Goodbye and thanks for all the fish

So what does one write in a final blog?
We could share all our favourite photos of the amazing things we've seen: the mountainous landscapes of Patagonia, New Zealand and Tibet or the amazing wildlife of the Galapagos and Costa Rica...but have realised we don't have access to them as they're sitting safely on a hard-drive in Edinburgh, so we'll have to share them with you/ bore you with them when we next see you.
We could tire you with more accounts of the pain fun of skiing in -40C (where two runs were all we could manage between coffee stops), running the Kepler track in NZ in 9 1/2 hrs (our poor knees), being power-stretched by Shaolins way past the pain threshold, or the deep thigh pain that builds from cycling day after day over the Alps and across Europe...but those are things that are probably better felt, than written about.
We could write about all the amazing food we've eaten (and drinks we've drunk!), in particular the French Cafe in Auckland (the best food we've ever eaten) and our own culinary efforts in Gerty the wonder-bus...but you'll have to wait until you next come to dinner to see if it's influenced our cooking (or sommeliering).
We could try to impress you with some of the new skills we have learnt...kite surfing, kung fu, tai chi, photography...or our (often comic) attempts at speaking Spanish, Thai, Mandarin, Tibetan, Nepalese, Italian and French...but that's best done in person.
Or we could write about how the experience has had a deep and lasting impact on us and what we learnt from our time with the Shaolins and Tibetan Monks...but that's way too serious for this blog!
So all that's left to say is a few thank you's....
...to Brian and Jackie, for their help with all our mail & admin whilst we were away...
...to Andrew, for his help with our photos...
...for all of you who have enabled us to feel connected, despite the distances - via skypes, email, or just reading our blog...
...and to our guardian angels, who ensured a remarkedly event-free trip (except for: the occasional bout of illness, particularly in China; the destruction of one bag by a (Chinese) airport conveyor belt; one big flight delay causing us to need to buy a second set of onward flights (cheers LAN Ecuador) and at the time of writing a lost bag to the Italian postal service (but we're hopeful it will turn up soon!)).
For anybody who is tempted to follow in our footsteps - go for it: it will certainly stun, impress, sometimes disappoint, but overall, enrich your life (we're allowed one cheesy line surely?).
So that's all folks (until next time) - we can't wait to see you all and hear all your news - thanks again for watching.
And finally, in the (slightly adapted) immortal words of Frankie S:


And now, the end is near, and so we face, the final curtain,
Our friends, who we hold dear, we've missed you lots, of that we're certain,
Our trip, was full of fun, we've travelled each and every highway
We've faced it all, we've had a ball,
We did it, our way!


Goodnight x

Home sweet home

Day: 21
Route: Honfleur - Portsmouth (via Le Havre)
Distance: 21 miles (cycling)
Height: 302ft ascent
Time in saddle: 1hr 57mins

All we had left to do was get to the ferry. As we were staying at a cheap motel on the outskirts of town we treated ourselves to 'Le breakfast' at a teeny cafe in the back streets where we had delicious homemade, local & fresh bread, pastry, apple juice, coffee and cake, served with a smile:

We had enough bread to pack some up for lunch and as Sam disapproves of cake for breakfast that got packed up too!

The cycle path to the ferry port in Le Havre went over the Pont de Normandie, which is a 90kph roadbridge over the Seine and the cycle path is the not very wide at times hard shoulder. Quite terrifying.

Then the route through the ferry port was equally as scary, as the cycle path came to an abrupt end and we got unceremoniously dumped on the edge of a busy trucking lane. We reached a bridge which was up to let a tanker into a lock, and as we stood around looking perplexed a friendly French road cyclist said 'follow me' (well we think that was what he said, as it was in rapid French) and slowed down to let us tag on the back. He then led us through the container port over a different bridge until he pointed out a left turn that was marked for the car ferry and waved a cheery goodbye.

We continued to follow signs to the car ferry along the trucking road where at one point a curb started from the middle of nowhere which Sam only just managed to avoid with a swerve and a squeal, that was unfortunately not enough to alert Alistair who was tight on her wheel, who hit it, and whose back wheel fish-tailed dangerously as his front wheel scrapped the concrete curb. Luckily and we're not entirely sure how, he managed to stay upright and calamity was avoided. This reminded us that a bit like the last ski run of the day, when your legs are weary and your concentration is elsewhere, you need to be even more careful!
A picnic on the ferry, a friendly chat with the border guard, followed by the last couple of miles cycle across Portsmouth and we are finally home.
A quick totting-up shows we have covered a total of 912 miles over the last 3 weeks and the official weigh-in showed we managed to survive with just 11.5kg of luggage (thankfully there wasn't an official weigh-in of us, as Alistair is convinced his pastry and wine consumption has somehow managed to more than offset the huge number of calories we've been burning).
To say we enjoyed every mile is stretching the truth a little, but overall it has been great and was a fantastic way to end our travels: the weather was (mostly) kind, the countryside (mostly) beautiful, the people we stayed with (mostly) welcoming and the food & wine (mostly) delicious!
We can still scarcely believe we're home at last and are looking forward to waking up in one place for more than one night at time!

Honfleur tourist trap

Day: 20
Route: Saint Etienne La Thillaye - Honfleur
Distance: 20 miles
Height: 843ft ascent
Time in saddle: 1hrs 48mins

More delightful pastries from our parisien patissier host set us up for the short, if occasionally hilly, cycle to Honfleur. Honfleur is centred on a very pretty little old harbour, but is the most touristy place we've been since China:

The crepes looked disappointing compared to yesterday, the service in the restuarants was poor (so poor we walked out of a place having not been able to place an order for over 20mins) so we settled on slightly underwhelming ice-cream and sorbets and a spectacularly poor pastry!

