The final blog!

So that was it - our fabulous three week tour. My anxiety of being "alone" with only Colin, his music and his special sense of humour was completely unfounded. He was the perfect travelling companion, even being all slushy on the last night (must have been the influence of the Romantic Rhine!) saying that I was also his best travel buddy, the only one with whom he would do such a trip again, so I think that our mutual appreciation society was in business ;o)

We haven't missed the villa holiday as such. It's just been different all together. Not comparable. It wasn't tiring to move location so much - the motorhome was so easy and fast to set up and pack up. Waking up in a new place every morning or planning a journey was so inspirational. We would never had seen so much of Europe on a different type of holiday.

If the van was ours, of course there would be modifications to be made - as we conclude at the end of every villa holiday! An outside integrated step, air con, different banquet seating arrangement etc etc. but overall it has been magnificent and she served us well, having been returned without any damage whatsoever. Great driving of course. (We just have to wait to see if we have any speeding fines before they return the deposit!).

Whilst en route, Dad and Pete set us a competition to describe the trip in one word. For me it was "landscapetastic" and for Colin it was "independence". I was in raptures of the sheer stunning scenery in our world and its vastly differing landscapes; from the Croatian islands and its jaunty spiky mountain ridges to Austria's green and lush mountain range to the absolute magic of Lake Bled.
Colin marvelled at the design of Mabel and loved being able to go from one place to another with everything you needed / wanted right with you. Never was he happier than when his barby was lit, his Bose by his side and a vodka in his hand :o).

We covered 4,679km in our three weeks using 635 litres of fuel.

For those interested, Colin calculated our fuel consumption to be
17.3 miles per gallon!!

Germany was by far the cheapest place to do a supermarket shop and Switzerland was the most expensive place to be.

All in all, it was an experience of a lifetime, a road well travelled with my bestest buddy!

So that's it. No more blogging. Phew, you may say. But don't fear - we still have about 500 photos to upload! The ones on the blog are just i-phone snap shots! For the real deal, the Nikon was in action all the way.

So until next time, ta ta from us!