Mmmmm! BAcon! – Off to Denver and Beyond with Aer Lingus and British Airways
Homeward Bound
Index:
- A Conference… why not?
- Early morning New New Street, Aer Lingus EI263 London to Dublin
- A Dublin transit, DAA Lounge
- BA827 Dublin to London Heathrow
- The Hell of A Heathrow Transit, BA F Lounge
- BA219 – London Heathrow to Denver
- Staybridge Suites, Denver Tech Center and a road trip
- The Cheyenne Mountain Resort, Colorado Springs
- A road trip back to Denver, Crowne Plaza Downtown Denver
- Photographic Interlude: Downtown Denver
- Denver Airport, American Airlines AAdmirals Club
- BA218 Denver to Heathrow
- Heading Homeward – THIS SECTION
- Interesting times
Arriving into Heathrow, the plane docked at the C Dock, so it was a case of going to the small room, then heading down the lifts to shuttle train. Now a big hint for those of you who want to save time at Heathrow T5 – avoid the escalators and head for the lifts – you’ll save bucketloads of time. The train thankfully did its usual thing and headed to the B Dock and finally the main terminal
Trust me. It felt like this after that flight.
Again, after leaving the train, I headed straight for the lifts, and over to the UK Border. Seeing the queues were of a stupid length, I headed to the empty e-passport lanes and cleared after the machine took its time to process me.
After arriving at the luggage belt, the good news was it was moving around. The bad news was that luggage delivery was slow. Very slow.
A good 20-30 minute wait, and finally, a fawn coloured rucksack and an aubergine coloured suitcase finally spat out of the luggage storage. Those items in hand, it was time to clear UK Customs (which was its usual quiet self)
Arrival
During this time, I had checked with the office who needed me to work on something remotely… with still the umming and ahhing if I was needed in. Reluctantly, I abandoned my onward connection to Gatwick, then Dublin and back to Birmingham. Electing to catch a train homewards and see what mess there was to fix if needed.
From there it was downstairs to the Heathrow Express and an onward connection with Heathrow Connect. Another £9.90 later, I was on my way.
Express pulling out.
As I spent the next 10 minutes on the phone trying to work out what they had done to the Active Directory, and me working out how we could fix it, I grabbed a Heathrow connect for the slow trip to Paddington.
And a visitor joined me for the journey too.
As we approached Paddington station, I saw that Crossrail was coming along with the major amount of works occurring outside the station mouth
Crossrail – coming eventually…
I exited the train, and ducked into the Underground station for the 2 stop ride to Marylebone station. The tube was its usual self – and I remember why I hate wheelie bags (it’s not fun lugging them around on the tube), but soon I was on a train at London Marylebone for the train back to Birmingham, with me using the free WiFi on the train.
Chiltern Railways
London Marylebone – Birmingham Moor Street
Super Off Peak Return: £27.50
After dumping my stuff in a corner of the train, it was time to whip out the laptop and remotely diagnose what was going on… and it looked like someone had been messing with Datacube that wasn’t reflecting the updates to the Active Directory. A bit of moaning and checking – and SURPRISE – the Cube hadn’t been refreshed.
That could have saved a couple of cancelled flights if someone else looked in the right place first. Grrr. Oh well – I was heading homewards at least.
The Chiltern route takes its ways past High Wycombe, up through Bicester, through Banbury and Leamington Spa, before finally pulling into Birmingham Moor Street
And compared to the 27c I was experiencing the day before, it was distinctly… cooler here.
Rushing beyond High Wycombe
Surburbia of Lemington Spa
Train interior
Closing in on Birmingham Moor Street
Pulling into Moor Street – The Selfridges building in the middle with silver dots all over it
Still, the train did reasonable time, and approached Birmingham as peak time was kicking off.
A quick escape from the train, and it was outside into drizzle of a Birmingham evening. Some things don’t change.
I headed for the taxi rank, and found it empty… for a minute or so before a black cab came.
After the driver did his best to get lost around Birmingham (what is it with taxis and where I live? It’s not exactly in the middle of nowhere), I was through the gates of the flat and at my front door – ending a very interesting weekend, with the joy of working out why someone switched off a cube in the morning…
… and nope, I’m still not sold on wheelie bags.
Next and finally – the wrap up…