Eastward Bound, November 2026

 

November 2nd, 2026

We're off for our second trip of the year to dear old Blighty, and while we're still three days away from flying, we've had some travel drama already.

Don't get me wrong, I quite like British Airways for our transatlantic jaunts; they have a fantastic terminal at Heathrow, their aircraft are normally pretty new, the staff are universally excellent, and their prices have been very competitive in recent years. But they do have a habit of messing about with pre-booked, and paid for, seating.

Two trips ago, with four of us travelling Premium Economy, we'd booked and paid for two rows of two. For "operational reasons", our seat allocations were changed to a row of four in the centre of the aircraft. I wasn't able to change their decision, so we sat in that four across row, but I did have a moan and claimed a refund of the seat booking fee, which was in the hundreds of dollars. I had a second moan to British Airways because I thought they'd bounced my refund claim, but that was unjustified on my part because they had indeed made the refund, I just hadn't checked the credit card bill properly.

Our last trip suffered the same problem. We'd booked and paid for two Premium Economy seats together, as we always do. When informed of the seat changes, I checked online to find that we, DW and I, were seated in different rows! On that occasion I was able to alter the seating online, more or less back to where we'd originally booked, so I didn't feel the need to claim a refund. I'm glad I didn't because on the trip home, we were upgraded to Business Class, at no cost, so props to BA for that.

For this trip, third time in a row, British Airways did it again. Our two seats together had been changed to two seats in the same row, but with an aisle between us. This time, though, I couldn't alter the seating online as there were no more two-seat sets vacant. DW was bereft, and the prospect of having to sit next to a stranger for eight hours was too much for her, so she did no more than called up BA in the UK and made a very polite, but firm, fuss. Low and behold, we have been restored to a two-seat row, window and aisle, and because it's in front of a bulkhead we get extra leg room, all at no extra cost. The irony is that the seats are directly in front the row we'd originally booked. Well done DW, and thank you British Airways.

The really aggravating thing is that we pay big bucks to choose our seat, and I don't know why we keep getting bumped around the aircraft. I absolutely understand that aircraft changes can impact seating, and even paid for seat allocations are not guaranteed, but why is it always us getting messed around? Yes, we could claim a refund, but if this kind of thing keeps happening, why do they bother charging at all if they then just have to give the money back?

Our return flight seats have been changed, too, but not drastically. Technically I could go for a refund, but we have gained an advantage on the outward leg of trip, so I'll hold off a claim in the interests of balance. Who knows, maybe we'll get another upgrade for the flight home?

Blighty Bound - Day Twenty-Four, Homeward Bound

 

We actually did leave the hotel about fifteen minutes ahead of schedule, and that proved to be a good thing, given how things panned out. For a start, the walk to the Departures Hall seemed much longer when hauling all the bags than it did without, and the three lifts we had to use during the walk seemed painful. 

We needed to print our boarding cards, which was the simplest part of the process, and as the slips of paper were produced from the machine, DW noticed that we'd been upgraded again, which pleased us very much. Flying on a Saturday, flying during the day, being a BA Club member, and having bought premium economy seats, all contributed I think. 

The line up to drop the bags was glacial, though, we were in the wrong line after the upgrade of course, and time was ticking. The automated bag drops were not working, I'd guess thanks to heightened security and as if to prove my point, a large policeman with a large gun came and stood close by, followed by a dog, its handler, and another armed policeman. All the bags were duly sniffed, which I suppose is comforting, although it's unusual to see armed police in the UK.

Back in the line, the people three ahead of us were having long discussions with the agent at the desk, mobile phones were being flashed around, and they took an age to be serviced. The man in front also took an age with his one bag, because it was overweight and he needed to pay some extra money. He was a youngish man with a long black coat, and long black hair held in a beautifully coiffured pony tail. He looked like he was travelling on business, and as it turned out, he was. He put his company's gold credit card in the payment machine, but it wanted a PIN, and he didn't have one. Then he had to fish his phone out and pay using his personal card, which was on his phone. That took a few goes, too, but he got there eventually. Finally it was our turn. The agent was very chatty, which I suspect was part of the reason the line was so slow I suspect. She shredded our paper boarding cards, gave us new card versions, then gave us directions to the BA Galleria Lounge, which our upgrade gave us access to without additional cost; it looked like we could get breakfast if we could get there in time.

But first, Security.

I never have an issue with security, they do an essential job getting me to take my shoes off, but even being allowed through the "Fast Track" channel, things didn't go well. I forgot to take my belt off (metal buckle), then to take my wallet and phone out of my pockets, and when I finally remembered, I distributed all of that stuff through our three plastic trays without giving much thought to it. I didn't get stopped by the body scan for once, but when our trays came through, the one full of model trains was pushed into secondary screening. We'd thought it might be, but what I didn't realise was that I'd put my belt and passport in that tray, and hadn't realised it. I went into major panic when I couldn't find my passport, and it wasn't helped by the screening agent covering up said passport as she was checking the bag. The people doing the screening were a wee bit surprised at the contents of the bag, they said they thought to looked like parts of musical instruments when it was scanned. Probes were run through the partially unpacked bag, but of course all they found was model trains. When the bag was returned and DW found my passport and belt under the case, the panic was over, but what a faff.

