07:14. We've just touched down in London

Boat down the ayerwaddy at the end of the ride

Day Seven: It's a wrap

So in total we had conquered 336km of Myanmar's dust tracks and roads, hills, traffic, pot holes, puddles, sun and rain. An awesome achievement especially given the weather conditions, so completely unexpected thanks to a stubborn storm out in the  bay of Bengal.

We boarded the bus at 0615, and drove the surprisingly long way to Mandalay Airport. Wallace and 99 gave us a characteristically euphoric farewell, we checked in our bags and waited to board our little flight back to Yangon.

A quick and comfortable journey ended at the mayhem of Yangon International Airport. Our bus - the Highland Express, just for Jim - awaiting us and battled its way to the Hosanna Children's Home through the traffic. A little help was required to find the correct turning off Route 3 but we arrived at 1200, to be greeted by the children all standing in high order clapping us into the yard at the home.

And also to be greeted unexpectedly by the guiding light of Hope Asia and the inspiration to the charity, Crispin Fairbairn. What a super surprise. We admired the new Ben White education centre, built with the funds of previous rides and dedicated to the memory of Crispin's great friend and original found of Hope Asia who passed away the year.

The home had laid on a simple but satisfying lunch and after a tour of the classrooms and the dormitories we went upstairs where all the children were sitting in neat rows. Pastor Va asked them to introduce themselves one by one telling us their age and year group. Their shyness diminished proportionately to their age and was completely dispelled as they launched into two joyous happy songs.

I have been privileged to visit the Hope Asia homes on three occasions. I am always struck by the happiness and healthiness of the children, and sharing a couple of hours with them is always so very special. It never fails to bring an enormous lump to my throat to consider what challenges what they would face if the coil not grow up in this loving environment.

After balloons were batted between us, drawings drawn, Lego built and doughnuts eaten our time was sadly over, and we heading back to our bus and the airport, for the 3 hour leg to Singapore, and then the 13 hours back to London.

In Singapore Fritz lead our little band like like the Pied Piper of Hamelin to collect our $40 transit vouchers, sufficient to variously fund a trip to the lounge, a Burger King (french fries....yee haa!), perfume shopping....

And now I sit wedged into 58B on this Singapore Airlines 777 with bearly two hours still to run, and a breakfast of baked eggs about to be served.

Shortly we will all go our separate ways, back to our normal lives. Each of us will undoubtedly been enriched in some way by the many experiences we have had in such a very short period of time.

Jim, our Global Adventure Challenge guide , has done a wonderful job keeping us going. I am deeply touched by his donation of his tip from us all to the Children's Home.

This for me epitomises the generosity of all of our many donors, who we must thank. At our final dinner there were was a team pledge to try to hit the team figure of £45,000, and if we can do so in the next few weeks that would be truly astonishing.

By way of signing off I would like to thank the 18 brave souls who accepted this challenge.  Agreeing to join this ride, for some over a year ago, marked the start of a huge journey of training, fundraising, planning and juggling home and travel arrangements and life events and ending today at a foggy Heathrow Terminal 2. Taking part is no mean feat, and I'm sure we all return home deeply contented, if perhaps a little sore in few places.

Crispin sent me a message as we drove away from the children's home. I can't say it any better:

Congratulations on [all] doing such an awesome job with the trip.
How fantastic to get to the end of the trip and know everyone was safe and had a great time and raised enough money to change lives!
It doesn't get much better!

Final celebration dinner....

..has been had. Medals awarded and speeches said. Job almost done.

And tomorrow we see the wonderful children for whom this has all been about...

Day Six - What a wash out: 21kms cycled

The Emerald Land Hotel is one of those establishments that you expect to find described in dog eared editions of Let's Go as a 'comfortable place to stay, possibly past its best'.
Somehow nothing here looked quite as inviting as it might. But for all its faded glory the offer of fresh cooked eggs in the dining hall was a good start for the day.

So it was a leisurely start for us all (relatively speaking), only needing to be on the bus at 8am, to travel out of town to the lock-up where our bikes had been stored over night so we would avoid negotiating the madness of the Mandalay traffic.

En route the threatening skies opened, dumping vast amounts of incessant rain at tropical force. Incredulous looks all around as Jim asked us to leave the bus. We ran the 100 yards to the sanctuary of the warehouse getting drenched in the process. We admired the lock-up for as long as we could. Longman's bedding in the corner suggesting that this was where he slept with his wife and baby who we also met.

With the rain showing no signs of abating we eventually set off. I guess once you are soaked you can't get any wetter.

