The End (Sort Of)

It's finally arrived, after weeks of seeing it coming and wishing it wouldn't, we're back off to the UK today!

Gifted with wonderful weather on our final day we headed into the sea for our first time since Italy and had a paddle in some very warm water. 

Wandering back into Gravelines, our park up for the night, we had a park picnic and a stock up on some French goodies you can't get in England before heading to the ferry.

While much of the history I knew was associated with Gravelines was to do with naval battles off the coast, it was very nice to see the fortifications so well intact in the city itself. We have seen these early modern fortifications in many cities used in different ways: turned into parks, ring roads, or shopping districts. Their repurposing in many places was largely due to urban expansion or invading French troops after the revolution slighting them to avoid their use as fortifications in future. In Gravelines, since the town never expanded dramatically and the French had no need to destroy their own fortifications, we found some incredibly preserved walls all around the city in the characteristic star shape.

Well there you have it. Exactly 87 days after leaving the UK for Europe we're back on the ferry. We've seen vast plains, distant seas, ancient civilisations, remnants of cataclysmic conflicts, and towering mountains. We've followed majestic rivers and sprawling cities, explored crammed ports and mighty metropolises. We've survived and learnt such an absurd amount and more importantly Moira survived intact!

As we move onto our next chapter we'll not have a tremendous amount of use for this blog. In the coming weeks we're off to Scotland for a month which we'll make a separate section for on the blog and add in some bits and bobs and hopefully over the next couple of months before we start work again in August / September, we'll post some bits summing up different aspects of the trip. 

It's been such an awesome adventure and we thoroughly hope you've enjoyed following along where you can! See you soon!