We did manage to find a nice little restaurant hidden in the backstreets for dinner, which made for a near-perfect spot for our last supper (even though Sam was somewhat perturbed by the whelks and winkles she had to wrestle with).

Oh we do like to be beside the seaside...

Day: 19
Route: Saint Etienne La Thillaye - Deauville - Trouville - Saint Etienne La Thillaye
Distance: 16 miles
Height: 513ft ascent
Time in saddle: 1hrs 30mins

Having made such good progress over the last couple of weeks, we have a couple of spare days before our cycle, and hence whole trip comes to an end on Friday and we have to return to w*rk.
After a yummy breakfast in the place we're staying, which is (lucky for us) the home of a patissier, today we have come for a day at the seaside, at Deauville & Trouville on the north Normandy coast. After a 40 minute cycle, a huge open expanse of clean (although shelly) sand greeted us at Deauville, although the water is more brown than aquamarine.
A few hours reading on the sand and then we pottered across the inlet to Trouville where we enjoyed a cafe gourmand (espresso and 3 miniature deserts) and the best crepe Sam has ever had (frangipane, pear, chocolate and toasted almond):

Having had to persuade Sam that she couldn't have a second one we're now writing this, looking out over the water wondering how we're going to go back to the reality of normal life (although don't expect any sympathy!).

Ps the day was finished with moules frites washed down by some more cider in a touristy cafe, before the short cycle back to our b&b

Normandy apples

Day: 18
Route: La Ferte-Fresnel - Saint Etienne La Thillaye
Distance: 45 miles
Height: 1524ft ascent
Time in saddle: 3hrs 41mins

A slightly shorter stage enabled a relaxed start to the day, as we let the rain abait. It was still dark and threatening when we set off, with yet more headwinds, but thankfully the rain stayed away.
We could tell we had arrived in Normandy as we passed lots of lovely looking 'chocolate-box' esque farmhouses. These country folk certainly have a sense of humour:

Arriving at Lisieux for a late lunch, we happened upon the local annual bike race, which kept us occupied for an hour or two (watching that is):

After a slightly frosty welcome at our b&b in the middle of the countryside (which thankfully has since thawed), we headed back into Pont L'Eveque to a delightful little bistro. Feeling a little short on our 5-a-day, we decided to try all the local apple specialities: pommeau for aperitif, a carafe of cider with our food and calvados for digestif! Delightful.

Not more headwind

Day: 17
Route: Chartres - Ferte-Fresnel
Distance: 59 miles
Height: 2027ft ascent
Time in saddle: 5hrs 16mins

The bonus of being out of the hills is that the ground is largely flat. The problem is you're more subject to wind, which can work in your favour, but more often than not seems to be directly on the nose. The first fifteen miles were a real slog, particularly as breakfast had been 'simple' (half a baguette and some imitation jam). To make it easier we took turns - 1 mile each in front before sheltering behind the other for the next.
The next 5 miles flew by as we played the alphabet game with songs and rather than calling out your answer, you had to sing as much of it as you could remember. Hence the French countryside was lit up by un-tuneful wails of 'Oooooour house, is a very very very fine house...' and 'Waterloo, couldn't escape if I wanted to...wo, wo, wo, wo'. We rolled into a small town for our morning stop treating the locals to a rendition of Jerusalem.
We shared a pastry on a bench in a little town called Senonches, which turned out to be so calorific we cycled through to 50 miles passed numerous sleepy towns until we found somewhere to stop for lunch without feeling particularly hungry! The road helpfully skirted the edge of a forest and old mansion house dampening the headwind a little, but we're not quite sure where all those miles went.

With 3 hours before we could check in, we enjoyed lunch in a cafe before spending some time reading books on a patch of grass in the sun, before tackling the remaining 12 km to our bed for the night.

Turns out that Hotel Paradis (which we were a little concerned about given the write up) is a fab little place where the dinner and vin du table have been spectacular, not least as the desert came swimming in a freshly made caramel....mmmmmm......

Ps. We reckon that if it wasn't for all this food and wine, we'd probably be quite thin after all this cycling!

Da Vinci, De Milo and Le Tour

Day: 16
Route: from Chartres to Paris (and back) by train!
Distance: 0 miles
Height: 0 ft ascent
Time in saddle: 0hrs 0mins (for us at least)

We had heard that there were some other cyclists pottering around France so we decided to intercept them on our rest day...meaning we just spent today in Paris.
An early start, an early trip to the boulangerie and an early train saw us arrive in Paris in time for a quick coffee before hitting the Louvre in advance of the tour groups, although a decent proportion of the population of China was still present.
A fabulous museum, we took the masterpieces walking tour with an audio app, a few favourites being:
- De Milo
- Victory at Samothrace

- The coronation of emperor Napoleon (where incidentally 200 people are pictured of which 75 are identifiable, including a chap who was painted with the face of Julius Ceasar despite him not having been there)

- And of course this lady needs no introduction (but the idiots in front might).

Weary and cultured (relatively speaking of course) we left one of the greatest museums in the world and had lunch at a traditional Parisian bistro with tiny tables on the pavement, seats squished close together and predictably average and over-priced food. The only thing missing was the grumpy waiter. Our's was in fact chirpy and smily despite rushing around serving far too many tables.
Next we took a stroll up the park to watch the women's race lap round the course.

A few hours, a quick nap on the grass, a strange parade and an ice cream later and the men turned up too. Sadly Chris Froome wasn't in yellow and Mark Cavendish wasn't competing for the stage (which had been the things we'd been looking forward to when we planned the trip). None the less it was awesome to see them whizz by close up and we had a fab day out of the saddle in Paris.