Nick Heathcote wrote regularly on 606 as his brother Alistair prepared to go for gold in Great Britain's rowing eight. After the eight won silver, Nick handed over to Alistair himself for the final entry, but he has taken a week to get around to it.

Nick asked me to write the last entry of the blog a while ago and, through no fault of my own I have only just got round to doing it.

What with the post-racing celebrations and the consequential chest infection and temperature/fever my mind has been somewhat addled. Thankfully my memory is still intact.

My shoulder is not, however, after I decided that a perfect way to end a heavy night’s drinking was a big mac and beach weights at 6.30 in the morning.

Whether is was having watched the weightlifting on TV or being unable to see the numbers on the weight discs I was a little ambitious and my gutteral alpha male roar as I lifted turned into a girly whimper as weights fell, in turn, off either side of the bar.

Having the bar taken off me and being told to come back later dented my pride somewhat so I returned to my flat smelling of big mac sauce ready to tell my crew-mates how I fought off some triads and sustained injury from multiple nunchuk blows.

So here I am, fully recovered from fever and able to think straight preparing myself for the last two nights of Olympic mayhem. I say mayhem because it is the only way I can describe this place.

There is no other environment or situation like it on earth - thousands of athletes finishing what has been the most arduous physical experience of their lives and all they want to do is party.

And as they have all been off the booze for months it is like herding 10,000 14-year-old girls into a pen, giving them unlimited amounts of ‘WKD’ and telling them to make sure they drink it all or they won't be given their vodka.

I can only compare the social experience to those first halcyon weeks at the start of university (and there I was thinking that at 31 I would never experience the like again).

Go to the Bud bar and you are announced over the loudspeaker system and ushered into the poolside bar and plugged into an unlimited free supply of Budweiser.

Go to the Heineken House and it’s just the same but the people are more beautiful.

My favourite, and I’m not just being patriotic, is the London House, not just because you aren’t surrounded by Americans shouting ‘Keg! Keg! Keg!’ but because they have captured the classic ex-pat feel to being in a foreign country.

Vast quantities of gin and tonic are served (clearly to keep the malaria at bay), the BBQ is top notch and you might just catch a flash of blonde locks heralding the presence of Boris Johnson giving you the perfect opportunity to demand, in a gin fuelled rage, a reimbursement of your parking fines over the last 15 years and the passing of a law making bowler hats obligatory to city folk.

I am rambling now and I think the paracetamol/absinthe combination that has kept my fever at bay and made me blissfully unaware of the foul miasma emanating from Rick Egington’s bottom is wearing off.

I will be serious for a moment to tell you that the real purpose of me writing this last part of the blog is to thank all those supporters in Britain for all their kind words and praise.

From an athlete’s point of view, the knowledge that the heart of the nation is behind you makes the job we had to do so much easier.

For the past year or two I had seen the Olympics as a personal goal and, as selfish as it may sound, I was doing it for myself and no one else.

As the Olympics grew nearer I began to realise that this was a lot bigger than I had thought.

The enormous amount of support was overwhelming and, by the time I started the racing - as cheesy as this may sound - I was no longer doing this for myself but for everyone.

I’d like to mention one last thing before I go. I live in the UK and like everyone else, I get thoroughly annoyed with the traffic jams, the congestion charge, the nanny state culture, the blame culture, knife crime etc etc.

However, for me the Olympic experience has changed me in one fundamental way (and I hope it has ever so slightly changed the opinions of those back home).

Competing not just in one discipline but as part of a country’s efforts against the world has made me proud to be British.

Nick – I’ll see you at home. Thanks for everything, couldn’t have done it without you!