It was a long schlepp over to the B Gate area, and time was evaporating. The transit trains to the distant gates are slow to arrive, which added further time, but eventually we did find the lounge, and we found breakfast, which was nice. The lounge was busy, but it was better than sitting out at the gate, not least because of the food and drink. I started to get into a state of anxiety as the departure board was showing our gate as being open, and I thought we should be heading that way. DW rightly wanted to get a drink and use the facilities, and despite the fact that the airline knew where we were, I was still thinking, stupidly, that we'd be late boarding. The open gate thing was a lie, of course, because it wasn't open at all, but we didn't have to wait long to be called to get on the aircraft, a shiny Boeing 787. For the second time in my life, I went left after getting onto the aircraft, which was more of a thrill than it should have been.

Club World, or Business Class, on this aircraft had the little individual pods, separated by a sliding screen from both the aisle, and the adjacent pod. We were in the centre of the aircraft, so no window, but the pod was a little palace. Bigger TV, seat that reclined properly, or even turned into a bed, and a host of exciting little "gizzits". (Gizzit = Give Us It, freebies). We'd been in the pods before, but I was still like a kid with a new toy. 

The flight left on time and I dined well once we were airborne, although I think DW struggled with the vegan offerings. I watched three movies, back to back, failing to fall asleep through any of them, while DW had a bit of a technology issue and had to have her entertainments system reset. It wasn't much like a flight at all, really, laid back as I was with my head on a comfy pillow with people bringing me food and drink while I watched TV. I did glance at the maps on the TV in between movies and noticed that we were coming in over the coast of Labrador, so quite far north. It wasn't until later that I saw that we were on a really northerly route and that we'd been over the southern tip of Greenland, and I'd missed it. Tsk.

We landed pretty much on time at Toronto, did the automatic arrival passport scan thing after having completed some of the formalities on the ArriveCan app the day before. Waiting for the bags to come through was a bit a pain because despite our bags being marked as Priority, two of the three were pretty much last off the aircraft. We weren't really in a hurry, but it's hot and noisy in the baggage reclaim area, not helped by people talking on their speakerphone enabled cell phones. While I waited, I completed the ParkNFly app so that the car would be ready to pick up when we arrived at the parking lot. I think it's quite magical that you can press a few buttons on your phone and automatically the car is waiting when their little shuttle bus drops you off at the lot. Talking of the bus, as we made our way out of the arrival point, people were being complete bananas. Huge, big, group hugs and kisses for people connecting and reconnecting are all very well, but not right at the point where hundreds of people with suitcase-laden carts are exiting the baggage reclaim and customs. Then there were the people who stepped in front on my suitcase-laden cart and stopped dead in front of it. That happened over and over again, although I suppose it's fair to say that airports can be scary and confusing if you're not used to them, and that could make you do daft things like trying to get run down by bag-laden carts. 

We walked away from the crowds to door B, and found our shuttle bus. The man driving had a really thick accent and said he'd come from Somalia originally. "I've been here 37 years" he said, with an accent that sounded like he arrived a week ago. That's no complaint, of course, I love the variety of accents, especially in Toronto. Indeed, our neighbours sounded like they'd just arrived from Northern Ireland, but they been in Canada for more than fifty years.

As anticipated, the car was waiting at the ParkNFly lot, so we loaded up and headed out towards the 401. I say headed, but the signage is absolutely awful in Ontario, and despite following signs for the 401, I still ended up heading for the airport again. Google came good and steered us back to the place where I'd normally have joined the highway, only the road was closed. Google came to rescue again, and we were soon bowling along to the west, happy that it was a Saturday and the traffic was relatively free-flowing.

Petrol, now gas I suppose, was going to be tight but I really didn't want to pay Highway prices when the cost is already through the roof (thanks, Donald), so we just pressed on and did the run without stopping, about two and half hours. I did the dozy thing and missed the first Chatham turn off, but as the second one suits us just as well, it was no hardship. To celebrate our return, we went straight to Craves Poutinerie for our supper, and ate chips (now fries) in the car, which was a pretty good way to end the long journey.

I will make a trip conclusion post soon, but first I must actually post these twenty-three blog entries I've written!

Blighty Bound - Day One, The Travel

Here we are again at Toronto Pearson Airport, ready for a run across the Atlantic. We're stupidly early, but any travel involving travel on Ontario's Highway 401 requires you to build in some slack.

The aim this time around, only nine months after our last trip, is to visit DW's dad and stepmum, given that with older parents, you never know which trip will be the last time you see them. We're booked into a little cottage near Ashburton in south Devon, about half an hour's drive from the old homestead. Sometimes that little bit of distance can be beneficial.

We'll no doubt get out and about, but our primary aim is family.

I won't be publishing any of these blog entries until we're back in Canada, just to make sure that family stays front and centre

So, back to the trip.

We've spent an anxious few days fretting about travel, thanks largely to the situation in the Middle East. However, everything looked OK for transatlantic travel, so we decided to press on. We always talk about packing lightly, but we never do, so this morning I loaded up the car with THREE suitcases for the TWO of us. To be fair, the combined weight of the three could have been split between two cases, but we tend to bring stuff back, so now have a "spare" case.

