9 April 2019
We woke to a calm and sunny day and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast.
We finished off the packing and weighed our suitcases, 17 and 18 kg , so enough room for some purchases whilst we are away.
We wrote and emailed some thank-yous to all those who had come to our Saturday party. We managed a short walk, delivering some of the thank-you letters, and then had a snack lunch of some tea and cheese while we waited for our taxi, which duly arrived on time at 13:30.
We arrived at the airport in plenty of time and bought some papers before proceeding rather slowly through security and into departures, where our boarding was somewhat delayed as we were moved from the jet onto COBO, for some unknown reason.
In any case, we arrived at Gatwick only 10 minutes late, where we met Sandrine at baggage reclaim, who was relieved that she still had time to catch her onward connection from North terminal.
We booked our return trip on the coach and had to wait only 30 minutes in the cold and damp of Gatwick until an empty coach arrived to take us to Terminal 5. We were the only passengers and one more boarded at North Terminal, so our driver was very chatty and got us to heathrow within 5 minutes of our scheduled time, despite there having been some delays on the M23 and M25.
The trip to the Sofitel was all on foot and walkways, some of which were cold and others quite warm. We were greeted at reception, where we had checked in online to the cheapest twin room, but received the offer of an upgrade to an executive room with lounge access, which meant that we could enjoy a buffet supper and complimentary (diet busting) drinks. Our luggage had been taken to our room so when we eventually arrived we were greeted with a large double bedroom and bathroom with shower and bath.
So its blog then bed!