In terms of weather, they’ve had the worst summer in nearly 140 years here in Paris, which is perhaps why Britain’s Paralympians felt so at home.
Once again, they outperformed their expectations as the fashionable colours of the season have been gold, silver, and bronze for their red, white, and blue.
They won 124 medals – exactly the same as Tokyo three years ago – but eight more golds, 49 across the 11 days of competition.
Charlotte Henshaw and Laura Sugar added the final golds, in the KL2 and KL3 women’s kayak respectively. Both set Paralympic records, in a fitting end to a golden Games for ParalympicsGB.
While some nations have trained a laser-like focus on just a handful of sports, Britain’s strength remains their range, medals were won in 18 of the 19 events they contested and 117 athletes in the 215-strong squad are heading back on the Eurostar with something to declare.
Encouragingly it wasn’t just the established faces that delivered either, those who blazed into public consciousness at London 2012 and aren’t quitting yet.
Of the 81 Games newcomers, 37 made the podium, with teenage swimmer Poppy Maskill the most successful with three golds and two silvers.
Maskill, 19, carried the British flag at the closing ceremony at the Stade de France, the first team member with an intellectual impairment to have that honour.
After their events, all athletes are obliged to pass through an area known as the mixed zone, where media can ask questions.
You could sense Maskill was utterly dreading the prospect after she won Britain’s first gold of the Games 11 days ago, her answers polite but short, the experience one she clearly didn’t relish.
Five medals later, she was slowly becoming more accustomed to the glare of attention and, it seems, starting to even enjoy it. Success at these Games can’t always be measured just in medals.
In total this team was funded with £68m of National Lottery money, while prime minister Keir Starmer has also promised to look at a significant funding shortfall at UK Sport.
Cold hard cash is the rocket fuel in the team, with Alfie Hewett and Gordon Reid bringing up the 300th gold since the National Lottery became the game changer at the Games.
But perhaps it might just be better for the Paralympic movement for Britain to not be quite so successful in the future.
How the country has valued and embraced these Games should be a source of satisfaction, but it’s time the rest of the world follow their lead.
There are small signs this could be a high watermark performance, 86 nations medalled here, just one more than Tokyo.
However, events did seem more competitive and medals harder to come by, with fewer world records across the fortnight.
“More nations are waking up to the opportunity that Paralympic sports present,” said UK Sport’s performance chief Dr Kate Baker.
“The competition is fiercer than it’s ever been, and the margins have never been finer. If we end up with few medals in the future, we’ll have to reflect on that.”
