Day 73- At Home

Finally after the challenges of the past couple of days I am now at home!

Yes … the plane did finally make it back to Melbourne!

It was interesting that there were 13 of us who were unable to make the connection for the Melbourne flight and were put up in various hotels in Doha… I got to know a few and in fact sat next to one lady on the plane home. I must say that Qatar Airlines did an outstanding job of sorting this out and they are to be commended.

Fortunately for me I was met by my son Christopher who drove me home which was great…. The thought of an Uber after a long flight with little sleep left me “cold”

So here I am at home and now have the opportunity of reflecting on the trip….

Here are a few thoughts…

The highlights for me were Stelvio, being in Paris for the Olympic Games and visiting Mesen to see the Grieve VC plaques.

The lowlights were the rides along the southern coast of England…. The scenery was ok but the weather was not great and the headwinds were a challenge.

I enjoyed the company of my 2 riding buddies in Steve and Chris and we had some great times together and responded well when there were challenges of various sorts.

Chris was great with the cycle.travel navigating and it made the journey each day more enjoyable to know we had a good course of navigation.

Steve was good company and fitted in well as part of the team and was always in good spirits during the ride despite having a couple of days where he was not feeling the best….his ability to navigate the “wilds” of the train systems and ferry at Lake Como was outstanding!

The accommodation by and large was good for us all with some places better than others…. The standouts for me were the accommodation in Judenburg in an old convent, the hotel in Bormio ahead of the Stelvio climb and the hotel in Menen .

It was great to have a few days of rest along the way and generally speaking we got the breaks right to recover.

I am really proud and thankful of the support we had from my friends and the Alkira community in fund raising over $32,000 for the Alkira Cafe project. I am hopeful that we will get a bit more and edge towards $35k. Given I set a target of raising $25,000 this is truly amazing!

I am quite proud of the the fact that I rode 3900 kms and climbed nearly 25,000 metres. I have lost quite a bit of weight and hope this does not come back in the months ahead in Melbourne. I also found my “climbing legs” during the trip… early on I was struggling a bit with gradients of 8% and above and had to walk a few hills. At the end of the ride I was climbing gradients of 18%!

The map in the picture below gives an idea of the entire route we took.

Thanks to you all for reading my blog and for the responses many of you made… the comments were quite inspiring for me!