Well, it’s over. After a long, tedious but punctual flight I landed at East Midlands airport just after 11pm yesterday, along with about half-a-dozen other planes. As a result it took a long time to just get off the plane – all the buses were busy – and then get through UK Border Control – the queue stretched out of the entry hall, down a couple of corridors, and back out onto the airport tarmac. At least taking a while to get through there meant that there was no real holdup in the baggage hall – the bags were already on the conveyors by the time I got there.
I had a certain amount of fun finding the Premier Inn but did so eventually, and hit my pillow at just before 1am; which was actually nearer 3am, Greek time. Then I woke up at about 5:30 and, because I felt quite wide awake, decided to get up and get on the road as quickly as possible. As a result I was pulling into my drive just before 7 o’clock this morning, which meant that Val and I had a chance to see each other for a few minutes and have a chat talk before she headed off to Stoke at about 7:15.
I did learn something interesting while waiting for the flight home. I had a chat with a couple who had missed the flight out a week earlier because of the hold-ups own the M1 – I blogged about this in an earlier post. Because of the holdups they missed the flight – they arrived at the airport at about the time the plane was taking off. When they spoke to Ryanair they were in fact offered a free switch, either to a flight on Friday from East Midlands, or a flight at 7am the following morning (last Tuesday) from Leeds Bradford and they decided to do the latter. They left their car in the car park at East Midlands and hired a car, one way, to drive to Leeds Bradford which they reached later on Monday, and they spent the night in the public lounge at there airport. Obviously they had to pay for the car hire themselves, but it was good to hear that Ryanair responded so positively to their problem – I think Ryanair would have been within their rights to say “you missed the plane, so that’s it”.
So that’s the end of this year’s Greece trip. Here’s a link to a Summary & Review page about it.
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