A Great Adventure, Part 2

Another Day of Travelling

Tuesday, May 2^nd 2017

I checked and re-checked all the packing, had breakfast, then we loaded the car with what we were taking with us. At around 10am, we set off for Heathrow. 

It isn’t really that far from S’s house, but it took us two hours!! After leaving our car with valet parking and making sure we had all our luggage and papers with us, we went to find the meeting place where we were to meet our tour group. I had remembered it as being Starbucks, but in fact it was Café Nero – well, that was close enough J

The company we had booked with met us first – we were dutifully wearing our ID tags round our necks – and they introduced us to the others and the tour group leaders, John and Jim, who would be coming with us to keep us in order. In all, there were to be 26 of us on the tour. Once we were all assembled (no, we weren’t last), we set off to get through security, which, because of our destination, was more stringent than we had been used to before. (yes, I am aware I haven’t told you what that destination is yet, but be patient and all will be revealed in due course). Once through security, we had about an hour before boarding, so everyone scattered to get some lunch. We got a sandwich at Pret a Manger and some water from Smiths. we also wandered around a bit and got a couple of photos of planes on the ground from the viewing window.

Eventually we were all on the plane. I had never been on such a large plane before. Not only did it have seats either side of the aisle, but it actually had two aisles with a bank of seats between them. As we were travelling as a group, we were all seated close together. OH and I were next to the window (him) and in the middle (me) of a set of three seats. A lady (Mary) was seated on the aisle end of our row and her husband (Philip) was seated behind her, also on the aisle end.

There was a delay on take-off. Apparently a woman had been taken ill, so they needed to take her off the flight. Good thing we hadn’t already taken off really. Anyway, they also managed to retrieve her luggage from the hold. It was all very efficient and we were only delayed by half an hour or so. I hoped the woman was okay, but I was also eager to be off.

The take-off was very smooth – the smoothest I have experienced. Not that I am much travelled on planes, but I’ve been on a few. Maybe it was because it was a much bigger plane, but there was none of that ‘pinned-to-your-seat’ feeling as we rose into the air. I chatted with Mary for a while. She told me she and her husband were travelling with her sister, Joy, and her husband (also called Philip, but called Phil to reduce confusion). Philip and Mary are in their early 80s and were really looking forward to the trip. If I remember rightly, they had not been to our destination before.

It was a great flight. After the miserable weather yesterday, we were happy to see sunshine, even if it was through the plane's windows!

We even got to see a pretty great sunset too

During the flight, it became apparent that all was not well with Philip. He and Mary had taken a gentle walk the day before and his foot had become painful. It got steadily worse, to the extent that he could bear to have his shoe or even his sock touching it. A flight attendant brought some ice as his foot had swelled suddenly, as well as being extremely painful.

We landed at 10.25pm (their time), which was our scheduled arrival time, so we had caught up the lost half hour. Getting through customs was very slow – the man in the cubicle dealing with the queue we were standing in was dealing with one person for everyone else’s three – and that is not an exaggeration; I had plenty of time to count! It took an hour to get through passport control and then a bit longer searching for a member of our party who apparently couldn’t follow instruction. We had been told where to wait and regroup after collecting our luggage, but she was nowhere in sight. After about ten minutes, we found her and then went to meet the young woman who was going to be our Guide for the duration of our stay. Her name was Angelina.

We all piled onto our bus, including Philip. As we had drawn near to our destination, the stewardess had called ahead to arrange for a wheelchair to take him from the plane to the bus. All credit to Philip, not once did I hear him complain and while he needed some assistance, he managed to climb onto the bus himself too. Once we were all seated, we were introduced to Bishara who was our driver for the trip and then we set off.

The journey to the hotel was 45 minutes. Angelina thought we would all be tired, but at home it was still only 10pm, albeit midnight here. However, we needed to be up at 6.30am to enable us to have breakfast before leaving the hotel at 8am for our first day the next morning.

At the hotel, an ambulance was waiting to whisk Philip, his wife and one of our tour leaders, Jim, to the hospital. The hotel provided us with the keys to our rooms and, because we had missed dinner (by about 4 or 5 hours!!), they gave us a boxed meal of sandwiches, salad, juice and cake. We had been given a meal on the plane, 

Shepherd's pie, or maybe lasagne, if I remember correctly

so I wasn’t really hungry. Added to that, it was quite late for eating, so sadly most of mine was wasted L

The room seemed fine, though to be honest, I didn’t really look at it when we first arrived. I made sure I had everything I would need for the next day and dropped into bed. Having not slept well the night before, I fell asleep straight away, probably with a smile on my face. I had known we were coming for some time; it was my 60^th birthday earlier this year and OH had said he wanted to do something special for my birthday, how would I like to go to…. This was for me the trip of a lifetime; I was in a place I never expected I would ever be able to visit:

