A quick burger, frites and coffee helped to pass the time till the bus arrived a few minutes late at 3.00 pm.I wasn't looking forwards to the ride home, coach travel has never been a favourite of mine but I was pleasantly surprised. It was very well organised and delivered us to our side of Northampton at 1.15 pm the next day.
24 hours later and I'm browsing touring websites....this may not be a good sign for a contented winter.
I'm still sure we could reduce the weight of stuff we carried, but we did use everything and were prepared for pretty much anything that could be thrown at us, so that should see us well if we go further afield in the future.
After 3 months of eating like pigs and abandoning all our previous slow carb diet we have come back exactly the same weight as we left. Must be all that exercise, maybe it is good for you after all.
After the early problems with the Exped mat (now replaced) and the broken spoke we have had no other failures of any note, although the bikes are looking a bit rough around the edges, Unprotected exposure to rain, dust, sand and salt from the sea means that they need a little bit of loving care before they're pressed back into touring service again.
People keep asking if we would do it again, the answer has to be, most definitely yes. After all we need to get some more use out of all this gear we've now got to find some room for.
We travelled France end to end and lived the summer end to end. We missed the Olympics, Wiggins in the tour, Murray at Wimbledon, 2012, and the US open, and much more, but this was something we did rather than living through other people's achievements, however memorable they were.
Final tally.....over 2500km not counting many of the shorter shopping type trips, which I didn't record, 22000m of climbing over 170 hours of riding. Not too bad for a first go we think.
Oh, and I never bought a cassette tool after all.
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