If you've been waiting for the fascinating facts and figures then your wait is over, here they are:
19 nights sleeping in tents in 19 different counties
4 hours total (approx!) spent pitching tents of one sort or another
835.6 miles driven
107.1 miles longest driven in one day
14 miles shortest, on Day 2
0 miles, Day 12
23 sausages consumed between us
7 ice creams each
13 rainy days
51 cups of tea each
1 game of crazy golf
5 geocaches
4 people joined us in more than one County (Judy, Kim, Helen & Angela)
1 Trefoil Guild joined us in 2 Counties
£715 raised so far on Justgiving PipMcKerrow
Immeasurable the number of hands shaken and wonderful people met.
Everywhere we went we were met with extraordinarily generous hospitality from our volunteer leaders, the girls and members of the Trefoil Guild. A heartfelt thank you to you all.
Our very grateful thanks go to the County Commissioners and to the hosts for our overnight stays in each County, to our family and friends for their support and encouragement along the way - even if posting a comment on the blog proved a tad frustrating and you had to resort to texts and emails! -and to all those of you who followed us on Twitter.
Particular thanks though go to the support team: Caroline for the huge amount of work involved in putting the route together for us and the detailed instructions for each day, Angela for encouragement with the concept and daily contact support, Jan for support setting up the blog and providing frequent back up, Kim and Reema for badge design support, Carole and Steve for the magnetic vinyl branding for the car and Chris for uploading to the website.
Looking back over the original concept of this trip we have certainly explored London and South East England, although when you look at our route you can see that we've completely missed our coastline which accounts for at least 50% of our Region border. We've thoroughly enjoyed almost 3 weeks camping with the challenge of travelling to a new venue each day - we've partied in 19 different places 19 different times! Our hosts were often challenged by a night of broken sleep in a tent whilst we put our heads down each night and in Nick's words: slept like a baby!
We wanted to do something memorable in Games Time - well there's no question that we achieved that goal. Our Day 1 was Day 1 of the Games - the London 2012 Olympic Games will go down in history as 'the best games ever', certainly in the eyes of the British if not in the world - 'a summer to remember' will conjure up very special memories for the two of us and we hope will be remembered by all those who joined us.
I promised that I would consider how this trip may have embraced the Olympic and Paralympic values: respect, excellence, friendship, courage, determination, inspiration and equality. Jan summed up some thoughts in her comments a few days ago, but for me, friendship has been the most important value shared by us all this summer. Friendship shown to us as we have travelled around the region, friendship shown by complete strangers towards one another in the spirit of the Olympics and friendship in the form of the many who have given their time to volunteering.
So, what next? Well next year we're thinking of travelling around the coastline, down the Thames and around our coastal Counties of Kent and Sussex. Greatstone Guides have already suggested that we might camp with them! Anyone else want to join in?
Finally, a humongous, mahoussive thank you to my son Nick for his unstinting support and interest in all things guiding and without whom this trip would never have happened. Thanks Nick, you're a star!
