11th August. Back in Australia.

Arrived home in Melbourne about 6.30 am. Customs checked out the tent and decided to wash the tent pegs and ground sheet otherwise no problems. Felicity collected us from the airport and we stayed the night in Melbourne to catch up with James and have a family dinner. Wet, windy and cold. Bit of a shock to actually see that we had missed a whole season, autumn, and that all the trees had lost their leaves. Arrived home on the 12th.

Just a bit in closing the blog. If we weren't walking with the packs on Annette had me walking without them. Just how far did we walk with the packs on? Hard to say with all the up and down hills but a rough guess would be 900 kilometres. How long did we spend sitting doing nothing? Felt like zero and wasn't very often.

Would we do it again? Of course and we plan to be off for another 3 months next year. What would we change? Lighten the packs a bit and try to plan the walking better so we could walk less per day. What did we get out of the trip besides three months off work? We both lost a bit of weight, ate hundreds of chunky kitkats, found that the midges are bloody annoying and that people everywhere were fascinated with what we were doing and really friendly and helpful. The larger Macpacs definitely set us aside from the other walkers. We walked, trained and bused through some lovely country and towns in both France and the UK.

I can't say the trip was easy as most days it was hard work walking with the packs but we definitely got to see more of the country and talk to more people than we would have otherwise. Annette found that she had an inner strength to keep going when it got tough and I am very proud of her. I know there were lots of days when she finished the day in better shape than me.

We are still talking to each other and Annette has forgiven me for some of the comments I put on the blog. I hope you all enjoyed what was suppose to be a honest, light hearted day by day commentary of our journey. Until next year.

Annette and Graeme.