I ride west along the E17 Ghent bypass, destined for France, my speed is unusually slow, 15mph below the legal limit, and I sense a different feeling from what I’ve experienced over the last eight days with Ray and Ken.

As they head east towards Holland, and the ferry at Ijmuiden, I’m still hanging onto them, that reluctance to let go of the good times we had together. Yes this feeling returns, the great times which are now past we have to let go of, because they’re past. We can enjoy the memories, of which I laugh at many, but to hold back any emotion I jolt myself to look forward and think of my beautiful family, who I will see in Brittany tomorrow. 

In my my mind I reluctantly let go of Ray and Ken, hoping that they will find an untroubled way back to the ferry port, but something just niggles away at me. 

I choose the easy route out of Belgium and take the motorway, I’m not under any time pressure, so after crossing the border into France I reprogram my satnav to avoid motorways. After one and a half hours rummaging through the backwaters of western Belgium, yes the satnav took me back there, I decided to pay the peage in an effort to get west of Rouen for the night. 

So now you’re pretty much up to date, with the exception of everything that happened from 31st July.

I can’t, and I’m sure you’d prefer I didn’t, give you a detailed account of all that’s happened during our Western Front Way trip, so here’s some photos with a brief resumé.

These are just a snapshot of our WFW trip, the social photos will follow….