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Published: November 25th 2008
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Ashford Station
They don't even have waiting rooms at the station, you have to stand on the platform and freeze. The big day arrives, thankfully not raining but it had turned cold with an icy wind and from the weather forecast it would appear we are escaping just before the cold weather hits.
Taxi to the station and then we buy our tickets. No wonder the trains are struggling, I can probably fly to Spain for less than it costs for a single ticket to London. We now have to start to manoeuvre our four wheelie bags through the transport system.
It starts with the new gates that have been installed at the station. There was a large one for disabled access so we asked the guy standing next to it - who holds the key to this magic place - if we can use it. Not a problem, he unlocks it and then stands in the way so we have to squeeze past him, would probably have been easier through the normal gates, was it deliberate I wonder because we’re off on holiday and he isn’t?
An uneventful ride to London and now we have to tackle the underground. We buy our tickets and make our way to the platform, fortunately there is only one change on the way. You would have thought that maybe a major station such as Charing Cross would have had a direct line to the airport - but no.
Now the underground does have lots of escalators which are a bit tricky when you are dragging two bags and one them of them pretty large, but with a bit of practice you can manage to balance them on the steps just right. I guess whoever designed the undergrounds likes a bit of a joke because you get about half way to where you need to be and he slips in a nice long flight of steps and not a lift in sight. Now I couldn’t manage to carry the large bags down the steps as they were too heavy and too unwieldy so that meant Andy was running up and down like a mad man.
Eventually we get onto the tube, make our change and now have a long ride to the airport giving us plenty of time to study the passengers. The usual person who simply has to phone everyone on their contact list and have a long conversation with them all in a foreign language, lots of mentions of ‘passport office’ - hope they weren’t illegals. The guy that sat next to me obviously works in a spice shop as the smell was so strong it was quite unpleasant, and I love a good curry!
At last we get to Heathrow, no problem with access there, too early to check in so look for a restaurant for lunch. The only one we could find was an Italian which served pasta and pizza which Andy hates, so we had a coffee and left. We did eventually find another pub type place right at one end but it was too late by then.
We had checked in on-line the night before so only had to drop our bags which was very quick. Through security where you have to strip - well almost, take off your shoes, belt, jacket, hat, no no not your trousers!
Finally we were through, found a good old Wetherspoons for lunch and finally it felt as though the holiday had started.
Our flight was half an hour late taking off but we made the time up on the way. The supper was lasagne or chicken and ratatouille with duram wheat, you could be forgiven for thinking we had flown one of those dodgy airlines and not good old British Airways - whatever happened to English food?
On the plus side, the steward was very liberal with the drinks, you’d like red wine? Here take 2 bottles, a beer? Here have 2. Not sure if he was trying to get us drunk so we’d sleep, was trying to cut down on his work or just feeling generous.
The plane wasn’t very full but it was just our luck to have someone sitting on the end of our 3 seats who wasn’t interested in moving. Even though we made our elbows quite awkward and kept needing to get out, he still didn’t take the hint.
The flight was good though and went very quickly with us being served breakfast at 3am GMT as we were landing in an hour or so.
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