THE END

Well it had to happen. It took two days to fully pack up the house in Gap and find all our things we had thrown around over the last 6 months. We managed to get all our belongings shoe horned into the van in time to get to Davie and Sandrine's house for dinner (our friends up the road). We had a great night with me drinking a little too much wine which affect some of my french vocab!

We left gap blurry eyed at 5am on Saturday and drove up to Calais, no issues, just 9hrs of driving.

Off the ferry and we both felt it very strange indeed to be driving back on our native side, and everyone drove so slow. having got used to the the "do or die" approach to the french driving, sitting on the motorway at 60mph (the speed limit of the van) was best described as painful!

Our first stop was with Lara's parents were we sorted out the MOT for the Golf, no real issues, then on up to my parents in Norwich. We met up with Dom, Jedi and Marion for dinner and was great to see them all again.

After collecting all the wedding presents and amazingly managing to shoe horn them into the cars we made our way up to York to see Mr Raven. We decided it was time to go and try out his birthday present

It was Chris's first go in it, and he picked it up really fast. A few moments of anger and shouting, but by the end of the day he was flying!Lara got in it as well. I was amazed at this as she is scared witless of my kites (she broke a rib a few years ago trying them), but she as well was fine and was flying around in little time.

I however was less subtle and didn't really watch where i went

Loved it, was very much good fun. Must resist more shiny toys.....So after a glorious day, getting filthy (a state I like!), having fish and chips, great fun and seeing old friends it was time to complete the journey home and get back on the road to get back to Aberdeen.

Arrived here no issues, unloaded the van and car. Not sure where it is all going to go, but it came from here, so it must fit!

It feels odd being home, Aberdeen has not changed since we left so it is fast starting to feel like we never left. Just been away for a long weekend somewhere.

So that is it, our honeymoon. We both agree it is the best thing we have done ever, we want to try and save up and in a couple of years do something similar again.

I hope you have enjoyed reading this, I strangely have enjoyed writing it. I might start a normal blog for photos and updates for our normal life, but that won't be for a while.

Well I will sign off here as I need to go get a job!

Dave xxx

Huff and Puff up the Galibier

With only a few days left out here, I was desperate to try and get a few more road rides in, up some of the Tour De France famous climbs.

The Col de Galibier stands at 2645m and is one of the highest passes in Europe. We parked the van at Briancon and set off up it, The first part was only 5% so kind of acted as a warm up.

13km later and we were at the Col de Lauteret. From here it got a lot steeper

Lara climbing through a switchback, The great Mieje can be seen in the near background. The weather was getting hotter as it was now around 2pm. A rare self portrait of me sweating my perverbials off. Lara categorically said no to stopping to take any pictures of me. She is so stubborn; she will not stop so to be able to say she got to the top without stopping. So in protest I started to sing.She tried to speed up to get out of ear shot, but my pistons work better than hers, so she just shouted at me instead. I shut up. Picture above is Lara trying to power away from my singing looking back down the valley to Briancon (where we came from).After about 1hr and 50 minutes we finally got to the top, above is Lara 'Armstrong' nearing the last corner.

Finally there, amongst many other fellow cyclist all red faced and many sitting down with their heads in their hands. Lara went to join the other sitters and I went about taking some photos. Beautiful views and still warm.

Time to descent, so we have over 25km of descent to do and it was going to be fast as the climb was steep.

Lara readies herself for battle, with a few extra layers of spandex. We were off, it was brilliant. All the road paintings from years of the Tours De France gone by, all the famous names. It was brilliant, like riding on a huge road of history (that is if you are into cycling, if not, then it is just vandalism!)I played my favourite game whilst going down roads like this, "over take cars" the only time on a bike that you are pretty much faster than all other vehicles (to be honest the odd motor bike did get me).

We got back to the van a lot quicker than we thought. Threw our bikes in the back and went in search of a well deserved hero beer.