Wednesday 20th May - Homeward bound

After having collapsed into bed without any dinner at 9pm the previous night I woke early and began packing the cases. An activity soon abandoned when Stephen woke and we headed down to breakfast and a morning at the pool. We’d arranged a 3pm check-out so figured on a leisurely day of sunbathing. Housekeeping were swabbing down the marble patio outside our room and had sprayed a lot of water down the whole length of the walkway. Of course it was inevitable that halfway to the safety of the dry area I did a slide worthy of Christiano Ronaldo aiming at goal and ended up landing heavily on my hip and elbow – what a holiday!

We got back to the room after lunch only to discover that the keys to the room didn’t work, so I had to dispatch Stephen to reception in order that we could get showered and finish the packing. And Stephen also had to go and take some photos of the hotel grounds as we hadn’t bothered until that point.

Why, oh why, despite the fact that we weren’t bringing things like sun lotion back and hadn’t bought very much, does it seem harder to get everything back into the cases on the way home? At 2:45 the rep organizing our transfer called to say he was in reception (15 minutes early) and I was still trying to get the cases zipped and Stephen into suitable clothing for the journey home.

The flight was fine – the arrival into the UK was very slow. There were two flights come in at once and the immigration hall was full. There were only 4 staff on – 2 to deal with the 10 non-UK folks and 2 to deal with the hundreds of the rest of us. I thought Stephen was being cynical when he said he thought it was a money-making exercise…until we met Mum who was in something of a panic as she’d parked in the short term car park expecting us to appear quickly and not take an hour. It cost £22 in parking. How ridiculous!!

Then to cap it all the junction connecting to the M5 was closed and we were diverted…by which I mean we were stuck in a traffic jam as they took us across country. We didn’t get home until gone 11pm.