We went to Taunton for the weekend to say goodbye to our youngest son and then take him to Heathrow for his big Australian adventure.
His flight was at 10pm and after internet check in the web site recommended arriving 90 mins before the flight. Google reckoned 2hrs 35mins to Heathrow so that would mean leaving Taunton at 6pm. Let's say 5pm for comfort so we could watch Cavendish show the world how to ride a bicycle very quickly indeed and still leave on time. After a brief "oh shit I really am going to Australia and leaving all my friends and family behind" style wobble we got away at 4.45pm.
We managed five minutes on the M5 and ground to a halt in nose to tail traffic. The next hour and a half were a nightmare of stop, start, crawl along at 10mph and then fly along at 60mph for a few minutes before stopping again. All I could think was, once we get on the M4 it will be fine. It wasn't.
We hit the same sort of conditions almost immediately on the M4 but only for about twenty minutes then it cleared. We then sped past Rogerzilla land and Reading, albeit in appalling weather with very heave spray. I had just seen the first plane rising from Heathrow and it was only just gone 8pm when we ground to a halt once more. We then crawled that last few miles to the Heathrow exit only to find ourselves queuing all the way to the car parks.
We were aiming for Terminal three and guess what? All car parks had spaces except Terminal 3! We were redirected to Terminal 1A which turns out to be about a mile from T3. We parked at 8.25pm and slogged across the airport for what seemed like forever and finally found the check in about an hour before departure.
There were a few tears and hugs and he was gone.
That only left the 225 mile drive back north in horrible rain for the first two hours and we landed back home at 1am, had a snack and a glass of wine or two while we took on board what we had just done and then crashed.
Mrs. TKP has gallantly gone into work today, I'm thinking I would like to go back to bed.
Kids eh? Don't you just love em?
