Our Grand Tour of Europe

This is just a quick update to let everyone know that the Wood family successfully completed the Coast to Coast walk late Tuesday afternoon! 190 miles across England, including almost 20 miles on the last day! We arrived at Robin Hood's Bay about 5:15 pm and made the traditional trek down to the sea to dip our toes in the water and toss in the rocks we had carried all the way from St. Bees.

After last year's heat wave, England has been hit this summer with rain and even floods in some places... we saw our share of bad weather and sometimes our trail turned into a stream, but we also had some beautiful sunny days... especially while we crossed the North York Moors. We thoroughly enjoyed the entire experience. What a beautiful country England is! We met so many wonderful people too-- there was a true camaraderie among people on the walk. We had 16 friends who finished the walk on the same day we did.

Kelly did really well on the walk... she actually led the way on our most aggressive day on the Moors. After a difficult beginning, we all got stronger and more confident as the walk progressed. We ate hearty English meals in the pubs each night, but we're all more fit and trim than we've been in years.

After almost 11 weeks in the UK, we took the overnight ferry from Hull, England to Zeebrugge, Belgium on Wednesday. We have two days in Brugge (beautiful place!!!) and travel to Paris tomorrow. That marks the beginning of our 7-1/2 month stay in France.

Sometime in the next few weeks I?ll post an update to my blog with an overview of our C2C experience. It was truly a peak life experience.