It was an interesting ride nonetheless, through little backstreets with bustling businesses, although dodging the overflowing potholes meant that you had to keep a beady eye on the road ahead. 7km in and we stopped at the U Pain Bridge - the longest teak bridge in the world. I never thought I would say I was cold, but getting off the bikes to explore the bridge sapped any warmth we had worked up on the short cycle.
Today was to be a day of executive decisions. Jim and I quickly agreed to ditch the idea of cycling on a local island given that we'd had enough of impenetrable quagmires on Monday, and so we rode on through the town, eventually heading onto a more major road out of town.

Sadly this was not much fun. Although flat, the continuing rain made for a challenging ride, as we vied for road space between the ever growing puddles with lorries, cars and scooters.

Time for another executive decision: we'd carry on for another 5km and then stop for lunch, and at that point call it a day on the cycling. While this would leave us some 35km short of our target, it was unanimous and popular decision. Our last few kms did present us with a couple of hills and were not without drama: half way up the penultimate him yours truly suffered the saddlebolt shearing, in a replay of the same event in Cambodia. Happily I avoided impaling myself on the seat pillar, and leapt on Wallace's bike to complete the ride.

Still damp, and requesting the fans be turned off as a result, we felt triumphant as we sat down to a  lunch that started with delicious spring rolls. They didn't last long!

As we finished eating, the drivers and mechanics floored us all by presenting back the tip of $200 dollars we had collected for them.

They wanted us to add it to the fundraising for the children back in Yangon. When you consider the tip probably makes up a significant percentage of their pay for looking after us so well over the week, the magnitude of the generosity of this move was a bit overwhelming.

We lined up for a joyous team photo,

and then stripped the bikes of all the accessories with had lovingly fixed onto them in Bagan on Monday. Mudded and travel worn, many of us were happy to donate them to Wallace for the benefit of locals.

Inevitably the rain stopped at the point, but in the bus the smell of damp cyclists and cycle outfits was something special! Heads nodded as we drove along a beautiful stretch along the river bank to the Mingun Pahtodawgyi, a huge brick structure built by King Bodawpaya in 1790. But I'm not completely sure as the slight air of delirium that was settling over the whole team made it almost impossible to understand 99's explanation as to why it was never completed, despite his very best and persistent efforts.

Equally persistent were the souvenir sellers, who managed a brisk trade in longyis and hats.

In actual fact the temple , that promised so much delivered very little, but the second largest bell  in the world (a very proud boast repeated many times), weighing in at at 90,000 kgs, was quite a sight.

We strolled to the waters edge and boarded our boat by narrow plank. Happily no mishaps or unexpected swims and we easily settled down into comfy cane seats for a very pleasant cruise downhill the river.

At the hotel we had a couple of hours to put wet clothes into plastic bags for the journey ahead, trying to avoid as much cross-contamination with the last dry clothes as possible.

At 19:30 we boarded our faithful bus to Ko's Kitchen, a trendy looking Thai restaurant.  for our celebration meal. So trendy it had one of those kitchen you could look into and witness the full experience of the flaming pans!

Sam chose a Robbie Williams theme to thank Wallace and 99, and we all received our well deserved medals. A happy team boarded to bus back to the hotel for a final celebratory beer.

One could say the evening had gone off with a bang, but not as big as the exploding bottle of Myanmar beer that went off in Emma's lap. That seemed to be a good cue to go to bed and get as much sleep as possible before the long slog home and the trip to the orphanage.

Well, not quite all went to bed. 'Uncle' Wallace and the two boys were still enjoying the pool. Olympic freestyle snorkeling another of his many talents!

Day Five: The Big One! 101kms cycled

We bought our bags down for breakfast at 7am. Not, Jim stressed, him getting soft on us.  Just the earliest the hotel would serve us.

There was an air of excitement in the builders' yard as all the hotel staff came out to cheer us on way and our 8am departure.

We cycled out through the bustle of the town as it set about it's day. Mopeds swarmed around us, children ran to school, the lock ups on the roadside started to open their shutters.

First stop was 23 miles in. Terrain today all tarmac, but the gradient was a steady climb that went on for miles and miles. Once again the overcast weather spared us from the worst of the sun.

Four days in and the joints were starting to creak, the pain on the hills feeling harder to overcome, as one learned to respect the biker's silence as we each deploy our own motivation techniques.

The snack stops are unanimously a motivation, and our next stop was 43kms in but followed by threats of a big 5km hill. Perhaps we have got used to hills, but this one almost passed us by, so the lunch stop at 65km came sooner than we realised.

