Back in Blighty

Quarantine Day 1

We were picked up from the hotel at 7.15am along with two other couples and we collected people at a few other hotels, but the bus was almost empty.  Everything went very smoothly and Faro airport was quite quiet, we checked in, went through passport control and security with no queues, and when we got to our gate, it was obvious that it was a very quiet flight.  In total there were probably only about 30 of us so there was no necessity to board in any particular order, everyone was spaced out on the plane. I've never seen so many empty seats it was like being on a private jet!   One of the stewards asked if we'd mind sitting at the emergency exit as they needed someone to be sat there, of course we didn't mind as that also mean extra leg room.

We took off slightly early and the Captain announced that this was one of the final TUI flights from Portugal to the UK for the time being.  We hadn't thought about that, but of course the quarantine rules had come into force later on in the day that we arrived, and all UK holidays with TUI to Portugal had been cancelled after that.  We had a good flight, landed into Gatwick at 12.20pm and we've never seen the airport so empty so I took the opportunity to capture it - this shot was taken heading to passport control which was also empty, but I didn't take any photos there, as I know it's not allowed.  We'd filled in our Passenger Locator Forms  and just had to show the QR code and went straight through.  Just as we got to the baggage reclaim the cases were already coming out, we picked them up and left - I've added a few extras of the empty plane and other parts of the airport.

Whilst still at the airport, with masks on, I quickly nipped into M&S to get a few essentials until the food delivery arrives tomorrow - I gathered that as we were still within the airport, that would be allowed, and then we caught the shuttle bus to the car park, again only us apart from 3 air hostesses that got dropped off at the staff car park.  Interestingly we didn't have to do anything else, and whilst we will follow the rules and will quarantine for 14 days, there wasn't anything on arrival to enforce that.  It'll be interesting to see if we get any phone calls to check up on us in that time. 

When we arrived home, the boys had a good sniff of us, but didn't seem too excited to see us - they've obviously had far too good a time with Charlotte & Ian, but we did get lots of cuddles from them this evening.  The unpacking's done, just hope the weather improves so that I can hang the washing out - the glorious weather that the UK has had while we've been away has ended and we landed to rain and 12 degrees, we even had the heating on tonight!

Whilst quarantining we will be working from home, and have decided to use the time to sort the garage out - it's a job that we've been meaning to do and we need to make space for Percy the Pod when he arrives, so it's a good opportunity to do that.  I'm not sure that I'll be posting many blips, unless anything interesting happens, but I'll use the time to keep up with your journals.