It begins, as always, with an indifferent railway station coffee

This is the last few months of my ‘sabbatical’ – I’m going to a convention in the US, on to NZ via a week in Fiji, then back through the US for two more conventions, and back to the UK.

That’s the plan, anyway.

The trip from Aylesbury to Heathrow wasn’t entirely smooth.

I got to the station just as the next sensible train had been cancelled, and while I could have made the one leaving in 2 minutes time from the other side of the pedestrian bridge under normal circumstances, I had a giant-ass suitcase & a family with 2 small children and a few enormous bags had blocked not only the “you have luggage” gate, but also access to the rest of them. If your children cannot do whatever it is they were supposed to do on the other side of the barriers without you being there, then why did you send them through without you?

The next train was in about an hour, so I had an indifferent coffee & waited in the sunshine.

At the suggestion of Alex I took the Elizabeth Line to the airport, as a middle ground between the Heathrow Express & the Piccadilly Line. Didn’t realise that it splits at the end, so the train going in the general direction of Heathrow actually went to Reading; Wasn’t a big deal, I just got off at a station along the way & waited for the next one which was going to Heathrow.

The last step of getting to the hotel took a while; Maybe I was just having a dumb day for ground transport, but as far as I could tell from the website & signage, the only hotel buses going near my hotel ended at 9am. Turns out that’s just an express, and a different one serves that group of hotels all day, but I only found that information from a sign in the hotel.

What I did instead was to go to where the Hotel Hoppa buses stop, read the sign when I found it, conclude that I would not be taking a Hotel Hoppa because there weren’t any that didn’t involve a 20 minute walk at the end of the trip, wind my way back through the airport to the ‘Central’ bus station, and take a regular city bus that dropped me a few minutes away.

The guy ahead of me in the hotel queue ( he was also on the bus, but was able to avoid a sprawling mass of people & bags from a coach – I had to pick up the case & go off-road to get past ) turned out to be at the wrong hotel; First time I’ve seen that at a hotel, though I’ve seen it happen at a hostel before. In fairness, this was the Ibis, his reservation was for the Ibis Styles down the road, and there’s an Ibis Budget around here too.

I got checked in, had some dinner, had my free drink because that seems to just be an Ibis thing these days, and generally tried to relax for tomorrow; It’s going to be a long day.