Day 91 Born to Walk

As we send this final blog we are about to head to the airport to catch our final flight home. We would like to thank all the people who have read this blog and hope that in some small way you have enjoyed our adventure. Writing this blog for us has been a lot of fun and we want to thank all who made comments and the occasional corrections. We did famously write once, that ‘we were on a ferry that went on a train’ but fortunately one of our readers picked this up so we corrected our error to say ‘our train went on a ferry’ (remarkable enough really). To end with adjectives would be impossible because we have used wonderful, adventurous, exciting, delightful and fabulous already far too many times. We have had the holiday and adventure of a lifetime and we are very grateful to have had this opportunity. We will end with a few statistics that in some way sum up our 91day trip around the world – Born to Run 2008.

Countries Visited: 15 countries and two principalities.
Highlights: Too many
Lowlights: Very few
Plane Distance Travelled: 56 233kms
Train/Tram Distance: 16 538kms
Taxi: 200 kms
Bus : 688 km
Boats: 389 km
Walking: 1 266 kms
Total Distance a little over 74 744 kms
Cost: Let’s just say we achieved our goal of living off our salaries for three months -no big bills when we get home. Yippee!!!

We need to thank our kids Hannah and Tim for looking after the house, cars, bill paying and dog for three months. We need to thank our employers for long service leave and the Australian Government for not abolishing this wonderful working condition that seems to be enjoyed by very few people around the world. We are looking forward to catching up with our many friends and family over the next few weeks.

Michael Pallin said recently that travel made him realise two things- that the world was actually smaller than he thought and not nearly as scary. We would agree with that conclusion and add that it is also more diverse, wonderful, beautiful and interesting than we had ever imagined.

Finally we end as we began with Mark Twain’s wonderful words

“20 Years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the boundaries. Sail away from the safe harbour and catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, dream, discover".