We haven't done a road trip in a while, so it was quite a treat to be heading out on the highway towards Toronto, even with the rain. This is the first rain we've had since November, which sounds bad, but precipitation has been exclusively of the snowy variety, so it's not like we've been parched. Highway 401 is a busy road, full of eighteen-wheeler trucks and people ignoring the speed limit. I set the cruise control to about 104kph, to keep pace with the trucks, and was doing fine until one of those trucks tried to pass me. Between Tilbury and London, it's just two lanes each way, so for what seemed like hours, this truck crept past. It started signalling to come into my lane when it was only half way past, and I think that was the driver saying "I've messed up, I can't get by and I'm blocking the traffic, slow down and let me in". Well, I'm all for cooperative driving but this numpty had tried a pass when it wasn't on, and I wasn't going to slow down to correct his mistake. Truck drivers drive all day and they really should be aware of their truck's ability to pass others, and it wasn't like I was doing anything wrong, I was on the cruise control on a constant speed. He did eventually get past, but I didn't fancy being in his cloud of spray for the next twenty minutes, so I passed him and set the cruise a little higher so we wouldn't get into the same situation again. Having held a commercial drivers' licence, I felt fully qualified to not only stick to my speed, but to call him a right knob end. 

We stopped at the Service Centre in Cambridge, and I availed myself of a Tim Horton's coffee. It was fully a dollar more expensive than in a normal Tim Hortons,  but worse, I had to order through an electronic kiosk, and the woman serving the drinks just dumped the cup on the counter and walked away; no order number called, no call at all, and she even covered up order sticker with the paper cup sleeve. I'd paid an extra dollar for that lack of service. I said to another worker that the first one should have called out something, and that worker agreed, but t'was a bit late by then.

Back on the road, we encountered the standard queue of traffic at the airport exit on the 401. Not that everyone was going to the airport, but you have to change highways, and that intersection is right at the point where the "Collector Lanes" join the Express Lanes, so you have multiple lanes of traffic trying to cross. It's always bad there. We also experienced Canada's dislike of informative road signs. There are precious few signs for the airport on Highway 401, and in fact the first one you see is after you get a full, panoramic view of the airport itself just by looking out of the window. You may not like London's M25, but all the airports are very well signposted on that particularly road system.

Then it was on to one of my favourite parts of the whole mechanical process of going on vacation the Park and Fly at the airport. It's run by a private company and it offers three levels of service; park off site and have you bussed into the airport, park on site and have you bussed to the airport, or drive to their site, have them park your car for you, then bus you to the airport. We like the third option, where you just leave your car on their secure site, right by the office, go in and register (or use an app like I did), get on their bus and go right to the terminal. When you arrive back, you let them know when you've landed, get on their bus at the terminal, and by the time you get to their office, your car is sat outside ready for you to drive home. It's long-term valet parking and I love it. It doesn't sound cheap when you look at the prices, $425 for three weeks, but by the time you apply all the discounts (CAA, or whatever) you only end up paying about a quarter of that. Compare that to the cost of parking at UK airports and it's a steal.

We were scarily early at the airport, as I said, but we dropped our bags having already checked in online, and made our way to the far distant end of Terminal 3. It wasn't hugely busy, so we located a quiet spot and broke open the sandwiches. The whole airport terminal, or departure lounge, idea has been changed over the years to provide an array of food and drink outlets, as well as the usual duty-free emporia. While that's not a bad idea, the prices charged at these places are beyond ridiculous, and given that there is theoretically no 13% sales tax, then it makes the price gouging even worse. As a result, we get all grumpy and bring our own food.

I can't remember how many hours we had to while away, but it was quite a relief when they started boarding for our flight early. We had, as has been our trend for a while now, bought seats in the not quite Economy/not quite Business section, so at least we had just the two of us in the row. The aircraft was a Boeing 787, the plastic 'plane, and the seats were OK, certainly better than the ones on the British Airways Airbus aircraft. At least there was plenty of leg room, which is why we choose these more expensive seats.

The flight departed bang on time, but disappointment followed, though, when I found out that the proprietary headphone sockets on the entertainment system didn't like my Bose adapter, so I was doomed to using the rubbish supplied by the airline rather than my very nice Bose version. The offending sockets were also damaged and they wouldn't hold the jack-plug in place, and allowed sound from only one side of the earphones unless I held the jack-plug in place. Then I found out that the touch-screen that was to show the movies and whatnot had a dead area across the top and down the right-hand side, which limited how I could use it. There was a remote control thingy tucked into the seat arm, but that allowed only basic functions. Between the screen and the remote I managed to get most things to work, but not all. I get it, the airline doesn't break these things, but it's disappointing all the same.

Anyway, I did manage to snatch a bit of sleep, although not nearly enough, and I did get to enjoy seeing the sun light up the starboard wing in the wee small hours, though the fancy LCD filter on the window that these 787s use rather than a pull down blind. Sadly, at 40,000 feet, above some dense cloud, I didn't get to see Cork (in Ireland), the land of my fathers.

I will close this entry now, as technically I was in day two of the trip as we flew over the Emerald Isle. There will be plenty more to write up, but so I'll do my best to keep each entry slightly less than the entirety of War and Peace. 

Blighty 2025 - Flying Home

Flight day dawned. All the bags had been repacked and reweighed, and all of them, thankfully, came in under the 23Kg limit. I eschewed breakfast on the grounds that I didn't need to spend another £20 on food when I'd done nothing but eat over the past month, and we moved seamlessly to getting the bags downstairs and loaded into the rental car again.

