DAY 62 finds us in ….Bluewater Shopping Mall, south of the Dartford Tunnel. Jannie has been going through glue like nobody’s business and has once again run out of Pritt Stick for the scrapbook. [She says it’s for the scrapbook and not for clandestine inhalation, and I am not about to spread uncertainty on this point]. So here we are in John Lewis’s The Place To Eat, with our tea and cakes, tapping the keys on one side of the table, sticking stolen beer maps on to pages, on the other: it is a touching domestic scene.

Our journey from Bruges to Calais was both uneventful and pleasant. The sun was out and this is big sky country, with the light catching the trees and the pastures beautifully. You can see why those edgy Impressionists liked to paint out in the fields round these parts. Though none were in evidence today. Just Belgian drivers overtaking on the inside; hesitant Brits in caravans; and oil tankers looming up in the rear mirror to nudge at the boot. Business as usual.

The Eurotunnel between Calais and Folkestone is and remains one of the great achievements of modern transport science. It is indeed roll-on, roll off, no hanging about, and a journey time shorter than an episode of EastEnders. It is a wondrous thing that the French and the Brits have achieved this together, when so much else has eluded us, like speaking each other’s language, for example. On which note, it is a relief after 9 weeks to be ordering tea and not to be faced with gentle pity as we struggle to articulate foreign nouns.

So, nearly home. It has been another fun-filled potpourri, and we are grateful to those of you who have kept with the 6,200 mile programme, offering us insights which have spurred us on, and ever downwards. We are already planning a third adventure for 2014, possibly to the Americas: there are still some unvisited countries lurking there.

So if you want to avoid another intrusive blogging experience, you might like to change your email address now…