Day 24 Flying Home

We set off pretty early from the hotel, about 7:30. It was great cycling through a big town at that time on a Sunday morning with the streets deserted, the only hazard being the tram lines.  We had absolutely no problem getting to the airport where we packaged up the bikes in big plastic  bags which we had carried all the way from home, we also taped our panniers and rucksacks together with parcel tape to reduce the number of bags we had to check in (airlines charge by the bag which is a bit of a pain in the bum when you have umpteen bags attached to various parts of your bike)

Check in was absolutely no hassle and a straightforward flight home,(much easier than trying to get bikes on a train in the UK)', the only problem being that we missed Andy Murray winning Wimbledon.

We've had a great trip, it was tough at times but the number of changes in the landscape and all the different styles of towns and cities we went through were fantastic. Travelling by bike you always get involved in conversation with other people, either other cycle tourists or just people who are curious to know what you are up to.

It would have been good to have had a longer time to do the journey as there were times when we would have liked to have spent longer in particular places, but we always knew that would be the case on this trip.

Due to the fact that we could only afford. 3 weeks holiday this was always going to be a challenge to see if we could complete this journey rather than a sight seeing trip.  This inevitably means that you sometimes don't always get to see as much of places as you would like, however on the other hand you do get to see a hell of a lot of places, and it gives you a great list of places to return to.

Here is a link to a rough map of our trip, it doesn't exactly follow the cycle tracks and roads which we took, (so don't follow the directions!) However it does follow our general route.

http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/fullscreen/184077052/

The big question now is where next??

Today's miles 6  (by bike)

Total miles 1166

Countries travelled through 7 (including Scotland and England)

Continents crossed 1

Numbers of smiles - thousands!