It's only a couple of minutes drive from the Hyatt Place to Terminal five, but I still manged to be in the wrong lane, and subsequently on the wrong road when trying to get back to the car hire drop off point. I managed to correct things without going too far out of our way, but still struggled with the complicated instructions on how to get to the drop-of point. Essentially it was a case of driving almost all the way around the T5 Sofitel Hotel before finding the entrance. They have a kind all 360 degree scanner you drive through when you leave, and again when you return. I guess it compares dents and scratches and the like without having someone come out and check. To the best of my knowledge, I hadn't added to the car's patina, so that was all good. Apart from dropping the key back in to the office, we didn't have to do anything other than unload the car - onto three trolleys - make our way back through the Sofitel and head into the departures hall of Terminal 5.

Dumping the bags was the first order of the day, so we did a self-service bag drop and boarding pass collection, which was all we needed to do having checked in online the night before. DW and I sat and relaxed before going through security, while Emma and Charlie went for a ride on the T5 Pod system for twenty minutes.

Going through security was relatively painless, for us at least. Emma had her bag opened and manually checked thanks to her carrying a big, resin, Lilliput Village church in her carry on baggage. Time had slipped away quickly, so we decided to head straight out to the gate, which was about as far away as you get from where we had arrived airside. You can walk it, and we have done that in the past, but this take we took the "transit", a little underground train that doesn't run often enough to make it a comfortable trip because it's always so crowded. Heathrow seems to specialize in not realising how many people move through their place; I remembered with horror the wholly inadequate lifts in Terminal 2, lifts that had no viable alternative, and were always bursting at the seams. The world's busiest airport really needs to do better, I think.

Our transport for the flight home waiting at the gate, and with the power of the Internet at hand, I interrogated it and found out that our aircraft was a 2025 Boeing 787 Dreamliner. It has come back to London from Barbados the previous day, and Toronto was its only flight this warm afternoon. How informative.

In our World Traveller Plus cabin, I was surprised to see the seat configuration was 2-3-2 and not 2-4-2 as it had been on the Airbus on the way over. Indeed, the seats were bigger, better padded and altogether an improvement over the outward leg. The Dreamliner also has fancy LED windows that lighten or darken at the push of button and, more pertinently for the crew, could be controlled as one from the flight deck, so no messing about with getting people to lift the window blinds for take off. 

We were sitting over the wing so were treated to a lot of wind and engine noise, and the sight of the Boeing's wing lifting and wobbling. It's a good job I understand the principals of flight or I might be a bit worried. The last time I flew on a 787, I remember it being quieter, but I'd trade the noise for the better seats any day. Flights are as flights are, pretty boring. The food was better this time, and I did enjoy a short while with Charlie on my lap watching Paw Patrol, which is so much better without the sound.

Then we were banking out over Lake Erie for a rare northward landing at Toronto Pearson Airport, getting a great view of the Islands and the CN Tower, which was all the better as it had been cloudy since we passed over Ireland. The airport wasn't much fun, though. Terminal 3 was packed, the customs kiosks were playing up and it took an age for two of our bags to show up in the arrivals hall, thanks to a technical fault in the conveyor system. The magic of Park and Ride was working well, though, as a Valet Parking bus was waiting at the curb, and as I'd already notified them through their phone app that we'd landed, the car was sat in the lot waiting for us. I do like Park and Fly, and it did take the edge off the fact that it had taken us two hours to clear the airport. 

Opening up the back of car to load our many bags, it was quite comforting to see that our Canadian (made in Ontario) Honda CRV had quite a bit more luggage space than our Skoda hire car, so the game of baggage Jenga wasn't quite so difficult. Mind you, two bags "self-unloaded" when we opened the tailgate at the On Route in Cambridge.

We arrived home tired, of course, and out of sorts given that it was 3am according to our body clocks. Still, we'd completed quite the epic journey. A month, give or take a day, and no major dramas (bar the Manchester accommodation), and we did most of the things we'd set out to do. Now, as we Brits are wont to say "we need a holiday to get over the holiday". Next week, people, next week.

Blighty 2025 - The Beginning

A long time in the planning, a significant family birthday is our prime motivation for yet another grand tour of our joint fatherland, England. This is a long one, just on four weeks, and is costing not only an arm and a leg, but the foot and the hand as well.

Planning started over a year ago, and we'd booked three weeks in a charming little house in the centre of the Cotswold town of Burford. Why Burford? Well, it's central, it's pretty, and is far enough away from our usual haunts that it makes this trip a little different.

The only trouble was that, a month out from departure and we are on the hook for the full accommodation cost, but we discovered to our horror that the cottage we had booked had been removed from the cottage rental agency's booking calendar, but no one had thought to mention this small detail to us. Given how close this was to departure, and we'd already paid in full for the air fares and the rental car, there was no backing out, and an awful lot of panic on our part. Step up Gardeners Cottage, in the almost as pretty Cotswold village of Shipton-under-Wychwood, just a few miles north of Burford. A place that had all the Burford place had, and more, and was available for the three weeks that we needed it. A quick booking, and a shed load of money, later and Bingo! The deposit we'd paid on the first cottage was fully refunded, naturally.

So, it was a long a fraught morning that we waited at home before setting off for Toronto's Lester Pearson airport and our overnight flight to London. It was fraught because the British Airways computer had decided to schedule a different aircraft and the seats we had paid a King's ransom to reserve didn't exist on the new aircraft. Again, without anyone actually telling us, we had been allocated different seats, none of them close to a window. Sure, a seat is a seat, but why pay a ton of cash for a specific seat and then have it whipped away from you on the morning of the flight? Decisive action was called for, so I put in a claim for the refund of the money paid to reserve the seats; take that BA!

