29- Journey’s End

Our journey home was a bit eventful. Firstly the car we had booked to take us to the airport didn’t arrive, so we had to take a taxi. The flight from Chicago to Heathrow was a bit bumpy due to strong winds. As we got nearer to Heathrow we were informed that the weather wasn’t great, 6 degrees Celsius, rainy and windy. The plane circled a few times then made its decent to the runway. We almost touched down when the plane suddenly veered upwards and soared back up. Seemingly due to the wet tarmac the previous plane which had landed had not yet cleared the runway so our captain was told at the last minute to abort the landing. We circled then landed on our second attempt. Our connecting flight to Aberdeen was delayed for 20 minutes while the plane was checked out because it had been hit by lightning on its previous journey. We all boarded and were then delayed for a further 30 minutes due to a backlog of flights waiting to depart. We eventually took off and due to the high winds made up some of the time we had lost. As we came in to land at Aberdeen the plane was caught in cross winds and the pilot had to abort the landing. Unbelievable – two flights and two aborted landings.

We were met at the airport by our daughter Nikki and our grandchildren Emily and Douglas. It was great to see them after six months. The kids had grown so much. They took us home where our son Chris was waiting to greet us with a welcome home banner!

After 27 flights our adventure is over.

Our trip had lasted 191 days. We’d travelled over 50000 miles, through 12 countries on 4 continents. We had visited 46 destinations and slept in 31 beds. We’d travelled by aeroplane, train, bus, car, ferry, tuktuk, songthaew, motorbike, push bike, cyclo, catamaran, junk, kayak, bamboo raft, campervan, helicopter, subway train, monorail, small boats, cable car, tram and by foot.

We’d climbed mountains,

crawled through tunnels,

swum with the fishes,

soared with the birds,

kayaked among the icebergs,

eaten with the cannibals in Fiji and so much more. We have so many happy memories and about 20000 photographs – anybody want to view them all???

We have seen magnificent sights, tasted delicious food (and some not so nice), and met many wonderful people who helped to enhance our journey with their advice, help, kindness and friendship. We would like to thank you all. To those of you still on your travels stay safe and face your fears, life is too short, live it large.

When we started this blog, it was as a way for our family and friends to hear how we were getting along. We have been astounded by the number of people who have viewed it. We hope you have all enjoyed our journey and maybe you will decide to go on your own adventure. If so let us know, so that we can follow your blog.

“I have a dream” said Martin Luther King.

Well we have fulfilled our dream. The coffers are empty, the heart is happy, the soul is full and the memory bank is overflowing. We faced our fears hand in hand and our love grew stronger. We have found many new friends and visited lots of amazing places on our journey around the world and the best thing of all is that we did it together.

Keep dreaming!