We’ve done it. The two of us, me and you, have suffered long and hard to get here but we’ve done it. I’ve had to write this blog, all 66,000 words of it. Some of them were good words like assemblage but most of them were average at best, and I had to write the vast majority of it on a phone screen the size of a mobile phone. While you, you’ve had the pleasure of suffering through reading my excoriatingly detailed nonsense. But it’s going to be over soon because today’s the day the teddy bears have their picnic. Today is the day The Gingerbread Men get home.

The first stop on the trip home, not considering the thousands of stops we have made in the past 12 days, was London to complete the dutys of Gingerbread Postal Service Inc.  London is well known for being to the east of Reading. A fact which meant that for the first time in a long time we would be driving east which is of course the only correct direction of travel, it just feels so much better than driving west. It felt so good that it was a serious temptation to just continue east would and repeat the whole journey again. But unfortunately we are a respected and reliable delivery service which prides itself in having never not delivered a package, so we would have to turn north.

London is a big city for two small town boys such as ourselves, anything could happen to us on our short trip we might even be mugged in the outer city suburbs. Unfortunately that is exactly what happened, we were mugged in the suburbs by lovely Mrs. Fan, Miles of the Lion Rampant’s mother. She took all of the vodka we had been carefully caring in the foot well of our car for the last few weeks and offered us a cup of tea. We were very lucky to escape with our lives. The burden of delivering the vodka had been lifted, it was no longer our reasonability after we had Mrs. Fan sign an extensive document detailing the fact. The handing over ceremony took place in Cambridge or not, I assume there was a lavish affair drenched in pompous traditional.

That delivery had been taking its toll on our mental state, the pressure to deliver it in one piece was too high to handle. Sometimes I couldn’t even get to sleep, but that might have had more to do with our sleeping arrangements rather than the threat of a stern telling off from a Geordie. But with the delivery made we were free, free to enjoy the last day of our adventure by driving northwards on the A1. Now I know the A1 isn’t exciting or different, the majority of people reading this may well have experienced the whole 400 miles of A1ing. We all know from first-hand knowledge or can vividly imagine what it was like for the final 7 of our 1392 hours on the road, so I’m going to skip the whole thing.

We re-join the action at the Scottish border a few hours after the previous paragraph where we drive by the saltire sign post and step foot, actually we step wheels we haven’t been flintstoning our way up the A1, into our final country. But again there is was a distinct lack of banners welcoming us home, it’s almost as if no one really knew or cared that we had been away. Not to worry though as we came speeding into Dunbar and did a victory lap around Chris’ neighbourhood to the roar of our engine and the honking of our substitute horn. The noise had stirred Chris’ family and brought them outside by the time we pulled up. They had even put up some balloons hanging limply by the doorway, almost like they had been expecting us to arrive at some point in the last week, but not to worry it’s the thought that counts.

Chris was welcomed home by a selection of his family, and we spent half an hour showing off the damage to our car and regaling them with tales of our exploratory exploits. I left to finish this adventure as I had started by myself in the car on a short 10 mile trip between Dunbar and Haddington. I pulled into my driveway and was welcomed home by a dark and empty house without a single limp balloon, my parents had gone on holiday clearly just to avoid me when I returned home. Instead I picked up a spare key from my neighbour and let myself in and that was that, the adventure was actually finally and completely over. To celebrate I had a bubble bath with a cold bottle of beer because I’m a hard-core adventuring man. As in I drank a bottle of cold beer in a bubble bath filled with hot water not beer, besides a single bottle of beer wouldn’t even be enough to bathe in anyway.

That’s it we’re done, I wrapped up the rally in the blog when we reached the finish line in Ulaanbatar Mongolia, and nothing has changed but the increased total of the countries we’ve seen (24), the miles we’ve driven (17132) and the days we’ve survived (58). There really is nothing left to say apart from to say thank you so much for reading, we can all move on with our lives, and depart with a simple “The End - I really did enjoy every single stupid little second of our time on the road.”