Five days from Volgograd to Calais, 3500 kilometres (2200 miles), then a short hop across the channel to stay with a friend (well his wife as he had gone Morris Dancing) before the final leg home.

74 days to ride around the world, I won't change the blog title as Mike isn't home yet.

I even managed to arrive home in time for Jean's birthday.

(Yes, I do have a new T-shirt on)My last few days on the were not without mishap, the bike broke down again in Holland (and people wonder why I call her the "Bastard" ).

Ignition failure struck again just as I was accelerating from a fuel stop onto the motorway, which was an interesting moment. Fortunately I was able to push the bike back to the services to work on her. The failure initially appeared to be similar to the one in Almaty. However when I stripped the front end of the bike and ignition I could see the wires were intact. Following some head scratching I realised the ignition barrel was worn and a small amount of pressure was needed to force a connection in the lower section. The insertion of a small piece of plastic did the trick and I was up and running again within an hour.

A plastic powered Peg !

Apart from having to fix my own bike this time, the major thing I noted was that despite me having the bike and tools spread all over a services forecourt no one stopped to help, not even passing bikers. At that point I knew I was definitely back in Europe.

I tested the P&O flexible-plus ticket by arriving 24 hours before my booked ferry was due to leave. Then in the boarding queue I met the P&O chairman who thought I should have got the ferry for free. I agreed, but as I did not know him until a few minutes earlier I didn't see how we could have arranged that.

A couple of things I never got around to blogging about that I feel conveys the friendliness and helpfulness of the Russians.

In Russia they don't believe in putting signs up to show where hotels are, so it is often just by chance we were able to find anything.

In the city of Kemorovo, western Siberia, we were searching for a cheap hotel. As usual there were no signs so I asked a passer by for directions. He was a bit on the drunk side,and it took a few attempts for me to get him to understand what I was asking for. The directions were not straight forward, so he climbed on the back of my bike, helmet-less, and directed us around town while he chain smoked all the way. We searched for about an hour before we found one in our price range (the Russians always start visitors off at the most expensive) or that was not a house of ill repute.

A few days later we were in the city of Barnaul, our last major town before Kazakhstan. The bikes were in need of an oil change and we needed, once again, accommodation. Using our Russian bike club contacts we were directed to a bike club and bar that could help.

We amused ourselves for a while waiting for Andre.

Unfortunately he never showed up, however the bar staff were very helpful and one of them led us to a garage for the service.

There we saw the ultimate hole in the floor toilet.

It had to be a "piss take".

Later back in the bar, still trying to locate Andre who was meant to be arranging a bed, the garage mechanic, Alexander ( a very common name) who had done the oil change turned up. He took pity on us and insisted we go back to his place. He lived in a proper soviet style apartment block, with big steel doors and slow clunking lift.

Due to his lack of English and our Russian, we used Google Translate to communicate. The next day he fed us and then rang the Russian visa services to confirm that we did not need to register our visas due to not having stopped anywhere for more than seven days.

We never ceased to be amazed by how much people wanted to help us, from Vladivostok to Almaty and beyond. They help make the trip.

Some trip stats (I'll add Mike's when he gets home)

Miles - 15041 (24065 kilometres), the world now seems smaller than ever before.
Breakdowns - 4
Punctures - 0

That's 2 major trips, totalling 40,000 miles that I have completed on this bike, puncture free.