Tag Archives: Gatwick

Travel Travails Continued-

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Last week I described the tangled web of bureaucracy involved in preparations for travel in these plague-ridden times. I’d ploughed through the covid vaccination pass instructions, overcome the troubling and confusing business of ordering tests and ascertained the whereabouts of the mysterious ‘drop boxes’. I’d purchased our tests for return. I’d written a timetable for us to ensure we do the correct things in the right order on the appropriate days leading up to departure and on our return. I was not feeling confident or smug, but I was feeling I’d done as much as I was able to get us prepared.

The plague feels like it’s lasted a long time, now. Does anyone elase out there long for the days when, if we wished to step beyond the confines of our own, squidgy little island we could just bag a passport and go? It’s bad enough for Husband and me, that we also have to be mindful of carting along the correct medications and in the right quantities [as contingency, you understand] as we get older and more decrepit.

This is all before we even begin to think about packing anything. Normally, at this time of year we’d be jetting off somewhere hot, for winter sun, a chance to loll about on a lounger sipping something cool and delicious. It’s always tricky packing for an extreme temperature change and we’ve come adrift before on our return, freezing to death on a frosty station, waiting for a train to come. This time, because we’re travelling to a notoriously cold place we’ll be all prepared, or at least I do hope so!

News today [Tuesday] has it that the return-from-abroad tests are being dropped. I begin to feel incensed that I’ve bought them, until I see they’re to be dropped from the day we return. We’ll still need to do pre-flight PCR tests and find out about the pre-return ‘passenger locator forms’.

Owing to changes to our flights by that highly-rated, luxurious airline, Easyjet, we’ve had to jiggle the dates of our trip. Easyjet saw fit to change our return flights to a different airport from our departure one. I wonder which operative thought this would be a good idea? Fly from Gatwick, London and return to Luton, many miles away…Suppose we’d opted to drive to airport?

Our flights on Monday morning are indecently early, at 8.00am, meaning Sunday trains, a hotel stay and a rude awakening, which provokes a frisson of anxiety. The time window for the PCR fit-to-fly tests is 72 hours, but 48 hours needs to be reserved for the results to come back to us. I’ve worked out that if we do the tests, register them and drop them off at the fabled ‘drop-off’ box nearest to us we should just about get the results before we depart for the airport- provided everything goes as the company, Randox, suggests. Hmmm…

For now, though I’m turning my attention towards all things warn and cosy. My Peruvian hat with flaps has arrived, I have my fleecy lined walking trousers and sufficient thermal layers for the ascent of Everest [no, we’re not going there!]. If we don’t get off the ground, one thing is guaranteed- I’ll be warm enough for the journey home!

Flight. A Dubious Pleasure.

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Once we’ve returned home from the Italian lakes in our camper van there’s barely a week to go before we are off again-this time by air. A week is just enough time to tackle the mountain of laundry we’ve brought back, scrub the van until it’s spotless, host a modest family gathering and even undertake a basic garden tidy-up, before we think about what we will need in our next destination: visiting friends in beautiful Norway.

Although our flights are booked, we’ve not opted to check in any suitcases, thinking that with the budget airline we’re using we’ll try and make do with hand luggage. In effect, however this is impossible-there are medicines and basics in sponge bags to take. Whatever do other people do? We suck it up, compromise and pay for one checked in case.

Due to my health shortcomings we are unable to travel to Gatwick early in the morning so I book us into an on-airport hotel for the night which means a rail trip or two, but it all goes smoothly except that my small, ancient cabin bag chooses now to foul up by having its handle stuck out. Then I’m compelled to buy a new one from the bag-wrap man at Gatwick. Once we’re installed in the hotel we can relax in the bar with its outstanding view of the short-stay, multi-story car park.

So far so good-and dinner is acceptable. But the room’s air-con will not sink below 20 degrees and the squidgy bed has a hugely thick quilt, which all makes for a hot and uncomfortable night.

Next morning we cross the road to the terminal and get the dinky shuttle to the south terminal, where the check in queue is mercifully short.

We do the security thing. Queue in the pen, unload everything into trays, walk through the door-frame, collect the trays, repack everything, wait for Husband. Husband, being special, has a personalised scan due to his pacemaker. At last, reunited at the repacking bay, we can trundle past all the ‘duty-free’ outlets for an outrageously expensive coffee, which has not deterred the massed swarms of people in transit, judging by the lack of empty tables.

I wander the shopping outlets, the activity the airport has summoned us early for, picking up a bottle of water and some wet wipes. We get another coffee.

It is time to go to ‘gate’. Our departure gate lies at the outermost extent of the airport’s appendages, which requires us to trundle along lengthy corridors punctuated by travelators. The wheelie case grumbles along the moving pavement like an angry bee. There is another wait and we are finally summoned to the queue for seats in the poky cylinder in which we are to spend our next two hours.

The flight is busier than I expected and we must share our row of three seats with another, but we all smile politely and greet in our British way as the cabin staff do their demo and check that we’re strapped in while the plane rolls along in its own queue towards the runway. From the porthole I spot the assorted planes in front and behind us as we wait our turn; then we are in position, breath-holding until the engines roar and we are hurtling along, that brief momentary flutter of panic that we may not rise before the end of the tarmac but we are up, up and away.

On this two hour flight there is no trolley service [unless you buy it], no small bag of nibbles and a drink, no warm tissue, no screens. We settle down to read until the aircraft begins its descent into Oslo, where we are to change for the onward flight, and have to undergo security again despite going through the transfer corridor. What are we supposed to have procured en route? The rigorous security man confiscates the unopened water I’ve bought at Gatwick and tips the water out of my reusable one. Wonderful.

Later we are high above the snowy peaks along Norway’s west coast and then descending into Aalesund. Looking down on the stunning landscape is enough to make me forget all the hassle of flying.

But the last time we came was by van. Drive to the port, check in, show passports, queue for 45 minutes [enough time to brew up a coffee] and drive on to the ferry. Read, have breakfast, drive off. No contest!