Day 1

Saturday, 7th June

To Heathrow

Terry couldn't find his bum bag. He'd had all this time and he hadn't thought about looking for it. It was in the loft.

This morning, I woke with no nerves - that was a rare thing and rather nervewracking! There were just a few bits and pieces to finish packing and the house to tidy and we were ready. We couldn't leave the house until I had checked in online with British Airways though and you couldn't do that more than 24 hours before your flight. So, at precisely 13:40, I checked in and selected our seats. I had to move us from the left side of the plane, to the right, where we were used to! We had seats 46H, J and K. I printed out our boarding passes, handed in the house keys to Harold, phoned Dad to say we were 'off' and off we went!

It was nice weather, apart from a few showers, particularly around Exeter - but, by Taunton Deane, I was falling asleep! We stopped at the services and Paul went off to Costa Coffee get the hub a cup of the strong stuff. I rather wished that I still drank coffee, as I needed to wake up, but it makes me too jumpy. We stopped again at Leigh Delamere Services (where they make you walk miles to the toilet; past all the shops) and we listened to the first Euro 2008 game on the radio. The Czech Republic beat Switzerland 1-0 - no great shock!

By about 6:00pm, we were hungry and decided to stop for eats. This was at another service station, but I'm not sure where! There was an M&S Simply Food though, where we bought sandwiches (for the record (and because I actually wrote it down!), I had salmon and watercress; Terry, tuna and sweetcorn and Paul had a pasta salad something). I think it might've been Reading Services. By now I was a little more awake, though not exactly bristling with energy!

Terry had forgotten to pack a bottle of wine, so we had to go to look for some. We turned off at Windsor and parked outside Threshers. There was no flag on the Castle, so we knew that Her Majesty wasn't at home. Terry said she'd been in Threshers. (Had the Queen really been in Threshers, Paul asked a few hours' later ...)

no flag

Then we drove through Eton. This had been intentional (apparently) and had had nothing to do with going the wrong way. The town is very quaint and there were 'wagtails' outside the college. Eton was followed by Slough, which is a dump by comparison. Finally we rejoined the M4 and turned off, a little further along the motorway, for Heathrow. We checked in at the Heathrow Marriott and parked the car where it would remain for the duration of our trip.

Our room was number 4034, with two queen beds and a rollaway bed. I think it was smaller than the room we had in 2006 and it was a little stuffy, with absolutely no view at all (apart from over a roof to the room windows on the other side of the roof). I wanted to sleep, but we watched bits of Portugal v Turkey (2-0), before walking the many miles to the elevator and outside to walk up to the McDonalds up the road!

A cheeseburger for me, a double cheeseburger for Paul and a Big Mac for you-know-who! We took these back to our room to eat; enjoyed a glass of wine and then went to bed. We had to fly to New York City the next day - how exciting was that!

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[ Introduction ] [ Day 1 ] [ Day 2 ] [ Day 3 ] [ Day 4 ] [ Day 5 ] [ Day 6 ] [ Day 7 ] [ Day 8 ] [ Day 9 ]
[ Day 10 ] [ Day 11 ] [ Day 12 ] [ Day 13 ] [ Day 14 ] [ Day 15 ] [ Day 16 ] [ Day 17 ]
[ Day 18 ] [ Day 19 ] [ Day 20 ] [ Day 21 ] [ Day 22 ] [ Day 23 ] [ Day 24 ] [ Day 25 ] [ Day 26 ]

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