Back to the UK!

Another two week blog this time and not many photos either, sorry.

Monday (22 April), as we had a 4:15am alarm set, neither of us had a good nights sleep. An Uber prebooked for 5:00am, by 4:40am was sitting outside waiting for us, so, as it was there, we left early, we were 3/4 of the way to the airport by 5:00am.

We still could not check in online, and had not heard from the Travel Agent, so had to join the check-in queue, which was not too long. The AirCanada check in staff were great, there was obviously a problem with our booking in their system, but they just dealt with it and printed our boarding passes! Time for breakfast.

6 minutes before boarding we received an email from the travel Agent, informing us they had reissued the tickets. Great timing! At the Boarding gate, our boarding passes made the scanner beep! They had re assigned our seats, unfortunately not together! However, when on board, Rog was sitting in a row on his own, so Nic moved.

An uneventful 5 hour flight to Toronto, in order to transit we had to go through security again, this time they didn’t like the small knife in a camping cutlery set we have carried through Heathrow, Toronto, Panama and San Jose airports, but what can you say, you can’t discuss it with them, once they have made a decision there is no going back! So lost the knife.

Our flight to Heathrow was shown as leaving from Gate E65, but there were no signs showing gate E65, so they then changed the boarding gate to E67, as they have a stand E65, where the plane was parked, but no boarding gate E65! Confusing eh!

Thankfully another uneventful flight, we both managed a couple of hours napping.

As we had no check in bags, and there was no queue at passport control we were through Heathrow really quickly, so we stopped for a coffee to ‘land’ properly.

Then the underground into London, a meal (not sure whether it was breakfast, lunch or dinner given the time difference), at All Bar One, then the train down to Kent to family.

We both fell asleep on the couch for an hour or so, despite builders working on the house.

Wednesday, just a day to recover from the flights.

Thursday, we headed back up to London, went indoor skydiving at the O2 arena, which was good fun, but a lot physically harder than we thought it would be. After dinner and drinks at the O2, we saw Take That in concert! A great night!

Friday, we got the train to York, and the bus to Pocklington, and checked into an AirBnB for 11 nights.

Then spent the next few days seeing family and sorting our stuff out again, prepping for a summer of UK travels, including volunteering at some festivals, Glastonbury here we come!

We had to pitch the new tent, to check that

A. we could do it &

B. all the bits were there,

thankfully it was a yes to both.

Wednesday (1 May) we collected the car that we bought back in February, for those interested in cars it is a Volvo XC90 2.4 R design, All wheel drive 2010 year, and for those really interested in cars it’s Black.

Thursday, local elections for the Police and crime commissioner, we haven’t voted in the UK for 20 plus years, so we exercised our democratic rights! We saw more friends and family, including swapping stories with someone who travelled through Central America in the 1960s.

Friday, we helped out at a coffee morning held in aid of the Marie Curie charity, we ran the tombola stall, everybody else had done the hard work of labelling all the prizes and dealing with all the tickets, we just persuaded people to buy them!

The evening saw a couple of drinks and food with family.

Saturday, helped out again at a Marie Curie plant sale, took the leftover Tombola, and sold the rest of the tickets!

The Tombola made £165 in total. No final total for the whole events yet.

In the afternoon Rog went to Bradford Salam Rugby club to watch Pocklington play in the semi final of the local ‘plate’ competition, Pock lost 43 – 12, it was a brutal game as some of the Bradford players were BIG.

Sunday, start of the packing up process ( to leave on Tuesday), then a walk round Burnby Hall Gardens, plus coffee.