I must have slept for most of the flight as time had passed really quickly. I woke up when they were starting to serve breakfast. Graham was awake as well. It was a funny meal choice as it was lunch time in London. As airline breakfasts go, this was quite edible. We had orange juice and water, some cut fruit, a croissant with strawberry jam and a cooked breakfast with scrambled egg, bacon, sausage, mushrooms and roasted cherry tomatoes. We also both had a cup of coffee. I played another game of Monopoly. Graham was looking over my shoulder and he was convinced that I had no chance against the computer. However, due to some strategic property buying and a big pinch of good luck, I beat all the computer players. I even had some time left to start another game of Trivial Pursuit. Unfortunately, I ran out of time, and we had landed before the game was finished.
We had landed at one of the satellite terminals at terminal 5 at Heathrow and as far away from the main terminal as possible at that. We had to take the train over to the main area of the terminal. Immigration was really quiet, and this time round Graham managed to use the egates. Once we were officially back in the country, we headed to the baggage hall. We wondered if our luggage had made it as we should have been on a different flight. When we got there, there were maybe a dozen or so suitcases going round and round on our assigned baggage carousel, but it took ages until more luggage arrived. I wondered if they were left behind from a previous time. Even once suitcases started to come out, we had quite a wait. I suppose that is what comes from being the first to check in. We were not overly bothered as we had plenty of time and would not be able to check in for our onward flight for quite some time anyway. We went through customs who were not interested in us at all and headed to the departure level.
Even with the delay in getting the luggage, we arrived at the check in desks way to early. I had a bit of a play with the BA app and found out that as long as there is no fare difference, we were able to change our flight free of charge on the day. I decided to check if there was an earlier flight that we could change to. There was and there was indeed no charge to make the change. I asked Graham if I should change to the earlier flight, and he told me to go for it. Even with the earlier flight, there was still some time until check in opened. I read for a bit. We were near one of the screens that showed check in details and as soon as our flight was listed, we headed over to the business class check in. There was nobody in front of us. We got checked in and then headed over to security.
Near security there was a screen with the estimated waiting time for each security check point and the waiting time for the one closest to us was the longest. We quickly conferred about what to do and neither of us fancied heading to the opposite end of the airport. In the end there was only a very short line, and we waited maybe 5 minutes. My hand luggage and handbag passed muster. Unfortunately, Graham’s hand luggage caused some interest. We have no idea what caused this. Graham was asked to unpack and then each and every item including the bag was swabbed for chemicals. The person who did this took his own sweet time over this and in the meantime other bags needing manual inspection got backed up. Eventually Graham was allowed to repack, and we were on our way.
Just round the corner from security was a branch of Giraffe. They had quite and impressive line, but it moved quite quickly. We decided to have an early dinner. We stuck with the breakfast theme. Graham had the Giraffe Brunch Plate, which consisted of bacon, Cumberland sausages, mushrooms, roasted plum tomato, seasoned fries, baked beans and eggs any style. Graham went with fried eggs. I had he Huevos Rancheros, which consisted soft tortilla with mushrooms, black beans, Cheddar cheese, avocado, Pico de Gallo, Cayenne ranch and fried eggs. We were both happy with our choices. We both had the Sunshine Coast Iced Tea, which consisted of ice-cold chamomile and green tea with mango, lime and fresh mint. I was a little bit on the fence about this. I have disliked chamomile tea since childhood, but the rest sounded delicious. It was really nice and we both had a second glass.
After dinner, I quickly went to the bathroom and then we headed to the gate area where the domestic flights were going from. I was surprised that with still almost an hour to go, they started boarding. We had to get onto a bus. The bus driver was surprised as well that they had called us so early for boarding. After a while, she checked with the ground handlers what the hold-upwas. She came back shortly after advising us that the cabin grew from our flight had worked on a delayed flight from Barcelona, which had landed at this stage. What was a nice touch was that shortly after this, the captain came onto the bus to apologize for the delay and to explain what was happening. Not long after this, a bus with our cabin crew arrived. They did the pre-flight checks in record time and soon afterwards we were allowed to board.
The flight was relatively empty. Ironically, when I had originally booked the flight, the flight we had ended up on was much more expensive. I don’t know what happened in the meantime, but I could understand why BA was so keen to work with us to make this change. We found out on the flight that the later flight that we were meant to go on was overbooked. On this flight, there was plenty of space to go around and we had a spare seat next to us which is always nice.
Even though it felt like we were very late, we actually left pretty much on time. It was a pleasant flight up to Manchester and we got treated to a beautiful sunset. Normally there are some nice crisps as a snack on the domestic flights, but all we got was a tiny bag of pretzels. We also got some water. We arrived in Manchester slightly ahead of schedule. We had to wait for a while for our luggage and considering how empty the flight had been, the area around the baggage carousel felt quite busy. When our luggage came out, at least it came out at the same time.
There was just one hurdle to master. As our original flight would have arrived at around the same time that the last train of the day leaves, I had prebooked a transfer. Of course, we had now arrived two hours earlier. I approached the counter of the transfer company and advised that the airline had rebooked us on an earlier flight. This was no issue. We were told to sit down opposite, and they promised to find us a driver. Ten minutes later, we were on our way. We actually arrived back home around the same time we had been scheduled to take off from Heathrow. We put our luggage into the living room and then we got ready for bed.
Dolphingirl’s Travels 
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