My journey got off to a bad start when a group of us were given the wrong directions to our section of the car deck on our ship. Speranza was right at the front of deck 4 and my late arrival held people up. How embarrassing,

The drive from Plymouth to London  can be summed up by this screenshot of Speranza's trip computer. Over five hours to cover less than 250 miles is a disgrace. My average speed was 40 by the time I made it to the M4, after encountering endless delays. It was stop/start driving all the time on the A roads from Plymouth and the M5. I managed to improve my average on the M4, despite a fair amount of stop/start and many miles of average speed monitored road works (with not a single worker visible at any point). 

The final run back home on UK soil is often the worst part of my continental jaunts, because our roads are so depressingly bad and overloaded by comparison with those of our continental neighbours. We used to have the excuse that we paid less tax than them. That's simply no longer true. Is it because their engineering skills or industriousness are superior? Perhaps so in Germany, but their roads aren't as good as France's. In my view it's entirely because of the ideological capture of our public services.

Whereas we pay public servants to be just that – servants – they decline these days to serve us. Rather than do a good job of public infrastructure works and their maintenance – a sort of blue collar, essential job in the national enterprise – they prefer to be our HR Department. They cajole, they threaten and above all they try to shape our thoughts and behaviours into conformity with their own.

They're neither rewarded for pleasing us nor fired for failing us. Their employment arrangements are Soviet in that sense. Unfortunately if you want the Soviet apparatchiks' opportunities for idleness, irresponsibility and superior benefits to the productive proles, you also need the Soviet discipline of the gulag and the firing squad – and ours don't have that. 

That said,  Speranza is back in her parking spot having brought me safely home. I thoroughly enjoyed my little adventure – even some of the unforeseen parts. I learned a lot about myself and at least one of my friends and I will certainly always remember where I was when I learned I am going to be a granddad! My final Track My Tour map (from which the above is a screen shot) is here. 

Without the late Mrs P. to edit me, I worry that I may over-share. If so, I am sorry, I hope that, despite that, you enjoyed riding along in imagination. Thank you.