I didn’t sleep very well on my final night in Vienna, and on the 4th September was up early to get the train. After saying a quick goodbye to Sue, I thought I had plenty of time to reach the station, but only just made it in time to get my ticket. There was a queue jumper in the line which made me think I was back in China rather than in supposedly disciplined Austria!

There was just time to grab a quick bite to eat before getting on the train. Needless to say the route went through Linz yet again, but unlike the previous 2 occasions I was not obliged to change trains there.

The train wasn’t at all busy, but there were a several backpackers and I got talking to a few people, including an American who was about to start studying German in Berlin. He couldn’t comprehend the magnitude of the journey that I was finishing, and kept asking me the same questions as though he figured he might trick me into admitting that I’d actually just gone to Vienna for a long weekend.

After snoozing rather a lot I woke up in the afternoon to find myself in the Rhein Gorge and before long the train reached Köln near the Belgian border. Here I had to change trains to get a “boat train” – one that would connect with a cross channel ferry from the Belgian port of Oostende.

I had a couple of hours before getting the train so went to visit Köln cathedral – this is one of very few old buildings left in the city centre, since so much was destroyed by the allies during World War 2. Apparently attempts were made by the RAF and American aircrews to avoid destroying the cathedral, but it has many scars still. While wandering round I managed to tune my little radio to the BBC’s domestic service on long-wave (Radio 4) which brought it home how close I was to the end of the trip.

A couple of hours after the boat train left Köln, I was at the channel port of Oostende. The ferry departure time (and ferry) were still some way off, so I sat in a corner of the terminal and had a snooze. Finally, a little after midnight, it was time to board the ferry, in order to leave the mainland of Eurasia for the first time since entering China.

Not so long ago, crossing back to England on a cross channel ferry, I had met an unassuming guy who was at the end of a round-the-world trip. He had been carrying just a medium sized backpack, just like I had with me now. He’d said he had managed to lose all his films, from the whole trip, in Moscow at the Bolshoi Theatre. I smiled to myself. Most of my films were safely at my sister’s house… and I had a rather different Moscow story to share.

I snoozed a little on the ferry, but just before it got light I wandered up on deck knowing that I should be able to see the lightships and lighthouses that I had watched from my bedroom window while growing up in Broadstairs. I peered out, and there they were, away to the north – the familiar flashes of the East Goodwin and South Goodwin lightships, and away in the distance the North Foreland lighthouse which was just a couple of km from my birthplace.

The eastern horizon was starting to glow but I headed inside for another snooze, peering through the window at one point to see the White Cliffs of Dover come into view, with the pale dot of the South Foreland lighthouse just visible.

The next time I awoke, the ferry had already docked in Dover. I was still half asleep as I went through immigration and had my passport checked for the very last time. I soon found myself on a train towards Folkestone, a few km along the coast. I alighted at Cheriton where my father’s side of the family is from, and once it was 8 am I rang my aunt and she (very enthusiastically) invited me for breakfast.

This was a wonderful way to arrive in the UK, but it all felt very strange…

The sensation I had was that the UK was just another country that I had reached on my travels. The fact that this was the country where the trip would stop hadn’t even begun to sink in, and this despite the fact that I was having breakfast with my aunt in a very familiar setting. I had been on the road for so long… the idea that I would stop was still incomprehensible.

I was given a ride to the station, and by midday I was on the train from London northward towards Bedfordshire. My mind started drifting back to 10 months ago, when I had nervously walked from my sister’s house to the station, and caught the same train south, uncertain of what on earth I was letting myself in for…

And now, all too soon, I would be ringing my sister’s doorbell.

As the train headed north I closed my eyes and started replaying the whole trip in my mind, country by country……………..

Direct link: YouTube Video

Embedded:

Significance of the music in the video:

1. Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (Debussy) – one of the pieces my sister played with her orchestra in Houston the day before I headed into Mexico.

2. Chorando se Foi (Kaoma) – a popular international hit in 1990.

3. El la Engañó (Natusha) – played ad nauseum in all the buses in Ecuador in late 1990.

4. Alturas (Traditional by Inti Illimani) – from the soundtrack of the the natural history series “Flight of the Condor” by BBC.

5. A Media Luz (Donato) – tango after which the tango club I went to was named.

6. Bamboleo (Gipsy Kings) – 1991 hit I first heard in Australia

7. Gamelan Music (traditional) – typical of Bali, Indonesia, as heard live there.

8. Imagine (Lennon) – used at the end of the film The Killing Fields, about the Cambodian genocide, and the spirit to survive.

9. Traditional Chinese Music

10. Lilliburlero – BBC World Service theme.

11. Wind of Change (Scorpions) – a big international hit in summer 1991 after the failed Soviet coup – an anthem for the end of the Cold War.

12. Spanish Ladies (Traditional) – a sea shanty, associated with sailors returning (somewhat reluctantly) to Britain from foreign waters.

Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish Ladies
Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain;
For we're under orders for to sail for old England
And we may never see you fair ladies again
 
[Chorus]
We will rant and we'll roar like true British sailors
We'll range and we'll roam all on the salt seas
Until we strike soundings in the channel of old England;
From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues
 
We hove our ship to with the wind from sou'west, boys
We hove our ship to, deep soundings to take;
'Twas forty-five fathoms, with a white sandy bottom
So we squared our main yard and up channel did make
 
The first land we sighted was calléd the Dodman
Next Rame Head off Plymouth, Start, Portland and Wight;
We sailed by Beachy, by Fairlight and Dover
And then we bore up for the South Foreland light
 
Then the signal was made for the grand fleet to anchor
And all in the Downs that night for to lie;
Let go your shank painter, let go your cat stopper
Haul up your clewgarnets, let tacks and sheets fly!
 
Now let ev'ry man drink off his full bumper
And let ev'ry man drink off his full glass;
We'll drink and be jolly and drown melancholy
And here's to the health of each true-hearted lass

AND FINALLY – The Out-take (Blooper) Reel!

Direct link: YouTube Video