In the last post I spent the night in a lovely campsite near Calais. I went to bed super early and left the campsite in the dark at 5:45am. I got through the security at Calais and bought a ticket for one of the first ferries. The guy at the ticket desk was lovely and sold me a cheaper ticket but told me to get on the ferry leaving in about 20 mins. I got in the parking lanes and drove onto the ferry.
It's weird going home after such a long time driving around Europe. I was obviously really sad to be leaving it all behind, as campervanning is definitely my favourite form of travelling now, but I was so happy to hear English voices on the ferry and to buy an English breakfast and cup of tea. It gets quite draining trying to communicate with people for 6 weeks. The whole experience would definitely be better if I could speak French or Italian, but I keep trying and a little more sticks each time. I can generally work out what people are saying to me, just can't seem to reply!
Anyway, I got to England at 7:30am and decided that I would go to Whitstable for the morning. This was a place that I'd marked on my map back when I arrived in England in 2015, but train tickets are stupidly expensive there and I figured that while I had my own wheels, I would go have a look around. I was there so early that I could park in the empty carpark easily!
Whitstable is a lovely beachside place, and I spent quite a bit of time wandering around.
I was tired and it had already been a long morning so I decided not to go anywhere else and just drive to my flat in London. It took a good 2 hours, driving around the M25 ringroad around London to the northwest, then heading in to Zone 2. But I made it and found a park fairly close to my house. I jumped out and hauled all my belongings and souvenirs and everything else I had collected along the way into my flat. Unfortunately, I couldn't leave my camper outside because you need a permit and there are always parking inspectors walking around. So it was back to the camper for me and time to drive it back to Getaway Campers. This might actually have been the most stressful part of the whole journey, as I managed to miss a turn off and ended up somewhere I didn't intend and had to double back. Honestly, roads in the UK, coupled with my GPS not giving me enough warning for which lane to be in, causes me so many problems!
I finally managed to get it back to Getaway and dropped it off. If you'll recall, I accidentally got it stuck in a car park in Italy and scraped the side a bit but they were so good about it (probably also partly because I'd been stuck in Sault for three days when it broke down 2 weeks into my journey). I gratefully handed the keys before beginning my LONG journey back home via public transport. I was glad I'd decided to drop it off quite early as I was knackered and over it. It took me about 1.5 hours but I finally made it home.
Looking back at the maps I made, I did pretty well to cover off most places I'd marked. The only places that I really missed were cities, because they require so much more effort to visit than smaller towns and villages. Plus, cities can be visited by flying in rather than driving there so I think its more important to go to places inaccessible without a car first 🙂
So that's it. After 48 days of travel, 3 countries, 7080km (4400 miles) driving and 506km (314 miles) walking I was finally home. I really did have the most incredible time. It was so different to my roadtrip in 2016 because adding Italy in made it so much more intense. I remember that first day I crossed into Italy, I almost turned back because I started stressing about the crazy Italian drivers. But it's important to shake yourself off and keep going, because it was only me who was stressing myself out! And in the end, I managed to do it all .... All by myself.