So we are on our way

Yesterday a friend, Patrick Coleman, mentioned in the comments that I was showing signs of "anticipation and joy" and he was absolutely right.

This anticipation meant that last night wasn't the most sleep filled night of my life, but it's a holiday, so I don't care. 

Waking Up

I awoke at just before 3am, unlike previous travel days there was no great rush, but once I'm awake there is little chance of dozing back off. However, as Drew is working this morning, getting up and "getting in his way", as he describes it wasn't an option.

BBC World Service

I turned, as I often do when I wake early, to the BBC World Service. Its overnight schedule provides some fascinating insights of a historical and a contemporary view. This morning I had the pleasure of Outlook, their history based programme, which today was looking at the United States's first black astronaut trainee, who final reached space earlier this year at the age of 90. This was a story I knew nothing about, but it turns out that Ed Dwight Jr. from Kansas City, Missouri travelled to the edge of space as an honoured guest in the Blue Origin rocket owned by Amazon's founder. The programme told the story of how Ed's trip was 60 years overdue as he had been chosen by President John F. Kennedy to be the first African-American astronaut at a time when racism was rife and segregation a reality. But JFK's plans for Ed were scuppered on his death and Ed had to pick himself up and build a whole new career, as a sculpture! At 90 Ed still sounds well and loved his experience of close space orbit 40 years after he was supposed to go to space. 

Outlook was followed by a archive slot called Witness History, today this included excerpts from broadcasts at the time celebrating (and regretting in some cases) the end of the Irish marriage bar, as Ireland, until 1973 (an amazingly late date that I would never have guessed) still expected women to resign from work in the Public Sector (nurses, teachers, civil servants) when they got married. It interviewed Bernie Flynn, who postponed her wedding so as to avoid the ban and thereby became one of the first married women in the civil service! How quickly the world has changed during my lifetime.

The 4am slot brought a half-hour of up to date news from the World Service and at 4.30am it was the weekly episode of The Food Chain which interviewed a range of Foodies who didn't want to be called influencers, but content creators, but who have a million or more followers each on Instagram, Tick-tock or another social network. It clearly is a full time job cooking or doing daily food posts. I'm glad my only endeavours in food description happens on my holidays.

The listening fest ended at 5am, when I turned over to Five Live to listen to Wake up to Money, my regular morning listen, which today was looking at the cost of the Grenfell Fire and the extension of Mountain Warehouse into the US markets. 

Even being awake early has its benefits when you can learn about things you are night likely to learn about elsewhere.

Getting Up

Drew got up at 5.30am and I followed at 6.15am, Drew likes a bit of quiet time in the morning, quiet time isn't something for which I'm renowned! [Co-Pilot's Note: As if, dear readers, we would say anything of the sort!!]

I started with a load of washing - all the clothes we've worn in the last day or two, so the washing basket is now empty, then we had breakfast. After breakfast we brushed our teeth, packed our electric toothbrushes, the last items to go into the case as we only have one each and having a spare just for holidays seems a little excessive! And Drew got ready to go

Leaving for the Journey - Part 1 

With our bags all packed it was time for the traditional photo of the bags protected by Captain Jack. 

For new readers of the blog Captain Jack is a Disney Bear based on the character of Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, who came home with us in 2004, when my Dad took us to Disney World. Captain Jack has travelled with us on all our holidays since - so this year is his 20th anniversary of putting up with the two of us. Good old Captain Jack, he is clearly very tolerant, putting up with us two!!

Photos taken and breakfast eaten Drew heads off to catch the bus (132) to work. He is working this morning and taking this afternoon off as flexitime for us to get to the airport a day early, rather than having a mad rush tomorrow. [Or, as my sister puts it, I'm a slave driver making poor Drew work on the day of travel 😂]. I leave you to judge that one, dear reader!

Check-in

At home I finish washing and drying the clothes, wash and dry the dishes, create the blog post about the night before, sort some final emails and turn the electric off around the house and setting the heating to holiday mode. 

