just about 180 days, not including travel days. This is *before* I add on the mystery trips.

I don't think I would mind being over 180 days, as I think it is fairly obvious (at least to me) that all of my trips were either work related or for holiday purposes - with no implication that I wasn't settled in the UK. Unless a case worker decided to be completely pedantic, I think I'd be OK here.

But to be right around 180...and to have 'unexplained' returns makes me nervous. It looks like I'm hiding something.

Any advice on how to handle this?