We have finally made it to Brugge, the last destination of this trip and I can hardly believe it’s all coming to an end. 

A couple of weeks ago, just to get organised, we made a fairly succinct itinerary of the last leg of the trip.  It was this first time we’d been so prepared and because of a few days lost to the van repair, the whole plan went to shit almost immediately.  It makes me feel quite justified in the general haphazard approach that reigned over most of the journey.

The last three days have seen a few miles pass beneath our wheels as we dash for the ferry home.  Neuschwanstein Castle was everything Kerry had hoped for and from Füssen in the South of Germany we headed North along the Romantische Straße.   We didn’t get much of a chance to explore but the whole of Bavaria just feels like something we’d both like to come back to one day.  We took a little time out on the Rhine River at Rüdesheim am Rhein and had dinner out amongst the oldies that had embarked on mass from their Viking River Cruise.  In fairness they were a lively bunch. 

Last night we stopped at Herleen, in the Netherlands, bringing a grand total of fourteen countries for our journey.  The total milage is just over eight thousand miles, which is thirteen thousand kilometres for those that prefer the more user-friendly metric system. 

We started this road trip during the tail end of winter and will be coming home to a Great British summer, although by all reports, it been a pretty shitey one so far.  We’ve had a bit of rain, a scattering of seriously exciting thunderstorms, there was snow and sleet up in the Alps and we’ve had plenty of sweltering days that made sleeping in the back of a metal van a sweaty affair.   But we have walked on so many beaches, spent nights alone in nature, wandered through an untold number of historic streets and eaten an uncountable number of local delicacies.

We only lived within the official budget of £500 per week for the first week, since then it’s started trended higher.  Even in a few cheaper countries we never tried to bring that budget down, we just spent more because it was so cheap.  We had a backup budget that we would have been happy with…. And we broke that too, but not by a lot.

Mistakes were made on this trip, but lessons were learnt to.  I wouldn’t do anything different really.  If I had another chance, I’d probably spent the same amount of time covering a smaller area but the parts of the trip I was looking forward to, and enjoyed the most, was those bits that were furthest away like Sicily, Southern Italy, Greece and Romania.  So, in the end, the miles had to be done. 

We’ve had one serious vet emergency and one serious mechanic disaster, at the time it felt like everything was crashing down, but I can smile at them even now.

So that’s about it then, the dog has had her worming tablets so the bureaucracy has been dealt with and all that’s left for us to do is take our obligatory walk around Brugge, taking in the sites and so on.  But, if we are going to do this right then I also intend to top off the night, and this trip, with a largish variety of Belgium beers along with multiple courses for dinner (and chocolate).

We always though it would be nice to finish in Brugge and I barely believe we’ll be there tonight.  And be back in England tomorrow.