The end of it all

The last week of our five and a half month holiday was spent preparing ourselves to return to amore normal way of life.
Neels and I borrowed Pieter’s car and drove down to Maastricht to leave all the odds and ends that Carol had lent us, with Steve’s family. After having spent so long trundling along at a maximum speed of 90 kilometres per hour, it was almost frightening to be able to do 120, to say nothing of actually overtaking other vehicles! And where we would have considered Oss to Maastricht a pretty good day’s drive in the van, we went there and back in a little over a morning.
We also returned the van to the company who sold it to us, and sold it back to them for the prearranged sum. This is quite definitely the most economical way to do any long-term touring. According to the research that we did prior to the holiday, rental for the same period, in the size of van that we had, would have been almost double the cost.
The weather that had played such a big part in our daily lives, for so long, had deteriorated and there were strong signs that Autumn was approaching. We did have a couple of really brilliant days though, which we thoroughly enjoyed.
All too soon it was time to be taken to Dusseldorf to catch our return flight, this time a night-time flight via Munich. Our fears of being flung into jail for outstaying our visa in Europe were not realised although we did spend an anxious three-quarters of an hour in the Gendarmerie while they decided what to do about that. In the end we got a tap on the wrist and were sent on our way.
Before boarding the plane, we bought an English newspaper. I took out the puzzle pages and handed the rest over to Neels to read. My section also had the star signs in it and according to my particular forecast, this week was one in which a decision had to be made – a creative project with which I was involved, should either be shelved or should have far more effort applied to it. I took this to mean that this was the right moment to end this blog. The holiday was a fun adventure, not without its scary moments, but mostly fun, and writing the blog has helped me to remember where we have been and what we have done, but now we are home again the time has come to get back to normal, which is mainly very boring, so the story will end here.
To all of you who have been reading our saga, thank you for your interest. Now it is someone else’s turn to entertain us. Goodbye, and God bless you all.