England #1: The second time’s a charm in The England Chronicles - September 2024

Not talking about the election. Not yet. I changed my FB profile and background pics to black, which says all I want to say right now. Much much more pleasant to write about the England trip!

SO. After our unbelievably horrific first attempt at flying to London from Charlotte on Saturday, August 31 - outlined in the previous entry - we returned to the airport on Saturday, September 7. Much less excited than the week before; much more filled with dread and fear. During the unplanned extra week at home we’d both had brief moments of wanting to just cancel till next spring. Mine was the morning after our DisasterDay, when in my exhausted and sleep-deprived state I just could not take the thought of going through that again (Kim nearly had a breakdown at the very idea of postponing - her job is so grueling and she’d looked forward to this trip SO MUCH. So had I! But I’d gone temporarily insane with exhaustion). On Thursday, a couple of days before the second attempt, we were hearing about more strikes at Heathrow and more delays and problems, and it was Kim’s turn to feel that maybe we should just put it off, and my turn to talk her down. Then one of my much more widely traveled cousins suggested tracking that week’s flights to London, which had not occurred to me. I discovered that most of the Charlotte/Heathrow flights had left on time all week, with the exceptions just being a couple of slight delays and no cancellations. So we resolved to stick to our (revised) plan, fearful or not! Also we would have lost most of our second Airbnb payment at that point. We did agree that if we got cancelled again, that was it and we’d call it fate and try next spring.

In the meantime we’d totally changed our plans for one week of the trip. It was originally the Lake District the first week and Bath the second. Now Bath was the first week and we had to find a new place the second week. Considering that we were already on what sounded like the edge of the good weather season for the Lake District with our original plan (Sept 1 - 7), it seemed like a bad idea to go the third week in September instead. It would definitely be chilly and probably rainy. Also we couldn’t just get the same place - Kim’s timeshare - so would have to find somewhere else to stay. It was very disappointing - we’d been watching Lake District videos on YouTube for months! It’s gorgeous! I had guidebooks!! But they will keep till Baker B and I go. We’d already planned to drive to the Cotswolds one day during our Bath week, so started looking there for the new Week One. Kim’s timeshare not being an option actually freed us up to go wherever we wanted, and the more we thought about it, the better the Cotswolds sounded. We wouldn’t have seen a whole lot on just a day drive from Bath. By the time we found a very reasonable Airbnb in Chedworth, near Cirencester, we were both actually thinking that would be even better than the Lake District! And then we both spent the week watching Cotswolds videos.

I won’t even go into the grueling work of trying to get reimbursed for all we lost from the cancelled flight, but I will cut to the point and say ALWAYS get travel insurance!! We did, and ended up getting reimbursed for everything we requested. Actually the insurance people were easy, it just took forever and was a lot of documenting that I had to do myself since I’d bought the tickets so everything was in my name and on my card other than Kim’s timeshare payment. The airline was a pain, as was getting back what I’d prepaid for parking. We also didn’t get our seat upgrades with the replacement flights, so no extra legroom for Kim either direction and no window for me going over (we did finally get reimbursed for those upgrades, though). It didn’t matter so much about the window seat, other than I love window seats, since the drive to Bath was less than two hours as opposed to 4 1/2 to the Lake District, so not as big a deal if I was tired.

I am very happy to report that everything on Saturday the 7th went without a hitch. We duplicated the previous Saturday with Baker B driving me to Morganton to meet up with Kim, got to the airport in plenty of time again, got checked in with no problems again, and even had dinner in the same bar and grill restaurant.

And I had the same thing as I did the week before! A delicious flatbread with mozzarella and tomatoes and basil and balsamic vinegar. The prior week I’d ended up eating it cold from a to-go box hours later, while sitting on my suitcase waiting for Kim’s suitcases to be retrieved. This time it was a much improved dining experience. And a delicious local beer. The prior week Kim did manage to sneak my very expensive beer that I’d taken like two sips of before getting the FLIGHT CANCELLED text into my water bottle that I’d left with her, but it was much nicer to sip it out of a … plastic cup. A pint glass would have been even nicer but this was more pleasant than sucking it from my water bottle like a delinquent toddler.

We sat and watched the planes come and go and tried NOT to think about getting cancelled AGAIN. But I was really really REALLY NERVOUS about it until we were on the plane and heading into the air. Happily it was such a non-eventful flight that I don’t even remember much about it other than the aisle seat being relatively comfortable although hard to keep my great big feet out of everyone’s way, especially when I dozed. Read a lot, watched the inflight entertainment - now I’ve forgotten what I even watched! I think it was coming back that I watched THREE episodes of Slow Horses in a row, despite having already watched them, in preparation for Season 4 which I still haven’t seen although I’ve eagerly awaited it for ages! Mostly I tried to sleep, though, and was pretty successful so yay for that.

And our !!Long Awaited Arrival In London!! will have to wait for the next entry.