Day 2: Back in the Mother Country

Good flight from Dubai to Heathrow: about 7 hours and during the day so we arrived at Heathrow reasonably bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. It turned out that The G was prescient in her decision to take some breakfast in the Dubai lounge. I was convinced they’d feed us twice on the flight – and I was wrong. Unusual I knows but in this instance I was indeed in error.

We emerged into the London sunshine to 21 degrees. That doesn’t happen very often but it did today. We made it to the Hertz pick-up and picked up a car that we immediately needed to change but we got an upgrade … from a Skoda to a Kia. My goodness: 20 years ago the Skoda was a mobile ashtray and no one had ever heard of Kia or even knew that Koreans made cars.

On the left a 1905 Skoda Voiturette A and on the right a 1962 Kia K-360. These vehicles are not available through Hertz.

We hied out of Heathrow Airport and joined a massive car park otherwise known as the M25. I recall reading a book called “Great Planning Disasters” and included with Concorde and the Sydney Opera House was the M25. They built it with 3 lanes each way when all the traffic projections said that four would be needed. Eventually they had to give in and add the fourth lane – which meant many of the bridges had to be rebuilt.

This is what the M25 was like for us today!!

My sister had provided directions to her house (she moved since we were last here) and I may say that her directions were impeccable so we found it without error and without satnav!!

Apart from a night’s sleep interrupted by urban foxes screeching at midnight there is little more to report from today which was essential a travel day.