To conclude the blog posts for our England trip, I thought I'd just do a little summary.
We allowed far too much time for our drive up the 401 to the airport, although I wouldn't be saying that if we'd been significantly held up.
We experienced the magic of the Valet service at Park N Fly again, so good and yet relatively well priced, at least in comparison to parking at a UK airport.
Flying from Toronto to London and back with British Airways was pretty good. Flights were on time, seats were good, as were the cabin crew. The return flight upgrade was a nice bonus, I guess that's what can happen on a Saturday during the day when the expensive seats are not in demand by businesses. BA continues to be very competitive on price, and they fly in to Heathrow's Terminal 5, the best of the bunch by a long way, if any airport terminal can be considered the best of anything. Terminal 5 is also the home of SIXT car rental, the only reasonably priced car hire company at the airport that doesn't require you to clamber aboard a minibus to get to their lot.
This is the third time we've used SIXT, and they were as good as ever. They did a brilliant upsell job on us, doubling the cost of the rental, but the car was very nice. The people that work there are second to none, personable and attentive and worth the money in my view.
Returning the car to SIXT was also a breeze, and given that it was at the Heathrow Sofitel hotel, our bed for our last night in England, it was all wonderfully convenient. The Sofitel isn't cheap, but the rooms are comfortable (another upgrade), and it suited us to be virtually in the airport terminal ready for our morning flight.
The accommodation we'd booked for the three weeks was one of the best we've rented. A barn conversion on a farm (full of racehorses, the farm not the cottage), it was well appointed and very comfortable. The heating was oil-fired and the owners kept a fairly tight reign on it so renters don't splurge, and given that the price of heating oil doubled overnight as we arrived, we were OK with the way things were handled. It was chilly in the cottage sometimes, but there was a super wood burner, a bucket of logs, and backup electric heater, which would have been way cheaper to use than oil.
We had a list of things we wanted to do, and they were all achieved, bar perhaps visiting the town of Ashburton, but that was OK because we drove past it most days, and that counts. We had fish and chips, we had pasties (some quite exquisite), and the occasional pub meal. Offerings for the vegan were patchy, not as good as in previous visits, but still streets ahead of Ontario
We also did the family tree things we'd intended to by visiting Weston Mill Cemetery in Plymouth, as well as seeing Truro, South Brent, Appledore, Bideford, Bishops Lydeard, and Bridport. There was nothing very specific about any of it, bar eyeballing a few houses mentioned in census records, but it was something special to tread the same streets, go through the same doorways, and see the same sights, as our distant relatives did.
The extravagant car, the Volvo XC-60 Hybrid, was OK, although it did break one of my own rules in that it was a bit big for barrelling around the narrow lanes of rural Devon. I know people drive bigger vehicles around those tiny roads, but it would have been a wee bit easier with a car that was a bit narrower. Still, it was comfortable.
I didn't get out to walk as much as I should have, and I'll blame the weather and the hectic schedule. When I did get out, I was blown away by the greenness of everything. To understand that, you have to know that the interior of Canada stays stubbornly grey and brown until at least the end of March, so that vivid green (and red) in Devon was quite the shock.
Of course we achieved our primary aim, and that was to visit family. I don't write much about them, obviously, but I will say that it was wonderful to be in their company again, albeit only for a few weeks.
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