You could feel it in the camp.

I don’t think they guys wanted to admit it but we were a little sad it was over. It was a horrible way to go out. I will miss it, going round France in a hope that England reach Euro 2016 glory. But alas, it is over.

We woke up making jokes about it. “It’s England, what do you expect?” Or Coatesy joked “Chay, please tell me it was a dream”. Sadly not my friend. It was not a dream. England did go out to Iceland.

For the second morning in a row we had a lovely breakfast at the hotel. The gent and who I assumed was his wife gave us croissants, baguettes, some weird Nutella thing, a yoghurt, a cake thing, juice, hot chocolate – the works. Hats off to him he did a great job. I wish him well.

The problem is now, that we had a full day ahead of us awaiting our flight at 9:55pm. We took the last flight available as it saved us £300 or so. To get home actually cost us £227 exactly.

Throughout the day we went to different bars just going to half a pints just to kill the time. Sometimes it’s horrible just waiting to go home, like the setting was beautiful and I couldn’t think of much better places to kill time in, but there was a sense of “I just wanna go home now”. Not because we wanted to, but because knowing we had to.

I believe the mood would’ve been better if we would’ve won last night. If we had a quarter final against France l set up for this coming Sunday, we would’ve been buzzing. Our Euro dream was over, and once we get home from Nice, so was our travels.

We took walks, we had food, we sipped our last beers, we chatted. All was left was to take our bags from the hotel then walk to the airport and await our flight. Our hotel manager even gave us a ice cream before we left for free. What a guy!

There was flight cancellations and delays due to the industrial strikes in France. To kick us while we were down we knew we would have to face delays. We were the last flight of the day from Nice airport. We were making regular contact with Sammy, Coatesy’s better half to update her on proceedings but it seemed she was getting information before we was.

We made conversation with some nice chaps for London and Eastbourne over the game last night. Many a humorous wrote and discussion on the silly odds to who will be next England manager. Emile Heskey at 100/1, seriously?

As news filtered though the flight departure time get later and later. And we finally set off three hours later than planned. Strikes. There was a callout for someone to refuel two airplanes – including ours because the guy on shift went home. The cabin crew were actually on standby before the flight to cover the original crew because of the long hours they have been working due to the strikes. It had been eventful I assure you.

I am writing on the plane as we speak to close this chapter. I am sitting in the middle with Trigg to my right and Coatesy to my left. They have been winding me up because I sneaked my bag in the plane despite being asked to put it with the rest of the big luggage. We all want to get home, I didn’t want to wait at baggage collection. They kept saying I was going to get in trouble and I would be the reason the flight would be delayed even further and people would be throwing shoes at me down the isle of the plane.

Luckily none of this happened.

All in all, I’ll do a summary of my thoughts on England and their performance in my final post but all in all…

This has been one of the greatest experiences of my life.

It is sad it finished so terribly, and lots of people will gaze upon this as a disaster, but I have had the best time. And my main highlights may not have been in the games. I still have Lens, and the 90th minute Daniel Sturridge winner. The feeling that gave us hope of winning, the pandemonium, the ecstasy, that came before the agony.

And no one can take that away from me.

Thank you France 2016. You have been a delight.