F & S Day 19 18/09/11 The Final Day

Lazy start to the day - breakfast and coffee in sleeping bags.

Fast progress down the river valley towards Le Havre in the first few hours and a chance to stop for some awesome panoramic pictures.

We rode over the fantastic bridge on the approach into Le Havre and felt quite euphoric as we headed down towards the city.

Le Havre certainly is a bit of a dump of a town - made worse by the spitting rain and cold northerly gale that was blowing through it as we made our approach. We found a small supermarket to grab some lunch and a celebratory bottle of French cider for the ferry.

Slight mess up when we found that our fast progress meant we couldn't check into the ferry for another two hours; which meant we had to shelter outside a shopping centre for an hour or so.

We got over it when we were on the ferry though - the last leg of the epic journey - It was a pretty interesting crossing with the winds as they were too:

We were back on the Isle of Wight by 2230 and had a fast ride back from Ryde, with the legs feeling very fresh from the excitement of almost being home.

What an epic trip this has been -I'll do a separate post of all the final stats in a minute. But really it has been fantastic; we couldn't have asked for better weather, more of a challenge, or a better route. It all went very smoothly and I'm already looking forward to next year's tour, wherever it may take us!