Rowkin Rovings Blog

It is farewell to the UK today after four and a half months of having lots of adventures and meeting up with lots of our friends and making new ones. Our day commenced with breakfast and a coffee with Karen and Miles before they helped us across the road with our bulging bags to the noddy bus stop. Lots of hugs and “we will see you soon” and then it was off to Southgate Underground.

We needed to put a few pounds onto our Oyster cards to get us out to Heathrow Terminal 2.

The tube ride to the airport took an hour and a half. Check in this time was very straightforward but we were reminiscing back to our last time here when we had Toque with us. It turned into an absolute cluster f%#@ck as they had no idea what they were doing. We had arrived three hours prior to our flight and only just made it to our plane. We even saw them loading Toque’s crate onto the plane and she like us was the last one’s onto the flight. No hassles this time but let us see what happens tomorrow for our flight from Montreal to Calgary with her.

Fras is in seventh heaven as he scored a Financial Times prior to getting on board but reckon it will be depressing to read considering what is currently happening in the UK.

Looking at all the empty seats, we reckon the flight might be only 60% full – yipee!! We had a seat between us so spread ourselves around. It is also a 787 Dreamliner which have extra leg room and much smoother and quieter to fly in.

We had heard that Westjet were going to start to fly in and out of Heathrow, so here is the proof. Next time we do a transatlantic flight we will seriously look at going with these guys as they are cheaper and just as good.

Our flight path took us right over the top of Scotland which seemed odd as we thought we would go west from London and out over Cornwall as we were going to Montreal. When flying from or to Calgary from London, you always go over the top of Canada and across Greenland and then down south to London, so we thought this route a bit strange. At the end of the day, as long as we get there in one piece.

We are already mind numbingly bored at 40,000 feet, so you, our reader, are going to have flight details inflicted upon you. Actually, we won’t be so cruel. We have just over a seven hour flight with newspapers, Robert Galbraith’s new 1012 page novel, sudoku and inflight entertainment to help get us through it.

Just found this little number. You can have internet on a flight, but it costs. We have done this before with Qantas on a domestic flight, but they never charged us anything. We won’t be doing it as there is enough entertainment on board without logging on. Besides, it is nice to switch off for a while.

We got into Montreal at 4.30pm and all going well until we found out that Air Canada had checked our bags onto Calgary. We had a funny suspicion when we booked in at Heathrow that this was going to happen but the check in chick assured us it wouldn’t. That delayed us getting out of the airport for an additional hour and a half and poor Simon was waiting for us in the cell phone lot.

We made it to Joannie and Simon’s place in time for a grand meal which Joannie had been making whilst Simon was picking us up. Guess we need to mention here the reception we got from the pooch. She did recognise us straight away and just about turned herself inside out with excitement.

We were pretty shattered after such a long day of travel plus the time change. We went to bed which was about 2.00am London time and guess who joined us!!!