Russell writes 12/1/12, photo’s by Rob:
The last day, at last. Full of nervous excitement, what was it going to be like turning up at number 13 in a little street in Hereford after 13 and a half months on the road? The ferry was British run and not French thankfully, so we sat in front of the TV with the BBC news making sandwiches. Seeing the white cliffs appear on the horizon was a very pleasant sight and it was time to check for phone signal and order a nice rib of beef for Sunday lunch. You cannot beat a bit of mum’s cooking and although I’d enjoyed the variety of foods in each country, there was only going to be one winner for me! The journey from Munich to Dunkirk yesterday had been our longest distance in a day, so this morning we were still quite drained, but our friends and families awaited a joyful reunion, giving us energy. Thankfully the weather held off and we had a dry run all the way through central London and west to Hereford. I still managed to stop 3 times to take my fuel filter off and blow it through as it became blocked, the bike by now had become very tiresome but I just wanted to get home. After all we’d been through a piffling fuel filter was not going to stop us now!
We’d given our friends and families a best guess at an arrival time so we could have a few of our closest supporters there when we landed. Coming back into our home city was a little surreal as nothing seemed to have changed but it was completely different to any of the cities we’d just been to. Turing into my street with only seconds before the end and quickly scanning around for signs of familiar faces, we pulled up onto the pavement and announced our arrival with vigorous revving! Our good friends Rob Breeze and Ben Voden quickly appeared with many manly hugs and a bottle of Champaign each, which were soon exploding over the bikes and each other. More friends arrived, more hugs and the next hour was quite chaotic as we tried to greet everyone. Our parents were able to make it which was very pleasing and it was a very happy reunion. They have been such a huge encouragement ever since the beginning and now after many months of love and support the prodigals have returned! With 27 African countries, 3 in the Middle East and 8 in Europe under our belts, in my view, we live in the best one, so for me it’s true; there’s no place like home!
So from myself and Darren we must say massive THANK YOU to everyone who has been following and supporting us through the good times and the hard. And a special thank you to everyone who has made a donation to the charities. We would also like to remind everyone else that the JustGiving page for Send a Cow is still open and two new, easy ways of donating to the Romanian children’s work at Bethesda are as follows:
1. Send a text message with the following text, ‘RUSS11’ and the amount ‘£10’ for example. Send it to 70070 and it will come out of your next phone bill. Your gift will be gift aided so the charity will get even more.
2. http://www.justgiving.com/AfricaorbitalRomanianCharity We now have a JustGiving page for Bethesda, the money will go through our church Christian Life Centre (www.clch.org.uk) in Hereford and the extra money from the gift aid will also go to the charity.
We don’t have any amounts to announce yet as we still want to push the fundraising when we get a mention in the Hereford Journal and from this blog. We are planning a little trip out to Romania in the early summer to make a visit to the children’s work and present a cheque. They are only a small charity and do a great work, we would love to make a difference.
Life in the Shire was not quite ‘back to reality’ as we had arrived in time for Christmas and a little overkill on the whole ‘busyness’ of the season and too little focus on the reason. But it was so good to have the family around over Christmas, and even a special guest from Germany, Daniel. Then off to Manchester for new year’s to meet up with some great old friends Paul, Anita and new baby Samuel, also Pete and Vix who were over from New Zealand. The plan now is to fix up the bike, prepare presentations for various interested groups and find a job! Watch this space for a few of our Africa Orbital top 10’s looking back at some of our favorite things from our adventures.