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Published: August 30th 2012
Hi All,
Firstly sorry, about the mix up,we published this last night and we had a technical difficulty,(me) I amended a spelling mistake and deleated the whole blog entry, Doh !!
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We had gotten back from our adventures in Derby and I only had three days left at work before our next big trip began, which has been planned since March this year and time has passed ridiculously fast.
As I type this it’s five past three in the morning and I am wide awake, we were so shattered from the flight, but I will get to that a bit later!
Caroline said to me a while ago that she wondered if I would have ever been excited about going back to the UK, but truthfully now, I really am to reinforce the connection with our friends and family.
I finished work at about 11.30 on Friday morning, one of my colleagues took me to the Hertz car rental place where I would collect our hire car that would take us to Sydney.
The car was collected and all the paper work was done and soon I was parked at home and back
Smiley Faces
Jan and Ted, yep !! probably being drinking to muchin doors to where Caroline was just finalising the packing. I quickly showered and shaved and finally zipped the cases up and we were ready for the off.
With the car loaded we headed out of Canberra, Caroline asked me how I felt and I think it was “shell shock” mixed in with the sense of relief, mixed in with the jubilation of having 5 weeks off work ahead of me.
The journey to Sydney started off very wet, they had even forecast snow in Canberra, I haven’t seen so much rain for a long time, but as we got closer to Sydney the weather seemed to go from miserable to lovely as if we crossed some sort of invisible border (actually we had, maybe that was coming out of the ACT and into New South Wales).
We arrived at Ted and Jan’s at about 4.30 which would be our first stop on this trip, they had kindly agreed to put us up for the night and it was great to see them.
We went out with Jan and Ted to the Old Bull and Bush which is a favourite pub of ours when we are
with Jan and ted, as the food is fantastic, we had a great laugh that evening with a couple of drinks just giggling about life really.
It’s funny that we are leaving from Jan and Ted’s house today, I said to Jan that it seems our big adventures seem to start here, as this is the place we left when we purchased the Land cruiser, back in March 2012.
When we got back from the pub it was late and we were both bushed, and hit the sack straight away, and as soon as morning had arrived I was up long before the rest of the house hold as I just wanted to do a couple of e-mails that needed attention before we left.
I took Caroline her tea at 06.30 and wished her a ‘Happy Anniversary” as today is our twenty second wedding anniversary.
After I slipped Caroline’s tea on to her night stand, she looked all cosy and lovely in there so a slipped back under the sheets for an extra 10 minutes, which did turn out to be about an hour, Caroline said she wanted a shower and as it takes her so
On the Wing
The Sun, going to bed much longer than I do so she was elected to be first in the shower so I elected to get comfy in bed and have some more Zzzzz’s.
When Caroline reappeared, she was fully presentable so I climbed out of bed and we went out to see what Ted and Jan were up to, Ted asked if we would like a Bacon and Egg “Banjo” for breakfast and I wonder how you could ever say no to anything that contained bacon and egg.
I noticed a present that had been wrapped in really colour paper and commented to Jan just how nice I thought the paper was, and gently stroked the very shiny finish of the print, and as Jan and ted had their nieces Birthday party this afternoon, naturally thought it was the Birthday present they were taking with them.
Jan handed me the Card and said, “Happy Anniversary” oh wow, did I feel a complete burke and explained my embarrassment away, how thoughtful was it that one of our special group of friends had got us a anniversary present, we were moved.
It has always been a tradition that we have always done something
Fire, fire burning bright.
Busg fires over Australia from 38,000 feet special on 18
th August and today was not exception, as we were flying back to where our journey began, back to the UK. I nearly typed the word “home” but the UK is not our home, they say “home is where the heart is”, and this is Australia for me, certainly at the moment.
We left just after Ted left, their home in Winston Hills, it was about 09.40 when we pulled off Jan and Teds drive waving like a pair of lunatics on an away day from the asylum.
Our Journey to the airport was about 55 minutes and Jan had produced some spectacular notes to get us there without any bother. We dumped the rental car back at Hertz and have the bloke go over it: top to toe just to ensure he signed the car off being returned with no damage.
Our luggage was decanted and we dragged it along to the departure lounge and we went and checked our luggage at the British Airways desk.
We tried for an upgrade but to no avail, the only upgrade they had was the 8 hours to Singapore, by then the excitement would have worn
Cartridges
Caroline's box of 12 gage cartridges off and then you would have to go back and sit in the cr*p “cattle “ seats, and this is at just the point when the novelty has worn off, your sense of humour has complete vanished and you just want to sit in a seat with some room, come to that I was not going to pay an additional $1200.00 just for better peanuts, what do they think we are monkies?