The food was wonderful. A little local restaurant who had never catered for tourists, and certainly not tourists who smelt like us, and looked like us with our colourful cycle garb, figure hugging Lycra (yoikes!!) and helmet. Lovely vegetables including a spicy pumpkin dish, chicken curry, a cauliflower dish. All delicious.

Peter's hallucinations are getting worse. He seemed convinced that his can of Sunkist was a gin and tonic. The tropical heat does funny things to the mind!

In Myanmar most of the women and children wear thanaka - a yellowish-white cosmetic paste made from ground bark. It is a distinctive feature of the culture of Myanmar, seen commonly applied to the face and sometimes the arms of women and girls. Four female generations of the family running the restaurant took great delight in marking up our female contingent.

And after a good lunch there's nothing better than a gentle cruise downhill for about 23 kms, which is just what we got.

More water at 86km and we started the final push into Mandalay riding single file with arms and index fingers aloft, dodging the traffic. We then regrouped for a surreal 10km cycling on the equivalent of the hard shoulder of the M25; the main dual carriageway into Mandalay. But we clocked 101km just as we reached the illuminated ''welcome to Mandalay'  sign.

Mandalay, the second-largest city and the last royal capital of Myanmar  with a population of 1.2m,  is the most developed I have seen in Myanmar with swish hotels, Ford Motor dealers and a beautiful old palace facing the river.

We invaded a small cycle shop to triple their monthly takings to buy lurid green Mandalay cycle tops and then appropriately enough checked into the Emerald Land Inn.

Dinner at a local restaurant washed down with the local beer, and the pleasing news of a lie- in tomorrow... On the bus at 8am for our final day of cycling.

Day Four: The Path to Nirvana...... 81kms cycled

We all awoke to the sounds of the jungle in our spacious comfortable lodges and headed to breakfast. What a treat to find freshly made omelettes on offer. And most importantly the first chance to celebrate Bithja's birthday with a rousing Happy Birthday.

This morning our initial mode of transport was the bus: a chance to hear the brakes on the bus labouring down the steep roadway that we laboured up yesterday afternoon. We continued down winding roads the the temple of Mount Popa that dominates the entire point perched atop the sheer-sided volcanic plug.

The streets were lined with souvenir shops selling 'i love mount popa' t-shirts. Mass tourism Myanmar style still has a long way to go. And that became all the more evident as we started the climb up the 900+ steps to the top .

As you enter you can't help noticing the monkeys lining the stairway as you enter, and they line pretty much one's complete ascent of 657 metres. 

Clearly the path to Nirvana is lined with monkey s**t! And there's something deeply uncomfortable walking/wading through it with bare feet. The views at the summit were almost worth the unpleasantness!

Back on the bus and hotel to quickly scrub our feet (a few times), grab our belongings and get on our bikes, our legs already warmed up from the steps.

Just as yesterday was uphill, today was almost exclusively downhill. And as a result we made great progress quickly. We reached our first snack stop after 23 miles, almost before breaking a sweat. The snack stops are always a welcome rest, with Wallace and his team laying on Coke, 100plus, biscuits, crisps, watermelon, bananas: even coffee.

We were warned that we were now entering snake alley, with vipers likely in the undergrowth at the side of the road. Going to the loo won't be an activity for the faint of heart!

We watched a herd of goats negotiate a path through our resting bikes, with the goat herd carrying a kid that looked as if it could only have just been born and the mother leading the mother my the ear.

We pushed on enjoying the cloud cover that sheltered us from the sun's worst impact.

60 kms in and we were treated to a special picnic lunch: avocado and mandarin salad, tea leaf salad with pumpkin seeds, eggplant salad, garlic potato salad and smiled butter fish. All prepared by the fair hands of our multi talented crew.

The final 26km saw the road getting increasingly busy as we cycled past a number of factories and machining plants and we entered the town of Myingyan. We finally arrived at the Kaung Kaung hotel, after an enforced single file policy to negotiate the town.

Once we were reunited with Jim, we started to sing Happy Birthday for the second time, at which point the hotel staff came out with an enormous birthday cake for Bithja. An impromptu birthday celebration continued with the 'road crew' now transformed into boy band, and singing a local song.

The hotel was new. So new in fact that one sensed that the builders had moved out that afternoon, DIY SOS style. Quite a bit of snagging still needed to be sorted. We sat in the courtyard bar amongst the sand piles. But it didn't make the beer any less good.

I suspect the builders' sons had been called into to help with the waiting for dinner. You certainly sensed they hadn't done it before. But the food was good, and the booming acoustic amplified our chatter full of tails of the exploits of our three days cycle that have clocked us to just over 200km and in expectation of the big 100km that awaits tomorrow