All done:

Finally arriving in St Tropez, the last day was a short ride - with predictable hills thrown in: we've come to expect those!

826 miles, 39823 feet of climb, seven cyclists, 3 helpers, myriad memories and tales. Fun from the moment we left to the end - greeted by a welcome group of friends and family and a truly earned food and drink blow out.

Casualties? The BMW remains lonely in a delership in St Etienne - visited just once by Alan Bretherton a he picked up the missing passports and directed the garage to the white envelope cloaked in a shroud of invisibilty in the glovebox (the garage resolutely refuse to inspect the vehicle without the documentation).

Weary limbs from over a quarter of a million pedal revolutions and 60 hours saddle time.

The Somme, the Seine, Loire, Ardeche and Rhone all followed - the Massif Central, Alpes Maritime and countless other hills complete, and still smiling.

Bretherton, Brookes and Margaret Oakley also made a huge contribution to the ride - tirelessly shepherding, caring and pointing the team.

Eales - birthday boy and sometime hedgehog whisperer; Brown - rarely lifting his eyes from the Garmin Navigator, strangely dressed in a pale green suit aquiring the nickname 'Ho Ho Ho Ho - Green Giant'!; Oakley - unfeasibly afraid of heights yet driving hard up every climb, avoiding swooping birds of prey stalking his hairpiece; Pagliaro - hoisting his shorts to Borat mankini tribute and not at all looking gay in the process, his mapreading trumping conflicting garmin data; Cocksedge - like a Duracell bunny maintaining speed and rhythm whether up or downhill; Saenger - completing his grasp of Anglo saxon idiom and dialect, including the subtext of flatulence; McNulty - modsty prevents me advising you of his amazing compendium knowledge of the works of Monkhouse, Cryer and Allen - tirelessly leading the spirits of the team to ascent.

Breteherton - rapidly coming to first name terms with the AA and Mondial assistance teams, cooly dealing with frustrating manana timescales; Brookes - one man car scrappage scheme with unending good humour (though heavy eyelids often told of mounting Armagnac dependence); Margaret Oakley - our Mother Theresa and conscience, somehow surviving 9 days of wind, toilet humour and Brookesey's driving.

Full report of the ride yet to be collated from so many memories, we can all say 'Chapeau, J'y etais!'.