Sunday 14 September was our last day in Paris, and getting close to the end of the year-long voyage. We paid our mooring bill at the Capitanerie and set off through the Port de l'Arsenal lock, and turned right onto the Seine for our 'lap of honour' of Paris. We had to do this - our own Last Tango - to cruise down the Seine and past the icons: Notre Dame, the Musee d'Orsay, under the Pont Neuf, and past the Eiffel Tower. We had to finish on a high note, and we did.

It was fabulous. The weather was gorgeous, the trees just beginning to tinge gold and orange, the sky a watercolour blue, and there was a general air of bonhomie in the morning sunshine. The streets alongside the Seine were an explosion of colour as a major running race threaded its way beside and over the river. Music pumped out of speakers to encourage the participants (personally I would have run faster just to get away from it) and a drumming band provided further audio incentive, a primal beat, driving the runners onwards. Commentators screamed over the PA system, their words loud, distorted and meaningless, but full of encouragement.

We would like to have pulled over and watched, taken in more of the action, shouted 'Bon Courage!', but the Seine was the busiest stretch of waterway we'd encountered in the whole year, with many commercial boats laden with sand, gravel and other cargoes, as well as beaucoup de bateaux mouches - tourist boats that are like waterway buses. They were everywhere, constantly stopping and starting as they dropped off and picked up passengers. In time-lapse they'd have looked like worker ants.

We had to keep our wits about us. Liz was tense, I could tell, but she did a superb job as lookout and kept me fully informed of everything in the water ahead, astern, and to port and starboard, reminding me which arches of the bridges to go under, and so on. It would have been far more relaxing just being a passenger on one of the tourist boats, but we felt we were a part of the river, we felt integrated, actually part of the postcard and not just looking at it. But we couldn't relax - there was too much to be wary of, too many decisions to make - yet it was exciting.

We annoyed only one passenger boat skipper, with a Mexican stand-off, so considering the density of the river traffic we thought we did quite well. The problem was his boat didn't have an obvious bow or stern - it was squared off at both ends, and the position of his wheelhouse was no indication of which way he was facing, so we waited mid-stream for a hint as to what he was doing as he came away from the quayside. All we could tell was he was easing away slowly, but whether it was to move towards us or away from us we hadn't a clue. So we figured it was safer to just bob mid-steam till we knew for sure.

However, it turned out he was doing the same - waiting for us to do something before he moved. As we finally pushed our throttle forward he gave Liz a glare and an angry shrug of the shoulders (at least we were spared any gestures more serious). Zees English, zay 'ave no idea!

Desolé Monsieur, desolé.

We sailed under the Pont des Arts - the lovers' bridge - where it has become a tradition to attach a padlock to the railings to 'lock in your love' with your partner, then together throw the key into the Seine, declaring everlasting devotion that cannot be undone (except with bolt-cutters). Some couples even go to the trouble of getting their padlocks engraved with their initials or names. Cute maybe, but the problem is the padlock practice has become so popular that some of the railings have begun to break away from their mountings, posing a danger to anyone leaning on them and a risk to boats passing below.

As we cruised under the bridge we could see pieces of timber in places where the railings had succumbed to the sheer weight of the padlocks. The entire span was so clogged with locks that from a distance they presented a solid wall of glinting steel, and you could only make out the true nature of the wall as you got close, so tightly-packed together were they. We held our breaths but managed to pass underneath without incident. We've no idea how much each piece of love-locked railing weighs but it must be significant, and certainly heavy enough to cause serious damage to anyone or anything passing beneath at the wrong moment.

Seeing Paris from the Seine was lovely - as millions of tourists each year must know when they catch one of the bateaux mouches, or the river cruise boats offering lunchtime and dinner trips. We felt very special being able to see the city from Liberty.

It's a city that begs to be viewed from the air too, so it was no surprise to see a tethered Helium balloon on the skyline, it's gondola underneath full of people wanting a bird's eye perspective. Of course you can get a fine view from the top of the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe, but the balloon enables you to get an aerial view of those icons as well.

As we cruised towards the Eiffel Tower it looked like a painted backdrop in a stage play - slightly faded in the morning Autumn light. But how fantastic to cruise almost under its sweeping ironwork, and watch its elevators climbing and descending. It was mesmerising, which is not a good thing when you've got a barge-load of gravel bearing down on you from the north!

We saw riverside markets, thousands of runners, families out strolling, the police diving near one of the bridges (why?), and as we passed under one bridge I caught a glimpse of what looked like a dolphin, but couldn't have been. Is there a Seine equivalent of the Loch Ness monster?

And so we came to the northernmost point of the journey, which proved to be poetically appropriate as we slowed Liberty to a stop just past the replica Statue of Liberty. There she was, holding her flaming torch aloft as if saluting our achievement, as fine a finishing line as one could wish for.

Liz scoffed at the statue's relative miniature size having been to New York and seen Eiffel's original, but agreed it was a Good Moment. I swung the wheel hard to port and our own Liberty responded, turning an elegant 180 degrees to face back the way we'd come; not so much a tango as a modest twirl.

But neither of us wanted to leave immediately, even though the river was busy and we needed to keep moving. I slowed the engine to tick-over again, and we took a moment to consider the significance of what we'd achieved in the past year; finding Liberty (and having to double our budget to buy her!), almost killing our first on-board guests with toxic battery fumes, heading off down the Saone and Rhône rivers with no experience and at a time of the year when everyone else was stopping for winter, getting rocked and rolled while moored as passing hotel boats created wakes of tsunami proportions, almost losing the boat at Avignon as the current tried to wrest the mooring ropes from our hands, travelling on the Rhône à Sete canal with snow falling, marvelling at Roman ruins, and being gobsmacked by the magnificent and not-ruined Pont du Gard, having the UK Channel 4 TV camera on board at Beaucaire, losing all propulsion (but right outside a boatyard), setting off along the Canal du Midi in spring and providing entertainment for the locals on the scary seven-lock Fonserannes Staircase, crashing stern-first into the lock gates at Bram, playing dodgems with hire boats, weeping at the felling of diseased plane trees on the Midi, sitting on the back deck on a sultry night listening to a nightingale, drinking far too much wine, enjoying the company of friends visiting, rescuing a yachtie with a broken engine, witnessing a baby deer swimming across the canal, mooring on the Midi miles from civilisation and watching a bird poking its head out from a hole in a tree, sleeping in complete darkness and silence (as well as next to railway lines), finding the bilge full of water one morning, fixing multiple problems with the boat (v satisfactory), causing multiple problems on the boat (v annoying), arguing, fighting, laughing and loving, speaking almost fluent French and at other times talking complete gibberish, meeting some wonderful boat people as well as some pompous b******s, taking far too many photos of herons, eating far too many baguettes and croissants, cooing at the ducklings, cygnets (Liz calls them 'swanlings') and other springtime baby wildlife, being swallowed by the cathedral-like Bollène lock, befriending dogs and being adopted (occasionally) by cats, honing our rope-throwing skills as well as making complete fools of ourselves trying to lasso bollards, and, of course, finally conquering Paris.

I reluctantly pushed the throttle forward and we left, going south again and heading for our 'hivernage' - our wintering-over spot. Only about two weeks left, and then we have to find jobs back in the UK. Back to reality, back to Liverpool, and back to where I once belonged.