Day 28. The Conclusion.

No start or finish.

No travelling.

No nothing.

5450 Miles, 956 Litres of diesel, 27 Days, 12 Countries, 11 Ferry crossings and a near heart attack on top of a mountain.

The day after getting home is the same for any holidaymaker / traveller, wether you’ve had a dirty weekend at Blackpool or have just finished crossing the Sahara, there is a kind of anti-climax, a belief that it didn’t actually happen, how can the time you’ve spent on your journey suddenly be over, ended, finished.

You arrive back to realise that life has carried on for your family, your friends, your workmates. They may have missed you but they still have their lives to live, homes to run, work to go to, life’s little problems to solve, and you sit back and contemplate wether what you have just accomplished really makes a difference.

It doesn’t, not really, not in the sense that means anything to anyone else but yourself. It was your journey, your time, your money and your experiences. Other people can look at the pictures, they can read the Blog, but they cant, and never will know the true experience of that journey as that is yours and yours alone.

I’ve already been asked if i would do it again, the simple answer is no, but only because of the things I now know about the journey, the places and the people, I would do some things different, I would miss places out and I would stay longer in others, I would take someone else along for the ride, if only for the company in the evenings and I would research the places along the route better as I know I passed by some places that I should have stopped at for a while longer.

There were times I thought I’d made a huge great mistake even starting such a trip. When your all alone on top of a mountain, thousands of miles from home and things start to go wrong it’s terrifying, it scares the hell out of you, but you have to push on, get through it, there is no other choice and when the disaster your expecting doesn’t actually happen you breath a sigh of relief and under your breath you call yourself a plonker for thinking that way.

The next day as your feeling a little silly, and you drive around a corner and you see some of the most beautiful scenery ever made on this planet you can forgive yourself for the little hiccup that happened and you promise that next time you’ll just stop and think before panicking.

I never made it to Nordcapp, the most northerly point of Norway, my expectations were way over enthusiastic and with a little sadness once I’d reached Trondheim I took a right turn and headed through Sweden and on to Finland, in hind sight that was to be the right decision and one I will never regret.

I hope you’ve all enjoyed reading the Blog, or even just enjoyed the photo’s, if it inspires one person to get out of their routine and go down the road less travelled then it was all worth it.

Until next time………………