Wanderung 21

Lands Ho! Scotland, England, Shetland, Iceland, Newfoundland

August - September 2009

Monday, September 14th, 2009: Picking up Lois and Phyllis

We arose in good time and Helen prepared a final breakfast before we reluctantly took our leave of our very hospitable hosts and embarked on our drive to Heathrow airport. We finally departed around 9:00 a.m. and wound our way through some country lanes to join the M1 motorway. As long as I was on the M1 the traffic was heavy but flowed quite rapidly and smoothly to the South. Jeff had checked the arrival times for Lois and Phyllis's flight and we knew they were getting in shortly after 9:00 a.m. I knew they would be tired and didn't want them to wait any longer than necessary, so I drove as fast as I could push the car in that traffic, which was about 60-70 miles per hour.

Keeping a higher rate of speed necessitated some passing, of course, and not being able to lolligag about with the trucks in the slow lane was quite a bit more stress. The stress levels increased noticeably when I branched off of the M1 onto the orbital road around London that leads to Heathrow airport as I hit a couple of stop-and-go backups. There were no practical alternate routes, so I just had to grin and bear it while thinking of my poor tired sisters waiting at the airport. Next time, I decided, I would purchase a cell phone that would work in Europe so that I could at least call and notify people about those kinds of delays. Of course, since neither Lois nor Phyllis had a cell phone that worked in England, that would not have worked in this particular case but I still felt that I had fewer alternatives without a functional cell phone.

Fortunately, the signage to the new Terminal 5 area used by British Airways was quite clear and I got into the parking lot and parked without a problem around 11:00. We had told my sisters to just get comfortable while waiting for us, so once inside the terminal Monika went one way and I went the other to inspect all the waiting areas and coffee shops. I finally found them at a table in a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts place where predictably Lois was having tea while Phyllis was enjoying a cup of coffee. They had been waiting for the better part of two hours, so they had already finished their doughnuts, of course. So once Lois finished her tea and I finished Phyllis's coffee we were ready to roll onward to the south.


 

Partly because both Phyllis and Lois had taken our advice to heart and really had packed lightly in rather small wheeled suitcases, I was able to fit all of our luggage plus the stuff Monika and I had accumulated during our tour of Scotland into the trunk of the car. I was very relieved to find that it all fit as that had been one of my big worries. Working our way out of London we drove South towards Portsmouth.

Most of the way South we drove along the M5 motorway, but we stopped for a proper lunch in a two-lane section in the Devil's Punch Bowl area where they were either building or rebuilding the M5. Since I knew my sisters needed a proper meal by that point, we stopped at a cafe run by the National Trust right in the middle of the Devil's Punch Bowl park. We all settled in for a nice, relaxed lunch and caught up on what had been happening with Phyllis, Lois, and their various sons and daughters while we ate. Collectively, we have a lot of nieces, nephews, grandnieces, grandnephews, and talking about what is happening in all the various far-flung branches of the family can take literally days, but we got a good start! I also was happy to get a break from the driving as I was finding it quite wearing.

Continuing on after lunch, Monika used the GPS to guide me to the Langstone Hotel on the outskirts of Portsmouth. That turned out to be a rather fancy, business-oriented hotel right on the shore of a small bay or river inlet across from a marina. The setting was pretty, to be sure, but the hotel was rather isolated. We walked about a quarter of a mile to a convenience store at the nearest gas station where Monika bought some wine for our evening meal. We had our usual sandwiches while Lois and Phyllis used the room service to have dinner, after which we all retired for the night.

Copyright 2010 by R. W. Holt and E. M. Holt
Index
Map of Scotland Map of England Map of Rest of Lands Epilog

August 2009
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
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2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31
September 2009
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30

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