On our way at last.

Good grief where did the time go. Arriving back in August with six weeks to go seemed like an age and now here we are at Heathrow waiting to take off!
It was all go with the family this weekend and those two days with them flew by. Loads of hugs and kisses from the grandchildren as the taxi turned up at 5.30pm on Sunday. Expected to leave Milton Keynes coach station at 6pm but the Sunday traffic jams delayed the coaches arrival. It was nearer to 6.35pm when we did get underway and the usual M25 hold ups made the arrival at Heathrow even later. Then trying to find the hotel hopper bus was a nightmare. Up and down in the lifts numerous times each time getting off at the wrong floor (no it wasn't ground floor that we needed but floor 1and the lift we took was to the car parks!) and when we did finally get to the bus stop, saw the hopper disappearing into the distance with another not turning up for another 40 minutes. Eventually arrived at the Travel Lodge hotel and into our room only to discover the air conditioning fan was sooooo loud and couldn't be switched off and the door to the bathroom wouldn't stay shut as the lock was broken. So after a complaint to the manager got moved to another room. Needless to say it was quite late before we went to bed and that alarm at 7am came all too soon.
Breakfast was good all you could eat for £7.95. Money not very well spent as far as I was concerned. Not being a good flyer that sickening stomach knot just wouldn't go away so trying to force a full English down wasn't something I wanted to do. Anyway the toast went down well followed by copious amounts of tea. The hopper bus took us back Terminal 3 and now we await the call to proceed to the gate. We land on Tuesday Sydney time 8pm, but it will be early Wednesday here in the UK.

From the hotel