The drive up to the airport wasn't great. The weather was horrible, low cloud and rain for most of it, and of course given the hour of the day and multiple collisions on our route, our four hour journey ran into five. It was a good job that we'd allowed so much extra time.

Check in at the valet parking was simple, as was checking in for the flight, so bagless, thank goodness, we made our way through security and into the vastness of Terminal 3. I've moaned before about the removal of most of the regular seating there, in favour of tables aimed at food and drink service from a number of outlets recently installed. Ordering food and drink isn't mandatory if you use the tables, but I still prefer a proper "comfy" chair and a good view out of the window, both of which were achieved, thank without having to settle for the table arrangement. The food and drink outlets are scarily expensive, as are all of the shops and whatnot in the terminal building; there are a lot of people making a lot of profit from their captive audience, and I object to that. 

The aircraft due to take us to London arrived late thanks to the weather, so was late in loading and late in departing. We pushed back about thirty minutes behind schedule, and the aircraft's pilots bolted for the runway. I commented to DW on how fast we were taxiing, and as we turned onto the runway, we promptly turned off it again and parked on one of the runway exits. This wasn't looking so good. After about ten minutes, the Captain came on to say that one of the aircrafts brakes was overheating so they had to wait until it cooled off before making a second attempt at getting to the runway. Curiously, I wasn't surprised at this news. Anyway, at the second attempt we took off, very smoothly it has to be said, and headed east into the night. 

The inflight food was OK, in as much as any inflight food is OK. I had Macaroni and tomato sauce, which wasn't too too horrible. Then it was time to achieve the almost impossible, some sleep. The seats on the Airbus A350 are not comfortable, and while dozed through Singing in the Rain, and a Harry Potter audio book, I didn't feel very rested as I awoke properly somewhere over Northern Ireland. We were served one of those odd aircraft "light snacks", a kind of pastry filled with tomato sauce, and to go with it, a very small cup of coffee. It was a strange snack, but we'd paid for it, so it was all dutifully consumed.

We arrived more or less back on schedule in a warm and sunny London, and Heathrow Terminal 5 wasn't too awful. We made our way to the Sofitel Hotel, just outside the Terminal, where Sixt car rental have a desk, and went through the usual "upsell" routine with one of the agents there. On a twenty-seven day rental I didn't really want to be upsold, despite the agent pretending that there was no way our luggage would fit in the type of car I'd already paid for. She set us up with a Skoda Karoq, or "Carrott" as it will be known for the next four weeks, and guess what? The luggage fitted in. Just.

I haven't driven a manual car for a while, but took to it quite easily. You never forget clutch control. Modern cars no longer have a manual handbrake, so I was having to get used to the electric version, and learn to trust it when it released automatically, but it was all fine. Our official route to Oxfordshire had us on the dreaded Orbital motorway, the M25, for a few miles. But this was Friday afternoon, at the start of the schools' half-term holiday week, so the normally busy road was doubly-busy. I opted to avoid the stopped traffic and made for the slightly less busy M4, and a cross-country route, despite the protestations of the lady in the Satnav. 

We came off the M4 at Theale, made our way through Pangbourne and Streatley, then skirted the Berkshire downs, took a detour through the village of Blewbury, my home for fifteen years, then onto the A34 to Abingdon, and across country to Witney, just a few miles short of our destination. We were some hours ahead of schedule, so stopped to pick up some supplies at Waitrose, the excellent grocery arm of the John Lewis group. Far from picking up "a few bits", eighty-five great British Pounds later we struggled to fit our many purchases into the already well packed Skoda.

What should have been a fifteen minute drive to the cottage took nearer forty as we crept through Burford in gridlocked traffic, victims once again of half-term Friday. There's a bridge across the River Windrush at the bottom of the hill in Burford, so narrow that it's controlled by traffic lights, and that was the cause of the delay, at least in terms of how the really heavy traffic coped with those traffic lights. I'm hoping that it's not so bad on other days. The slight upside of the hold up was that we arrived at our home for the next three weeks, more or less at the time we were supposed to.

I'll write about the cottage in another post, but it really is a nice place to be, right on the edge of the Cotswolds. 

And so to bed. Everyone was dazed and confused after the (mostly) sleepless overnight flight, so tempers were beginning to fray, and I couldn't find the car keys which didn't help the general mood. Still, a good night's sleep will surely sort me out.

Plymouth (The Original One) 2024 - Homeward Bound

We had an interesting trip back to Canada, starting with the very nice taxi driver who hailed, he said, from Czechoslovakia (not the Czech Republic or Slovakia, you will note). Very chatty and with a better command of English than me. He was driving a Toyota Prius, which seems to be the choice of taxi drivers in provincial towns, as that model of car has conveyed us around quite a lot.

