Tuesday 10th July - Bristol - We've arrived

Tuesday 10th July

Bristol - We've arrived!

We arrived at Heathrow at 5:03am right on time! It is amazing that a 10,000km journey can be timetabled down to the last minute.

We had expected that going through Customs and arrivals would be a long tedious process, but because we were so early and ours was the only plane arriving at that time it all went quite quickly . Even when we joined the queue to get our passports checked a lady came along scanning the people and saw us with our NZ Passports and took us out and sent us down to a passport check with no-one in the queue. I think anyone who looked like a Hongkong citizen with a Hongkong passport stayed in the original line of about a hundred people.

Even our bag pickup only took about 5 minutes!

Then at about 5:30 we were out into the long walk through Heathrow Airport to the Central Bus Station – took about 20 minutes.

We bought our tickets for the National Express Bus at £30 each – I had thought that it was going to be £20 – but still. It was for the 201 bus to Swansea in Wales stopping at Bristol on the way due to leave at 7:10

Had a bit of wait in the bus station. We were both pretty shattered by the long journey by this time. I texted Elspeth Body, to say that we were going to be early – 9:20 instead of lunchtime. However the bus was late arriving at Bristol – about 7:35 – so it was more like 10:00 am for Bristol.

A smooth trip through beautiful English countryside. Lots of corn fields, hedgerows and trees. We saw three quite large solar installations sitting on farmland:

Got there at about 9:45. I let Elspeth know and while we waited for her we had a coffee and a drink at the Pumpkin Café at the Bristol bus station. Elspeth phoned to say that she was unable to meet us till 10:45.

We decided to get a taxi to the Hertz Car Rental and then drive back to Elspeth’s work at Horizons in Deanery Road. The taxi driver looked Indian, Indian clothing and big bushy beard. He was nice and chatty and charged us £11.10 for the trip.

Although we were very early at Hertz the car was available. The only issue was that there was an excess of £1000 for any damage that occurred. This was separate from the "Collision Damage Waiver" which exempted us from the total cost of repair in the event of an accident. Excess is a separate thing. We could pay an extra £36 insurance a day to cover this  £1000 excess. Mary-Ann and I had a debate about this and decide that £216 was better than £1000 – still quite a chunk that we weren’t expecting.

When we figured out how to start it – you had to depress the clutch before starting the engine – we then got our TomTom GPS unit going so that we could find our way back to Elspeth’s work. Thank God we had the TomTom otherwise we would never have navigated our way through Bristol’s tortuous streets. We were able to park just about outside her work and sat down and waited while they paged her.

She was a bit younger than I expected. She gave us the remote to open the gates and the building entrance and the key for the flat.

250 Lakeshore Apartments is a big industrial looking set of apartments made out of concrete and steel.on seven levels overlooking a small lake. Apartment 250 was on the third floor from the water..

We were able to use the remote to activate the gates and get in. They are building and even larger set of apartments next door – about three times the size.  250 is on the third floor. It is nicely laid out inside with a view over the little lake.

We both needed a lie down before we did anything else. Mary-Ann has a nasty cough that she can’t seem to shake. It was very warm - discovered the underfloor heating was on. We have since turned it off. It has only the door onto the deck that you can open for fresh air and a view of the lake.

I had shower before I lay down.

At about 5:00pm we were both up – still pretty whacked – but needing to go shopping at the nearby Imperial Park shopping area. 

We bought: eggs, butter milk, whisky, wine, milk, fruit, tea and coffee at the Marks & Spencers Food Hall.

 On the way back to the flat we bought a Pizza for dinner from Pizza Hut – two for £17.50

We watched TV because we wanted to see what had happened to the 12 boys and their coach who had got stuck in the cave in Thailand. To our delight we discovered that they had all been able to get out.

Our only issue at the moment is internet access for our phone and laptop – wireless doesn’t like a big concrete and steel structure.  I will have to sort out that tomorrow.

We went to bed at 8:00ish – comfortable bed. It had been a long and exhausting day!