Day 16. Thursday 8th October
Flying through the night across the Atlantic Ocean was perhaps the lowest point of the holiday. The flight was scheduled to arrive at Manchester International Airport at 6:50am, but, the flight crew informed us, the freak east wind at altitude would delay our arrival by over half an hour. The announcement went on to inform us that the regular wind usually meant much reduced flying times from west to east, and that 360 days out of the year this was usually the case, with the remainder being calm.
Dawn approached, and with it our arrival over a damp and cheerless Manchester area. We touched down on British soil at 7:28 and the aircraft finally stopped after taxiing from the runway at 7:53. We walked leisurely along to collect our cases, saying goodbye to majority of the people who had accompanied us from Los Angeles, and passed through the luggage collection area, through the customs channel, and out to where the Top Gear driver was waiting to collect us. After a most subdued drive, with two couples, who lived close by, we arrived home at 9:30am.
Not wishing to wait until the following day to send my photographs for processing, I got in my car, at 11:00am, and drove to town to get the things processed. This experience in itself seemed strange, probably due to the fact that I'd been used to traffic coming from the opposite direction for two weeks. For the rest of the day, we shivered in unaccustomed low temperatures and levels of humidity.
Ho hum ... all good things must come to an end :-(