Just a very short “news” post. We had a final couple of days trundling across Brittany, and exploring St Malo (thanks to our last WarmShowers hosts Muriel in Loyat and Jean-Yves in St-Malo). This was something of a relief, as the last few weeks up the west coast of France have been some of the hardest – endless rain, everything closed, expensive, surprisingly bad drivers, and our emotions all over the place as we approached the end, and worse, real life. France gave us a final quick drenching as we left Jean-Yves place for the ferry terminal (5 minutes away!). Finally, a comfy overnight ferry to Portsmouth and a short day’s ride back home.

• No rain, some sun
• Oh, a cycle track out of Portsmouth
• Unexpectedly mostly prudent & considerate drivers
• A ginormous supermarket with reasonable prices
• Hello everybody we missed.

Maybe South East England isn’t too bad after all.

We’ll do a last one or two real blog articles in due course. But in brief, here’s the final statistics:

• 722 days (16th April 2016 to 11th April 2018)
• 35085km ridden according to the bike computer (21800.8 miles). Well, a few of them might have been pushed up hills or through mud or sand!
• 24 different countries excluding the UK, three to five of them twice, depending on how you count.
• Two antipodes – places on opposite sides of the globe, near Wellington and Madrid.
• Hundreds or thousands of wonderful people.
• Six flights, and five ferries longer than river or bay crossings, four coach rides en route, three truck lifts, one train ride (these en-route, not counting side trips).
• One visit home for a family funeral (five extra days and four extra flights).
• About three sets of tyres and eight chains each. Two on the road welds, one fork replaced. One of the original wheels made it home, three were replaced.
• Approximately 200Kg of souvenirs and redundant clothes sent back to home.

The End, for now.