And so it all comes to an end.
The plane was delayed for about an hour so we left closer to 9pm last night local time. Apparently we made up some time en route, so this morning we were all set to land at around 9.10am, about half an hour later than scheduled. But then Gatwick decided to shroud itself in fog so that caused a queue of aircraft and we had to stack and circle for a bit longer.
Eventually we landed at around 9.30am. Passport queues were non-existent - we were off the plane and straight through without a hassle. Then to the baggage carousels. After about 10 minutes the screens announced that our luggage would appear on carousels 1 and 2. About 10 minutes later, some bags appeared. 10 minutes after that, my case appeared. Then the bags stopped coming out, and Tom still didn't have his. Judging by the number of people from our flight still waiting, nor did a lot of others.
The BA rep put out an announcement to say that they were trying to check with the baggage handlers where the rest of the bags had got to. Then they put another out to say that they'd located the bags and they'd be with us in "just a few minutes". About twenty "just a few minutes" later, there was another announcement to say that they'd actually left the bags at the plane stand, and so it would be "just a few more minutes". Tom eventually picked up his bags at nearly 11am, an hour and a half after we'd landed!
Customs was a similarly uneventful affair, we had a carriage to ourselves on the inter-terminal shuttle, then made our way to the station where we found we'd just missed a Thameslink train. I had to pick up my ticket from the machines, behind a queue of utterly bewildered foreign tourists who hadn't the foggiest idea which of the 27 combinations of tickets they needed.
Down on the platforms, someone was playing silly buggers with the allocations. Every few minutes a "platform alteration" message would play, and lots of people would have to change platform with all their luggage. Our turn came as our train was announced on platform 2, then platform 1, then back to platform 2 again. Thankfully it was quite empty at the front, so we had plenty of room for us and our luggage.
Due to engineering works we crawled up to East Croydon behind a stopper, then crawled up to London Bridge, then crawled up to Blackfriars. It's worrying when the tube home from Blackfriars is the speedy section!
So anyway, home at last - now I'm going to have a nice long hot bath and catch up with Bake Off!
No comments:
Post a Comment