Welcome to Israel J

A Great Adventure, part 1

Off on my travels

(All photographs in this post were taken by my Other Half)

Although Storm didn’t accompany us beyond the first day, I have chosen to put this series of posts on this blog for two reasons: (1) because it involved a fair bit of walking, and (2) because it was quite an adventure and this blog is already associated with Adventures

Sunday, April 30^th 2017

Having packed ready the night before, we loaded up the car with our bags and Storm and set off at about 9.15am. we collected my Dad, added him and his suitcase to our vehicle and left his home at around 9.30am. from there, we drove to Shropshire, just inside the English border with Wales, where we were welcomed by none other than my friend Sandra, (with whom I had attempted the Dales Way walk) and her family. They provided us with lunch, my Dad with some travelling respite, and a home for Storm for the next two weeks.

Storm did not seem to remember Sandra, despite having been so friendly towards her while on the Dales Way (though Sandra later told us she thought Storm had been faking it!!) I was worried how they would all manage, given that Storm doesn’t seem to like many people (including how Storm would manage) for a whole fortnight. This was compounded by Storm growling, snarling and snapping at several of the family before we had even left. It might of course have been the fact she was puzzled – the look on her face was definitely bemused when we brought her bed-crate into the house. She kept looking at it and going in and out as if to say ‘this shouldn’t be here! What’s my bed doing here?’ Anyway, we left her and hoped for the best. I was determined to forget all about her while we were away.

We left Sandra and co around 2pm and resumed our journey south. Our next stop was Haywards Heath in Sussex, where Dad was getting out. He wanted to visit his late wife’s grave as he had not seen it since the headstone had been installed, then he was to spend the night with his step-daughter. My brother was driving over from Cornwall to take Dad to stay with him while we were away. Plans were also in hand to have something of a celebration – it was after all, Dad’s 89^th birthday. What a way to spend it!!

We arrived at Haywards Heath at about 6.15pm and set off again within half an hour – minus Dad, of course. We drove to Barcombe to put some flowers on my mother’s grave

St Mary's Church, Barcombe

My Grandmother is buried nearby, too

then had a bite to eat somewhere near Tunbridge Wells, 

before continuing to London, where we were scheduled to spend two nights with our daughter.

It was 10pm when we finally arrived in London, after a very long day of travelling, but our missions for the day were accomplished – Storm was in Shropshire (hopefully not being too reactive); Dad was in Sussex, en route to Cornwall; and we were in London. We watched ‘London’s Fallen’, then I went to bed, leaving OH and our daughter watching something else.

Monday, May 1^st 2017

We had planned a relaxing day, but one that involved a lot of gentle walking having been sat down for around 13 hours yesterday. With that in mind, all three of us went to Greenwich Park. As it was a Bank holiday, S was not at work, so she was able to come with us.

I'm the short, fat one!

When we arrived, we went to the café and ate a Panini and had some coffee. I am not convinced the coffee was actually decaffeinated, as I was rather hyper afterwards (I’m allergic to caffeine), but it might just have been the brand – some decaff has more caffeine than others and I have been caught out like that before.

After the Park, we visited a sandwich shop, then into a lovely old church nearby, called St Alfege. Wikipedia says the following about it:

The church is dedicated to Alfege (also spelt "Alphege"), Archbishop of Canterbury, and reputedly marks the place where he was martyred on 19 April 1012, having been taken prisoner during the sack of Canterbury by Danish raiders the previous year. The Danes took him to their camp at Greenwich and killed him when the large ransom they demanded was not forthcoming.^[1]

The church was rebuilt in around 1290. It was in this building that Henry VIII was baptised in 1491.

It's a modern interior, due to some storm damage that took the roof off, but nevertheless it is tastefully done.

By the time we exited the church, it had started to rain, or rather, pour! Well, it was a Bank holiday so what could we expect? Across the road from the church was a vintage market, so we had a quick look around that before heading into the indoor market round the corner as the rain was getting heavier. After coffee/wine in a pub inside the market area, we wandered around the stalls. 

These are all Richard's photos - you can see that food is definitely on his mind!

There were some interesting works of art and photographers’ stalls. One of the photographers explained in great detail how he created his pictures – some taking eight months to complete – before photographing the art for sale. His creations were things like London buses, or phone boxes, in the shape of Daleks and other random items. It was very interesting.

We walked back to S’s house and the rain had let up. Dinner was eaten at The Ledger at West India Quay; we travelled on the DLR to get there, but walked back afterwards. 

There are some weird buildings in London!

I went to bed when we returned, but I couldn’t sleep – the next stage of our Great Adventure was to start the next morning!