25,992kms

Cassie: 25,992kms. I’m still trying to absorb that number. ‘They’ say that most people will drive an average of about 20,000km during a year. We’ve driven over that in three months. We picked up the car in Vladivostok on 28 June 2012, set off driving on 29 June 2012 and finished up on 1 October 2012.

Troopie was farewelled today as we left him and Quorn at the freight forwarder’s depot. I had a bit of a lump in my throat as we were driving away. The guy at the freight forwarder’s office kindly offered to drive us to the train station in Southampton. We were all geared up to get a taxi but he insisted on driving us there. Again, such kindness from a stranger. It really restores my belief in humanity that people can be so freely generous.

The better part of this morning was spent physically getting the car ready for shipping. Graeme got everything off the roof rack and sorted it out so that we could get it in the back of the car, disconnected the auxiliary battery and other stuff like that. Whilst my jobs were to clear out and tidy up the interior, clean out the fridge, empty the water containers and pack a bag. As it turned out, we finished our respective jobs pretty much at the same time and after getting breakkie, putting a splash of fuel in the car and throwing out our mini mountain of rubbish we were ready to set off for the final 93km to the depot at Southampton. I didn’t like seeing those kilometres dwindle. I wanted the drive to be the same as it has been for the past three months – ending in us camping somewhere for the night and getting up in the morning to do it all over again.

Troopie looking a bit bare on top with everything packed away inside.

I’m sure Quorn will look after Troopie until we pick it up.

I’m so sad that the trip is almost over. In fact, it pretty much feels done and dusted already. A couple more days of sight-seeing around London, three connecting flights to get home and…..that’s it. We’ll be home. How strange does that sound!? I’m happy to be heading home because, I don’t want to speak for Graeme, but I am tired. I think we’ve said this before, but if we could snap our fingers and be home we could spend a week or so recuperating and then snap our fingers to be back overseas and continue the journey.

Our train journey from Southampton to London was great. The train was relatively comfy, super quiet, super smooth and quick….and expensive! Everything here is very expensive.

After getting off the train at the Waterloo station we had to find accommodation. Boy oh boy that was a bit tricky. Even using the websites we’ve used previously to get cheaper accommodation it was still crazy expensive. We finally found somewhere to stay in an amazing location. We are within spitting distance to the London Eye (literally at the side of our hotel!) and across the River Thames from Westminster (Parliament House) and Big Ben! Seriously cool. Tomorrow the plan is to jump on the London Eye for an overall city perspective and then take it from there.

Graeme: Yeah, Cassie said it all. We were perhaps a bit daft. We had no idea of the costs that London would bring. After our generous lift to the train station we bought tickets. $106AUD for both… Ouch! Train was good, very quiet. The drinks cart came around, figuring for that sort of money we’d get a free cup of tea. Nope, that’ll be $8.50. Jhezuz. We’d payed 70 cents for two cups in Russia! After that, we  found ourselves standing in the London-Waterloo station using Wi-Fi to find a hotel. Again, something we should have done beforehand, but we didn’t know the freight-forwarded would go so smoothly. After exhausting all the Google maps, Apple maps, Expedia, hotels.com, we fluked on Premier Inn. We’d stayed next to one a few nights ago, and they have dotted every highway we’ve been on. At a much more respectable $200 something a night. To put in perspective, some hotels were charging 10 GBP PER HOUR for Internet access, this place charges 3GBP per day. We had the money, but I couldn’t help but do the sums, calculating how long I’d have to work, and how long I’d have to save for each night.

Thinking it was all behind us, I jumped on to book our return flights this afternoon. We’d planned to fly out on the 3rd… at 4207 pounds… each! HOLY CRAP! Staring to freak out, looking around at heaps of other carriers… nope, same thing. Thinking ‘how could we have been so stupid’, all that sort of thing. The annoying thing was, return flights were advertised at (booked a fair way ahead) were like $1500AUD, so I felt a bit robbed at the prospect of paying ~$6500 … EACH. I guess there is a lesson there kids, BOOK AHEAD! If we’d hold out here for a few weeks, they’d be a lot cheaper, but at ~$200/night, you soon eat up any savings! We were stuck.

After much more sweating, like a desert island appeared in the distance. Amongst the next few days of 4200GBP flights, one single flight of a relatively respectable 1470GBP flight revealed itself. Without any hesitation, it was booked and we’re set to fly out on the 4th. Phew.

In some ways we should have booked our flights earlier, but there’s no way we could have known when we would get here. I only posted all this so other people who come after us will do some research about this end of the trip ;)