On Plymouth Station, waiting for the London train, we watched with interest as an empty five-car Hitachi set rolled in and stopped halfway along the platform, waiting it turned out for a similar five-car set to arrive from Penzance. At Plymouth, they were to be coupled together to make a ten-car train to London. Only they didn't couple together. The fancy self-coupling system failed, and after twenty-five minutes of the railway people trying, we were about to have the whole train cancelled on us, even though there was a perfectly serviceable five-car set right in front of us. Sanity prevailed, though, and the set from Penzance was abandoned while everyone piled onto what should have been the first half of the train. Once again, all seat reservations were cancelled and the train became very busy. Of course, running late were were going to get stuck behind stopping trains, and despite the "Train Manager" asserting otherwise, the slower trains did delay us and our original twenty-five minutes late became forty-five minutes. It wasn't an issue for us because we'd built a big cushion in our plans, but the poor guy across the aisle was chuntering the whole way as he was going to miss his connection at Reading. 

 

Apparently we could have claimed compensation for the late arrival of the train at Paddington, but frankly I couldn't be arsed. 

The Heathrow Express from Paddington to the airport is indeed an express, albeit an expensive one. Fifteen minutes into the airport from Central London is not to be sniffed at, though, if you've ever had to negotiate traffic and transit in that big city. We didn't pay the top fare, though, because we are smart people.

We arrived at the airport with no more issues, checked in and went through security. I had the whole body scan treatment, shoes wiped and everything, because I'm special, and we headed into the huge shopping mall, sorry, departures area, to await our flight. Given this was a Saturday afternoon in October, it was horribly busy in there, so we opted to go out to the departure gate straight away. I say straight away, but we had our sandwiches first. Who wouldn't?

As with the flight two-weeks ago, it pushed back bang on time and we were heading west in our surprisingly uncomfortable Airbus A350 seats. Also like the outbound flight, of the three meal options offered, two were curry. What is this obsession with curry? Naturally they'd run out of the non-curry dish by the time the meal cart arrived at our seats, so I was well and truly buggered. The flight attendant was beside herself that I had no food, and searched the entire aircraft for a non-curry meal but couldn't find one, so I went hungry. Given that I had eaten a month's worth of food in the previous two weeks, it really wasn't a hardship, but why give up a reason to feel aggrieved? Such a crappy choice of meals kind of calls into question the whole idea of having two out of three meals essentially the same. Don't worry, I have let British Airways know my displeasure, as you knew I would.

In Toronto it all went smoothly. I had filled in the ArriveCan app on my phone before departure, so our customs declarations were ready to go when we went through the passport scanner. People of a right-wing bent here in Canada get very upset at the mention of that App, built as it was to ease the COVID limitations. Me, I'm very happy to be able to do stuff on the app and sail through the airport with comparative ease. If you're a Canadian arriving home by air, the ArriveCan app is the mutts nuts.

Another bit of app automation is the Park N Fly airport parking. I logged the fact that we'd arrived in the terminal, agreed the price (already quoted when we dropped the car off) and immediately was issued with a bar code with which to exit the parking lot. The bus from the airport to the parking lot was driven by Michael B, a jovial man of Jamaican heritage who crammed lots of people on, which was a good thing because he wanted to get people home, and talked himself into a load of very good tips. The car was waiting at the lot, so we loaded up, used the app barcode to get out of the lot, and then we were on our way. That's the kind of app that makes me glad I have a smartphone.

We didn't have to go too far, which was good because even though it was only 9pm in Toronto, our bodies thought it was 2am. We had a room booked at a Marriott hotel in Mississauga for the night, about twenty minutes from the airport. When you just want to get your head down, the general state of the place isn't too important, but this hotel could have been a little more on the ball. The poor woman on Reception was on her own and rushed off her feet, our room was decorated in the current hotel room vogue of "Dark", and the single beside light didn't work. DW tried calling reception, but the aforementioned Reception clerk was too busy to answer the phone, so a visit to the desk was required. The maintenance man turned up quite quickly and fiddled with some wires to get the light working, which did at least make the room usuable. While he was doing that, we took stock and decided that the housekeeping at this hotel could have been a wee bit more thorough. It wasn't horrible, but at nearly $200 a night for an out-of-town hotel room, you can expect better. Indeed, the whole room looked tired, although that seems to be the norm these days.

We did get to bed at a sensible (Toronto) time, and I slept through until 2:30am when I was woken by people crashing around in the corridor outside. I went back to sleep, although DW had a similar experience at 3:30am. I guess that's what happens at hotels close to airports. I was wide awake at 5am, though, and while the dawn dawned, listened to an podcast about the rise of Hitler, as you do. It's alarming that the similarities between old Adolph and today's right-wing populists are striking.

We had planned on a vegan breakfast at a local Copper Branch outlet, but it was closed this Sunday morning, so we set off down Highway 401 in glorious sunshine and way more traffic than should be allowed on a Sunday. A word about driving the the Greater Toronto area; it's friggin' crazy. The speed limit is 100kph, but to find anyone else doing less than 110 would be a miracle. The general speed in around 120, with many going much faster, and weaving between the many lanes in order to make progress. They drive feet from the back of other vehicles at this speed, too, and it's no wonder there are so many rear-enders. There's a new High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lane on the way out of Toronto, but unless you're doing at least 130, people are trying to drive over the top of you. I don't use that lane unless the main lanes are slow because I don't want to drive that fast, I don't want to use so much fuel, I'm not in that much of a hurry and I don't want a speeding fine. That last one is never going to happen, though, because the Provincial Police have given up enforcing the rules. They won't stop anyone unless they're going fast enough to merit having their car impounded - it's known as Grandstanding I think.