Now you may think, this swish, as we have mentioned the Qantas Club before, but it’s not, all it is, is a designated area owned by Qantas, where you can go and sit and feed your face and drink all their beer, wine and champagne until there is no room left as it is all free, and we get this service at a cost to the company because we are such frequent flyers, Caroline totted it up, in the last 6 weeks we have both flown about 50 + hours and believe me the novelty has definitely worn off, I think both Caroline and myself have individually flown over 150,000 miles on business alone, as well as driving over 60,000 K’s around Australia.
We sat in
the Qantas Lounge, ordered food and watched the 747’s and A380’s thunder down the runway and take to the sky I am always amazed just how big these aircraft are and they actually fly.
Our flight was called, it was 3.45 and we boarded the British Airways 747 and what a tatty of piece of junk it was, I think they must have taken it out of the Being Museum for this flight, it may even have been the original prototype, only joking.
As usual I had a window seat, I can’t bear the thought of missing everything and just love to watch the world go by, It’s a pain in the back side when you want to get up and use the loo when there are people sitting against the aisle, but that’s the trade off.
The flight to Singapore was pretty good, Caroline and I agreed it would be best if we didn’t sleep at all, so we would be tired on the second leg, (Singapore to London).
We arrived in Singapore at around midnight Australia time.(10.00pm Singapore Time), we felt like sh*t and hurried off to the Qantas club as we both wanted
Sunset
On Derby Jetty a shower and if we had time, may be something to eat.
My shower booth was just fantastic, clean plenty of hot water and big comfy towels, and Molton Brown smelly stuff to wash with, what could be better, after brushing my teeth and changing clothes, I felt great, even though I was definitely not looking forwards to the next leg of the flight (13+ hours).
The plane had been refuelled, the crew had been changed, when we got back on, they were all fresh and smiley, we went back to the same seat, the pillows and blankets had been changed, I could just not find any solitude in sitting here again for another 13 or so hours, it would be akin to Japanese water torture.
We settled in to our seats and the plane came off the ground at about 1.30am Australia time, 11.30 Singapore time as I would not adjust my watch until we were on UK time, so I could easily see how long the journey had taken. I think I must of managed to stay awake until just after the main undercarriage went up.
I have just woken up, the flight time
remaining says 4:48. I can vaguely remember a while ago waking briefly and Andy looked at me and said we had broken the back of the journey.
The cabin is slowly coming back to life with people waking and turning on lights for reading or watching the inflight entertainment. This leg of the journey was to be approximately 12.5 hours - somewhere along the way gaining a little bit of time which has shortened the flight.
Life for approximately 24 hours becomes institutionalised In a large metal dart with a tiny little space that you can call your own, fortunately we had a lovely lady sat next to us and every now and again throughout the flight we chatted.
We find out that she also lives in Canberra.
I feel wide awake very quickly, at some point during the flight the temperature dropped for the first time since leaving Sydney, so I deployed the standard BA blanket - Andy was using his as a pillow. I looked over at him a few times uring the second leg of the flight and he seemed to be sound asleep, just a tad grumpy when the flight attendant woke
him up so that he could put his seat back up while dinner was served. That was only because he was tired but we all know that it is just courteous to the passengers in behind you.
We are now breakfasted and just coming into land, the captain tells us that it is twenty to five in the morning and the temperature is 18 degrees and lookinglikely to be a lovely summers day. bring it on England!
We left our home in Canberra on Friday lunchtime and drove up to Jan and Teds in Sydney for an overnight stop and left theirs at around 9.30 yesterday morning (Saturday) we have now been travelling for over 28 hours since then, but surprisingly feel quite refreshed but I can assure I won't be feeling that way later on today.
We are both very excited to be landing soon, for Andy this is his first visit back since we left the UK nearly four years ago and surprisingly he was looking forward to the visit, and there was a time that I thought he would never come back.
We touched down at exactly 5.45 am UK time and were
really excited to be flying over London, we managed to pick out the new Olympic Stadium, and other cool landmarks.
We quickly got through the UK Border Patrol our British passports got us through in a flash, the man looked at my passport and asked where I had just flown in from, I told him and he said "welcome back".
The sun was well and truly up, and the day was really warm, and hopefully in November this year we will be the proud owners of shiny and new Australian Passports which we are really excited about.
We collected our Hertz car, payed the money and turned out of the car park and onto the M25 clockwise heading towards Welwyn Garden City, where Andy’s sister Jane lives and his Mum resides in her care home.
To be continued Kj
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Jo Trouble
Jo McCarthy
Belated congrats!
Belated congratulations on your 22 years of marriage - I think it was a bit mean of BA to not come to the party with an upgrade in celebration! Hope you're having a great time back in your former home :-)