We're in the UK

 Sitting in a tiny community named "Titchfield", just south of Southhampton, we arrived in the UK two days ago.

The journey was not without drama though, with our ferry from Calais being cancelled due to "Industrial action".  We received an SMS stating that we should proceed to Dunkirk, to be loaded onto a next available service.

That would have been OK, if we were in a motorised vehicle.  But not so easy on a tandem bike!

We were up at 4am and cycled 34km (21 miles) to make the ferry, and when on the UK side of the channel cycled another 100km to make it to Eastbourne.

Before all that, we enjoyed our last few days with friend in Mol, Belgium, before cycling west and across to Calais in France.  Plenty of cycling, but no real walking training of substance.

Sharon's feet are now good enough to hopefully pose no problems for final Parish walk training, or indeed for the event itself.  But we're not doing much committed walking as the cycling is tough right now.  Our bike Happier, due for major starting in three days time, is hard to ride.  All sorts of issues that I won't go into now.

The strong head winds are tough too, and so we are just trying to recover each day and avoid too much fatigue and soreness.  Adding fast walking right now would be counterproductive.

We do hope to do a couple of longer and faster walks in Bridgwater when Happier is being rebuilt though.  We are looking forward to that, and about everything to do with the Isle of Man now.

A few days ago, we also crossed 40,000km of cycling for the journey.  About 25,000 miles.  That was worth celebrating.