The end of part one

It is our last day in mainland Europe. The skies are grey, and getting darker with every kilometre. The wind is fierce, shaking the camper van as we struggle up the hills of the A16 en route to Boulogne, then tomorrow morning, Calais and the Channel Tunnel.
And yes, it has started raining. Altogether a miserable day and not just because of the weather.
I don’t want to stop driving, or to be more precise; I don’t want Nigel to stop driving. I want to explore every nook and cranny of France, visit every Greek island, and eat in as many Italian restaurants as my waistline and bank balance will allow. To say nothing of spending more time in Serbia, exploring Croatia and finding out if the Black Sea coast is a beautiful as the brochures say it is.
Europe is a treasure trove of exciting food and drink, gorgeous land and seascapes, and fascinating people, all shapes, sizes, religions and allegiances. I had not fully realised until now what an interesting continent we belong to, nor just how our fully our future, and our past, is intertwined.
There were many highlights.
We ate most the amazing fish soup in a century-old fish restaurant in the outskirts of Belgrade. It was the very essence of the sea, garnished with the freshest of herbs, served in a small copper tureen that looked as old as restaurant.
We savoured our first, and last, glimpse this year of the Acropolis as we meandered down Ermou Street in Athens.
We were astounded by the scale of Amiens Cathedral, which is twice the size of Notre Dame, to say nothing of the technical genius that built this most powerful of monuments.
We fell asleep to the sound of birds, and woke to the sound of birds.
We drove through the Alpine clouds, tasted champagne at 10.30 in the morning with a bunch of Belgians, danced in the streets of Belgrade during Eurovision, lit candles in Bulgaria’s Rila Monastery, got lost in Budapest and shared showers with total strangers, usually doughty Germans.
We drank beer in the same Hamburg street the Beatles started their career, relished the first sip of cold, cold Retsina, delighted in finding a bottle of Samos Muscat in a French supermarket. 

And I read, for the first time, James Ellroy’s amazing novel The Cold Six Thousand and for the second time, Andrew Nicoll’s equally compelling book The Good Mayor.
There have been some bad moments too.
Damaging the camper wasn’t much fun, nor were the wet few days we spent in Bavaria while it was repaired, though we did taste the best chocolate of the trip during a visit to Neuburg.
Imagine handmade white chocolate, infused with champagne and studded with real rose petals. Sounds wonderful? It is even better than that.
Saying goodbye to our grandson Kyle at the end of our detour to Crete to see him on his summer holidays was painful, but we cheered up considerably when we found out his father, our Sean, had proposed to his partner, Kyle’s mother, Karen, a few days later, and that she had accepted.
And we have had a few cold, wet days, when we were forced to don our ugly plastic anoraks just to go for a pee. But once the camper van was battened down, the red wine flowing and the West Wing on the MacBook, even the sound of rain on the roof became a comforting part of the trip.
We are going to spend the next week in Brighton, and this weekend with my sister Wendy and her partner Steven. We will catch up on all the family gossip, bitch about Big Brother, drink too much champagne and gorge ourselves on food and kinship. Wendy and I may even do a little light shopping, for essentials of course.