Anyway, apart from the lunatics, the people driving in the middle lane, the trucks using the left-lane and the tailgaters, it was a very pleasant run. The temperature reached 22C (October 20th!), and the red, gold and yellow trees were spectacular in their autumn colours. The traffic did thin out as we went westwards, and we didn't really get held up the the construction zones. We did stop off in London (Ontario) for a different vegan breakfast at Odd Burger, then in was a gentle run home with no other distractions that US plated cars driving significantly over the speed limit as they made their way home. Call me a crusty old git, but I do think visitors to another country really should have a stab at obeying that country's laws. When they know that they're never going to get caught, though, I guess it's a free for all.

 

That was the run home. We've had better travel experiences, but we made it in one piece, which is really the most important thing.

Plymouth (The Original One) 2024 - The Arriving

 Another trip eastwards and across the ocean for us, this time to DW's ancestral home Plymouth. Not the Plymouth of Massachusetts, but the one in Devon from whence the Mayflower sailed. We haven't brought the Airstream, obviously, but I thought I'd document the trip here, especially given that we might have been camping were we not in Merrie Olde England.

Travelling to England is always expensive, and always a chore. We'd booked the best price seats we could manage given that we wanted a full service airline, Premium Economy seats, and a direct flight (so not cheap), and placed our faith in British Airways from Toronto's Pearson Airport to London Heathrow. That of course meant a drive up the dreaded Highway 401. It's construction season on Canada's roads right now, and we knew that there were around six or seven different construction sites between home and the airport, and because we were travelling on a Friday afternoon we decided to allow ourselves plenty of time. It was a good job that we did.

We were about twenty-five minutes past our target leaving time, and immediately hit a snag when the train crossing lights started flashing on LaCroix Street in town, and we spent five minutes watching one of those never ending freight trains pass by, although the angst was slightly offset watching a couple of drivers ahead of us panic when then realised they'd stopped so close to the tracks that the barriers would likely hit their cars when they came down. I mean, there's half a dozen trains through there daily, so it's not like it's a rare event, but still they stop on the tracks. But I digress.

 

On the 401 it was busy. Wall-to-wall trucks, but at least it was moving. That lasted up until Colonel Talbot Road when we hit the first of many, many slow-downs. On a trip that should take just on three hours door-to-door, it took us over four hours. The Friday afternoon traffic likely made things worse, but that run up was the worst I'd experienced in my fifteen years in Canada. But in this case, we'd left so much slack in the schedule that we were not even mildly late for our flight.

Toronto's Pearson airport isn't the best place to be on a Friday evening, but then it's not the worst, either. The check-in area in Terminal 3 isn't really big enough to accommodate the number of people that use it, but then again, neither is the same space in Terminal 1. We dumped our bags in fairly short order and made our way through security screening without too much of a fuss. Airside, things have changed a little from when I first started travelling regularly through the airport. Firstly you're forced to walk through a big duty-free perfume selling store (which was new), and the long departure gate arm now has many more retail outlets than it used to have. It certainly gives the place a livelier feel, but they are all, without exception, hugely over-priced. London's Heathrow airport has long been known as "Thief-row" thanks to the high prices levied on airside clients, and Pearson Airport is catching up. We were in Terminal 3 last November but things had changed even since then, with most of the regular seating removed and replaced by tables, with a central restaurant and bar in the centre. In T1 there are I-Pads on the tables through which you can order your over-priced food and drink to be delivered to your table. Now it's just a QR code etched on a metal plate on the table and you can order the same over-priced food and drink from your cell phone. I don't think I'd mind too much if the tabled area formed only part of the departures seating, but it doesn't, it's all encompassing. You don't have to make an order when you're sat at the tables, but it's kind of implied. It's not as if any of this is essential for the travelling public because pretty much every flight out of there gives you a meal within an hour of takeoff anyway. My cynical mind tells me it's all about profit, and I'm never in the mood to voluntarily help the GTAA (Greater Toronto Airport Authority) get rich. We, being the ever economical souls that we are, brought home made sandwiches. I did spoil things by going to buy an over-priced cup of coffee from Starbucks, but walked away from the line waiting when the three people serving seemed that talking among themselves was more important than moving the line and actually selling coffee. In my annoyance I bought a bottle of water and KitKat for the eye-watering sum of $9.38, which was three times what I'd have spent at Starbucks. But hey, principles are principles.

Our aircraft for the flight was an Airbus A350, wide-bodied mediocrity and indistinguishable from any other in its class. The Premium Economy cabin is over the wing so my two windows, one slightly behind me and one slightly in front, were not going to be of much use. The two overhead storage bins above us were marked "Crew Only", so I heaved our bags into one on the other side of the aisle, much to the consternation of the people sitting below it. Being English, the woman made a quiet comment about not using "their bins", but made her feelings truly known with the fixed stare she gave me.

Our seats were not the most comfortable I've ever sat in, but were so far from the seat in front that the tray table was mounted in the arm rest of our seats and not on the back of the seats in front. The seats also reclined with a leg support coming up from below. I like to sit up so didn't use that function, and nor did the woman sitting in front of me, which was fortunate. As is normal though, the person sitting in front of DW did recline, fully, so she was forced to recline as well, although as she was intended on a goodly nap, that was OK. Me climbing over DW while the seats were reclined was pure comedy, but when you have to go, you have to go.