Then at 11.50am, my phone notifications announces that Check in is open for the flight tomorrow. 

I open the Qantas app and, instead of the labourious process of typing in all the details from the passport, as I have always had to do before I simply scan the key page in the passport and the app fills it in. 

This works really quickly, very literally two clicks per passport, so we are both checked-in by 11.52am.

Leaving for the Journey - Part 2 

I leave the house at 12.10pm for the scheduled 12.25pm bus. In the tradition of good Welsh weather it is pouring down with rain. My sister What's App'ed to ask if I was getting a taxi to the National Express Coach station. She must be kidding I have an over 60s bus card, travelling to Cardiff is free, why would I pay!! Thankfully, I had packed my 'Mac in a Sac', which we bought while on holiday in Dartmoor two years ago, in my hand luggage, so had it ready to stay dry in my walk to the bus stop. 

The reliable 132 service that travels through Tongwynlais every 12 minutes in day time arrived at 12.25pm right on time

The bus wasn't full and the luggage rack had plenty of space for my case, so it was a comfortable journey down to Blackweir where we arrived at 12.24pm, ready for the walk across Bute Park to the National Express Coach Station.

National Express

I arrive at the National Express Coach station at 1pm only 65 minutes before departure, not bad, given I've sometimes been two hours early😀

Drew walks the few hundred yards from his work to the Coach Station arriving at 1.30pm. At 1.50pm the bus pulls in. It is going to Gatwick via Heathrow. 

Our e-ticket checked on the phone, our luggage stowed on the Coach and it leaves at 2.05pm, right on time. 

Drew turns to me, and for the first, but surely not the last time on this holiday says: "Dingo ate my baby". It makes a nice variation on the more traditional journey question: "Are we there yet"

The Coach stops at Newport for some additional passengers and then goes via the M48 to stop at Bristol Coach station for passengers to get on and off and for a driver change. We arrive at the Bus Station in Heathrow at 5.35pm.

The route to Terminal 4, where our hotel is, was well signposted. So we went down one floor in the lift, to a moving walkway which leads to Terminal 3 and then down another lift to the Elizabeth Line station under that Terminal. A free ticket machine dispenses transfer tickets and we go through the ticket barriers and on to the platform for the train to Terminal 4

We get on the train at 5.50pm and arrive at Terminal 4 at 5.55pm. We then walk a short distance through a tunnel which crosses a number of busy roads arriving at the hotel at 6.05pm and check in.

IHG - International Hotel Group 

In 2019 we travelled to Hawai'i and Alaska as the last two of the fifty US states we hadn't visited. At that time we stayed in a variety of hotels, and in Fairbanks, with none of our, then regular, Choice Hotels we stayed in a IHG hotel, the Holiday Inn. While there for four days we won a prize drawer they were running to earn Gold Status with IHG. This status was extended for a few years post-pandemic, so on our first overseas trip last year, we used it to book a lot of IHG hotels. Indeed, between the train trip around Europe and the the half-marathons Drew was running in Lisbon and Valencia, we ended up staying in IHG hotels for 20 days, enough to extend our Gold Status into 2024. This influenced our choice of hotels for this holiday.

There are a number of IHG hotels in Heathrow, but this one is the only one which doesn't involved leaving the airport on a bus. So, even though there is a Holiday Inn at Terminal 3, where we catch our plane tomorrow, it is a bus ride from the terminal. Whereas the Crowne Plaza is attached to Terminal 4, meaning transit from one to the other is entirely undercover and not reliant on the notorious bad traffic around the airport. It also, as the photo above shows, is quite impressive. Captain Jack seems to have settled in well as you can see below:

It is worth pointing out to people who don't follow these blogs every year that even more photos of the hotel and other parts of the journey are available on Flickr - you are welcome to supplement your blog reading with the photos there.