Singapore - London Heathrow - Manchester

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OMG, we were surrounded by children on the leg from Singapore to London!! There was a man and his young daughter in front of us, a young boy across the aisle from Bernie and another man and his daughter behind us! My idea of hell. The little darling sitting behind me kicked and pushed the back of my seat for almost all of the 13 hours that this leg took. Despite this irritation I did manage to sleep for some of the flight. When I gave up trying to sleep to the staccato rhythm of kick, kick, kick in the back of my seat I watched ‘Milk’ - another movie that I did not manage to see while it was screening in Melbourne.

Finally, we arrived at London Heathrow at 5.30am - Bernie feeling well rested and me feeling like my kidneys may be bruised?! We landed at Terminal 4 and had to find our way to Terminal 5 for our domestic flight to Manchester. It is very well signed and we didn’t have any trouble finding our way to the shuttle bus to bus us over to Terminal 5. At Terminal 5 we cleared immigration and cleared about three X-ray checks before we were able to proceed to the departure lounge. Rather surprisingly we did not have to pass through any thermal imaging devices. It was a bit like swine flu, what swine flu?? Bernie saw one person at Singapore wearing a face mask, but other than that there hasn’t been anything to indicate that there is any sort of world-wide health alert going on.

On our flight from London to Manchester we saw one more person who was wearing a face mask. We didn’t even think about even carrying face masks with us let alone wearing them to guard against the swine flu. Russell and Joanne showed us their face masks while we were still in Melbourne. They had some very classy looking ones supplied by their son who works at Dandenong hospital. The masks were white and orange and Russell told us that when they are worn they form a sort of orange duck beak effect. He wouldn’t demonstrate for us though!! I wonder if they will end up using any of them?? So far, from what we have seen, one would be very much in the minority if deciding to wear one. They do not seem to be de rigueur in Europe as they are in Mexico!!!

We bounced onto the runway in Manchester, but had an otherwise ordinary flight up. We were served surprisingly palatable warm ham and egg ciabattas during the flight. We already had breakfast before we landed at Heathrow, but what the hey, we ate breakfast again! There’s nothing like eating every three hours and doing no exercise to make one feel like a bloated pig!

As we were waiting at the baggage carousel I heard our name called over the PA which is never a good thing. We went over to the baggage information counter to be told that our bags had not made the connection at Heathrow and would not be arriving in Manchester until later in the morning!! While we were at the counter another passenger named Gaffney came up to the counter so the guy behind the desk had to double check to make sure it was our bags and not hers that were missing. Unfortunately he confirmed that it was our bags not hers that were still in London. So we filled in the necessary paperwork to have the luggage delivered to Stalybridge when it finally makes it to Manchester. Ah well, less luggage to be manhandled to the hire car!
We used the facilities before heading off to collect the hire car. The delay proved to be fortuitous because, just as we were about to leave the terminal, there was another announcement over the PA for us. We went to the information counter where they told us that one of our bags had now turned up and if we could just wait a moment it would be brought through to us. So, in a couple of minutes we were reunited with Bernie’s bag. My bag,however, was still in transit!!

With half our luggage now in tow, we made our way to the Hertz counter to collect our hire car. I was still a bit anxious about this as our voucher indicated that we were expected to collect the car on Friday the 22nd of May which was yesterday. I sent an email to their enquiry area earlier in the week to alert them to the fact that we would not be in the country until Saturday. What a waste of effort that was. ‘You were supposed to collect the car yesterday’ we were told. ‘Yes, we know, we sent you an email to explain that we would not be collecting the car until Saturday’. ‘Hmmmmn, let’s see what we can do’. Aaaarrgh, why do we always have hassles when it comes to collecting our hire cars? More to the point, how is it that our travel agents always stuff it up???? Next time I think we shall book directly over the internet.

Finally, someone out on the lot found a vehicle that could be signed out to us, but we would have to wait while it was cleaned. What a relief! And, as luck would have it, it is a 2.0 litre rather than a 1.6 litre Ford Focus, so a slight upgrade to boot! So, we kicked back in the Hertz office for about half an hour or so while they cleaned it for us. When we finally made our way out to the car it smelled like cherry cough syrup and the carpet in the footwells was still wet from being shampooed!! But, we finally had wheels so it was all good.

Bernie rigged up TomTom and we set off on the last leg of our epic journey from Hallam to Stalybridge. TomTom worked a treat with only one little hiccup where we were in the wrong lane to change from the M60 to the M67 and ended up going through Denton rather than sticking on the motorways! But TomTom was cool about it and simply directed us back onto the motorway when able to do so.

After all the fuffing around about the bags and the hire car it was late morning by the time that we finally arrived to a warm welcome from Kath and Albert. The rest of the day was uneventful. We popped out to Tescos for a couple of things and then relaxed until tea time. After dinner we managed a couple of games of cards before we decided that we really needed to get some sleep at about 10.00pm.

And I have no idea how active (or more likely inactive) we have been since we left home as the pedometer is dead! I’m not sure if it just needs a new battery or if I need to buy yet another pedometer?! I guess we will start out with checking the battery in the next day or so and take it from there?

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