The journey home begins!

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Our flight isn't until early this evening so we had a whole day to fill in without really doing anything! The weather has turned cold and wet - I guess that will acclimatise us for the weather back in Melbourne??!

Bernie and Albert went to the airport about 10.00am to return the hire car. The car is due back at 2.00pm, but our flight from Manchester to Heathrow is not until 6.50pm. We rang yesterday to see if the return time could be stretched at all because we really don't want to be at the airport at 2-2.30pm when we don't fly until nearly 7.00pm. Hertz would not budge at all on the drop-off time for the car and, when asked if we could drop the car at another depot, told us that that would incur a £42.00 surcharge!!! There really was no alternative but to make an extra trip between Stalybridge and Manchester Airport which Albert very kindly offered to do. I'm sure we have hired with other companies in the past that have been much more flexible.

When he returned from the airport Bernie rang to confirm the time of our flight from Manchester to Heathrow. Our tickets said 6.50pm, but the website said 7.25pm. Sure enough, the British Airways flight had been moved to 7.25pm. We hope that it is on time because that has shaved half an hour off the time we have to transfer from Terminal 5 to Terminal 3 at Heathrow for our Qantas flight to Melbourne.

Once our bags were re-packed, we filled in the rest of the day blogging and processing photos, watching the golf and reading a bit. We had a very light lunch and then an early dinner that Kath prepared for us to tide us over until we get fed by Qantas later tonight.

We headed off to the airport at about 4.45pm with Kath and Albert. They dropped us off and we headed to the BA counter to check-in. We weren't too concerned about the weight of our bags because our Qantas Club membership entitles us to two bags and up to 32kg of checked luggage each. Unfortunately, their One World partner British Airways doesn't care!! We managed to check two bags in without any problem, but then we had our bag of bike gear that we also wanted to check-in. Hmmn, the BA rep told us that she would have to charge us for excess baggage at £47.00/kilo if we wanted to check it in ... or we could take it as carry-on luggage. It's so crazy BA quibbling over whether or not we could check the extra bag in when we were let take it as carry-on without any trouble??? I'm sure it doesn't weigh any less if it is carried in the passenger compartment rather than the hold?!!

So, after we took our bags to the 'special' drop-off point for soft-sided bags, we carted our four pieces of carry-on luggage to the security screening point. No-one seemed to care about the amount of carry-on luggage that we had BUT there was a little problem with the contents of the bag with the bike gear in it. Because we took our own pedals with us for the bike tour there was a pedal spanner in the bag and you're not allowed to take spanners in your carry-on luggage!!!! The pedals are OK though?!

What I wonder is - are spanners banned because they are a potential weapon or because a spanner could be used to assemble a bomb on board the plane??? If it is the former, a bike pedal would make a pretty good dent in someone's head if you used it as a weapon, but presumably 'bike pedal' isn't on the list of items that can't be taken on board in carry-on luggage. If we had known that we wouldn't be able to check the bag in we could have packed differently and made sure it only contained innocuous contents.

Finally, minus Bernie's bike spanner, we were able to head for the BA lounge to wait for our flight to Heathrow. At least they were prepared to recognise our Qantas Club membership for reciprocal lounge entitlements!! While we waited the announcement came over to say that our flight to Heathrow would be delayed. The window for transferring to Terminal 3 is getting narrower.

We eventually took off for Heathrow nearly an hour later than our original 6.50pm departure time. When we arrived at Heathrow we just had time to take the bus from Terminal 5 to Terminal 3, claim our VAT back on the purchase of the new camera lens and board our Qantas flight to Melbourne. I don't think that Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs really wants tourists to claim their VAT refund because it was really difficult to find the office where we had to have our claim form stamped!!! Even then, it's not like we got the cash back in our hand. We had to post the stamped claim form back to Camera World and eventually, in the fullness of time, we will have a cheque mailed to us ... we hope. Not counting that chicken until it is hatched!!

Our journey home finally got properly underway when we took off from Heathrow bound for Hong Kong at 10.30pm. And we were in our preferred seats - 71J and 71K - down the back of the aircraft. Albert and been doom and gloom all day and reckoned we would be lucky if BA at Manchester would issue our Qantas boarding passes and that our requested seats would have been reallocated by the time we could get to the Qantas desk at Heathrow. Despite the quibble over luggage allowances, we were issued with our boarding passes for our Heathrow - Hong Kong - Melbourne flight, in our requested seats, at the BA check-in desk in Manchester. If we had missed out on those seats THAT would have been more upsetting than having the pedal spanner confiscated!!

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