At 1.15 pm on 19th September I crossed the shipping lane outside Felixstowe and the track I had made when I left on 8th May. There was a feeling of great satisfaction in having circumnavigated the British Isles, sadly with the exception of Shetland and Fair Isle. I could look at the map and in my mind's eye visualise every section of the coastline.

Returning home, everything was perfectly normal. My son was in A & E with a rugby injury, my daughter was at some party or other and I was told off for unpacking on the kitchen floor. Homecoming can be a bit odd for all concerned after a long absence. I'd been living a completely different life and my family had got fully used to having the house to themselves. All of a sudden there was an additional (large) person cluttering the place up. New routines had evolved while I'd been away and it takes a while to become part of them. Conversely, I had many stories to tell but nobody wants to hear them all at once. They have to trickle out. But we'd done this before when I used to work abroad for long periods and it all went smoothly even if it did take me several days to get through the pile of post.

Then it was back to work to discover whether I could remember how to investigate fires and to catch up on all the cases I'd left in the care of colleagues.

There was a certain pattern to the questions I met.

Did I have a good time? Yes, I enjoyed every minute and rather to my surprise wasn't lonely or miserable once

Had the ground stopped moving yet? When you first come ashore after a long time at sea it feels as if the land is moving, particularly when you sit down in a small room (yes that's right!). But it goes away after a few hours.

Then most people can contain themselves no longer and cut straight to the chase:

Did you have any nasty moments?

I'm sure that even if people don't say this then they're thinking it and it seems to be code for, 'How many times did you nearly die?'. I'm sorry, but the answer is 'Not once'. There were three occasions when I narrowly escaped damage to Snow Goose and numerous occasions on which things did not happen quite, or indeed at all, the way I'd planned. I was apprehensive and on edge for some of the time but never truly scared.

If I had to pick one aspect that is difficult to adjust to, it's the relief from that feeling of constant slight tension. On a boat, one seems to exist in one of only two states; waiting for something to go wrong and coping with it when it does. The complete release from that tension takes a little getting used to. Another thing is the relaxation from the constant awareness of what the weather and tides are doing. After four months of having my life dominated by the forthcoming weather, it's odd to have it suddenly relegated to no importance at all.

Some holidays disappear once you return home almost as if they'd never happened. I'm pleased to say that this one hasn't. I think partly because it was so long, but also because I was living such a completely different life. If I ever begin to forget that I did it then my screensaver reminds me. It's a pleasant distraction when the train stops yet again on the Circle Line to close my eyes and remember what it was like in the fresh winds and tumbling seas off Achill Head.

And catching up with work? It's really been no struggle at all. This seems to have got it out of my system, at least for a bit. I have no great plans or yearnings to set off again immediately, just a new and slightly more relaxed outlook on life. Just before I left, I wrote to a client giving my opinion and highlighting the work I still wanted to do. I left the file in the hands of a colleague and took it back the day I returned to work. Two days later I received a letter from the client apologising for the delay in his reply and authorising the further work. Four months isn't really that long!