The meal served about an hour into the flight was, well, not my thing. The choices were Cod with Polenta, or Curry. I have a feeling it was the same choice on the flight we took to London last year. When it was served, the fish was OK, but the Polenta was horrible and the little bowl of ricey stuff that was on the side looked and smelled like the sort of thing I would pay not to eat. I don't know why British Airways insist on serving food that they think might look a "a bit jazzy", and pretty much always contain a curry option. Air Transat did the same for a while, but reverted to more standard fare when people like me moaned about it. The best meal on a 'plane I ever had was on a charter flight from Kephalonia to London, and it was a beef stew. If the charter people can do it, surely the major airlines can. The "hot snack" served before landing was a "hot mess", and again I ask why? Trying too hard to be too fancy really doesn't work.

I couldn't get comfortable during the flight, even when resorting to the old standard sleep aid of watching Bridget Jones' Diary for the umpteenth time, and as a consequence didn't sleep much. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield had suggested some good Northern Lights viewing that night, but nothing. Curse that Astronaut. It was thick cloud cover as the day dawned and we flew over my other ancestral home, Ireland, and it stayed cloudy pretty much until we popped out of the clouds a few miles from Heathrow. All in all, it was a bit of a manky flight. That said, it left Toronto bang on time, and arrived in London ahead of schedule, so well done BA.

Terminal 5 at Heathrow is a wondrous place, but when you get dropped at a gate far from the terminal you have a choice of a long walk, or get crammed onto and all too infrequent shuttle train that runs to the terminal. Every time we've been presented with the shuttle option it's been overcrowded beyond belief, so we decided on the walk this fine morning. There were a few of those moving sidewalk things, but still a fair bit of walking, although having been sat still for six hours or so, it was not a bad thing.

 

The bags came out quite quickly at the luggage reclaim, and we made our way down to the Heathrow Express train, which was no mean feat with me hauling two big cases. The Heathrow Express is one of three rail-based options to get into London from the airport, is the fastest by far, and the most expensive. The Elizabeth Line is a new rail line across London and would take us into Paddington railway station directly, if a little more slowly. The Underground's Piccadilly Line would get us to Paddington with a change of trains at Gloucester Road, but is a seriously slow way of travelling given that there are many, many stops on the line. While the Express may have been expensive, I bought the tickets online, ahead of time, and with our rail discount card, the price was only around £6 each for the single fare, as opposed to the regular £25 if you buy on the day without a discount card. When the train starts its run into Paddington, you soon realise why it's called the Express, because that thing really flies. It takes fifteen minutes from Terminal 1 & 2 to Paddington, compared to over an hour on the Underground, which is quite impressive.

At Paddington, we had a wait before picking up our train to Plymouth. About a three hour wait. To get a well priced ticket on British trains, you have to plump for a specific train, and book seats. Doing that, and using the discount card, we were able to afford First Class tickets, which in this case worked very well for us as we were able to use the First Class Lounge at Paddington Station. The lounge is three rooms, two with sofas and the like, and one with tables and chairs. Snacks and drinks, non-alcoholic of course, are complimentary, so we hunkered down for the duration, just happy to shake off the rigours of the journey so far. It being Saturday, the station was busy with non-commuters, many heading to football matches. I took a quick walk up onto Praed Street, just outside the station, and surveyed the very familiar scene. A student nurse of my acquaintance worked at St. Mary's Hospital just next door to the station, and while she didn't merit a Blue Plaque on the wall, Sir Alexander Fleming did his groundbreaking work on Penicillin there and has a Blue Plaque, and the royal princes William and Harry were born there. Like so many other streets in London, notable things have happened there. While up on the street, I came across a heap of London Black Cabs, all purring along using electric motors rather than the old chug-chug diesel engines of the past. It turns out that the cabs are hybrids and do have their internal combustion engines, but a lot of the time run noiselessly and smokelessly on battery power. What with the hybrid buses as well, London's air is getting so much more breathable.

 

When it was time to board our train (they notify you of the appropriate platform only minutes before departure), we looked in vain for Coach K, where our booked seats were located. A quick question to one of the train's crew revealed that they were short of a few coaches and there definitely wasn't a Coach K. All seat bookings had been cancelled as a result, so it was sit anywhere. Fortunately the train wasn't terribly full, so we found a couple of seats and settled in for the run down to the Westcountry. Like the aircraft we'd flown in, the seats here were not the most comfortable, but there was plenty of room. And, like the lounge at the station, snacks and drinks were complementary. Similar to the Heathrow Express, this train took off like a scalded rabbit and we were quickly pelting through west London at a serious clip and heading to Reading. The weather was OK and the scenery getting greener as we crossed and recrossed the River Thames. Reading, Taunton, Tiverton, Exeter, Newton Abbot, Totnes and finally Plymouth, took us a little over three hours. The weather closed in, the sea was battering the sea wall at Dawlish, and by the time we reached Plymouth, the rain was coming down, but then this is the Westcountry in October, so nothing unusual about that.

 

A short taxi ride from the station and we were on Plymouth's famous Barbican, and opening up Number One, Stokes Lane, our home for the next two weeks. We were both shattered, but did manage to get out to the Co-Op for some essential supplies, dodge the many young people out in the wet streets, and buy some proper English fish and chip shop chips, which is surely the best way to end what was a long and uncomfortable trip.

I'll write a little about our accommodation in the next instalment, and about the purpose of the trip, but for now, I'll round off this very long post by saying it was very nice to be back in Devon.