Blighty Bound - Day Two, The Arrival

 (That's London City airport, not Heathrow, but you get the idea about a panoramic view of the city) 

I left you as I was peering out of the aircraft window over Ireland, so the next part of the trip was the descent into Heathrow Airport, after the obligatory stacking over Sussex for a while. The pilot had said that the cloud base was low, and we were yards from the airport before we could see the ground, so the weather had deprived us of the panoramic views of London as we approached the runway from the east. Ah well.

Heathrow Terminal 5 is pretty good as airport terminals go, apart from the little transit train that goes from Gates B and C to the arrivals area. It gets very crowded and there seems to be big gaps in the service. You can walk instead of taking the train, but it's quite a hike, so we crammed onto the transit carriage for the short trip. 

At the border, we went though the automated gates without an issue. We'd only just heard about the need for dual-nationals to have a British passport with them, so we travelled on our UK documents this time, and were admitted - to the country of our birth!

Then it was baggage reclaim, and onto the SIXT hire car desk in the Sofitel hotel attached to the Terminal. I'd booked a specific car, but we allowed ourselves to be talked into a bigger and better car, a hybrid Volvo XC-60, at great expense. I have to say that the service at SIXT is always exemplary. The agent we worked with was excellent, and the people at the car pick-up area similarly so, and in what seemed like just a few minutes, we were driving out of the airport and heading west on the M4. 

The car is excellent, by the way, and while it's blown the budget a bit, given that we're going to be using it a lot, I don't mind at all. It's not as economic as a lot of European cars, but still better than all the North American cars I've driven.

We had a couple of stops on the motorway, not least to prevent falling asleep at the wheel, but managed to get ourselves safely down to the big Tesco store in Newton Abbot to pick up some key supplies. Neither of us were in the mood to browse, so we blagged what we needed then made the short journey through the rolling green hills of Devon to Whiddon, and our converted barn, Little Orchard. 

I'll do a separate post about Little Orchard, but suffice it to say, it's very cosy.

Having hauled the luggage out of the car, I sat down in an armchair and slept for nearly an hour. That's what an overnight flight will do to you. But we eventually hit the hay at 9:30, which was only 4:30 for our bodies, but it was dark and we needed the sleep.

It had been a long day and a half, but a successful day and a half, and we both crashed out very happy.

The family visits start tomorrow, so stay with me dear reader.