Well this is the post I have been looking forward to writing for months. This time tomorrow I will be sat at the airport waiting to fly back to the UK! This post will be slightly different as there is not really going to be any of my usual spiritual ramblings in it, as I am currently doing my hand over to my relief so time is short.
The past week has been another week of ups and downs; there have been a lot of problems with flights, which of course is very stressful when all you want to do is get home. At first we were due home on an RAF flight, which is an epic journey. It is not rare to spend over 30 hours trying to get home that way. Which when you hate flying as much as I do is a nightmare. Then we were told there was no space on the weekend RAF flight so we would have to leave the ship and stay at the military airport until the mid week flight; not a good thing to be told! But then there was no space on the mid week flight, so we were told they were looking into civilian flights. After being told we were booked on flights twice only to find out we actually were not I was not really a happy chap. But then finally we got our flight conformation and it was certain we were booked onto a civilian flight straight home. Believe me that is such a good feeling!
I also had an e mail this week which confirmed I had a place to run next years London Marathon for The Salvation Army. I was really happy about this, although it does mean to do a 6 month training plan I have to start training on Monday! Oh well may as well get straight back to the UK and hit the ground running!
Looking back over this trip it seems like this has been the longest 5 months of my life. I really have not enjoyed this trip. There are a few reasons of this, my heart is not really in the Navy anymore, I used to love going to sea, but this trip I just did not want to be away. The trip itself has also been quite bad, usually you have some good port stops to look forward to and break the trip up. But this trip we have only really had one good stop.
This trip has been so hard for me, I have never ever struggled with being away before, and I have always loved it. But there have been times this trip where I was ready to jump off the side of the ship, swim to shore and then get a flight home. But then anyone who read my triathlon post will know I would not have got very far in the swim!
I really have enjoyed writing this blog over the past few months. I was not sure if anyone would actually be interested in anything I had to say! But nearly 2000 people have read this blog and some weeks over 100 people read the posts. That's way more than I ever imagined. Thank you to everyone who has read it and even more to the people who have been coming back every week! I also need to say a big thank you to my Girlfriend, as due to the ships rubbish internet I cannot actually get onto blogspot, so each week I have e mailed here my posts and she has taken the time to upload them for me.
I was only going to do this blog for the trip, but I feel there has been such interest in it I will carry it on when I get back to the UK. So hopefully I will speak to you all again next week when I am back in the UK! (It feels so good to say that!)
The Sailing Salvationist
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