Back in the UK

And wow! It's summer! Cheltenham was looking particularly lovely. I partook of a passion fruit juice at a rooftop cafe while waiting for a bus. Pretended I was still in Portugal.

    H and I landed last night around midnight. H had booked us a room at the commodious Hilton Garden hotel, which is at Birmingham airport. From there we we were able to stand at the bedroom window the next morning and watch planes queueing for take off. EasyJet,  Jet 2 and Aer Lingus were the main players at that time of the morning.  After leaving the hotel, we went back to the airport for breakfast, then H took the bus to the car park, as she had to drive back to Wales.(she moved there from Stroud about eight years ago. She had offered to take me back to Stroud on Saturday if there had been another strike, but I didn't want inconvenience her massively, so I declined.).


My original plan for the holiday had been to take the train from Stroud to Birmingham International station,via Cheltenham, and then the monorail to the airport. However, there was a train strike on the way out, so I had to cancel my return ticket, ask a friend of H's to drive me to Cheltenham at 7am on outbound departure day, take the coach to Birmingham coach station, then a city bus to the airport. I decided to do almost the same on the way back, as the trains were not on strike, but being replaced by buses because of engineering work.  This decision meant that I had a lengthy wait at both Digbeth coach station and Cheltenham, from whence I caught the bus to Stroud. Eventually Steve picked me up there at 15.22.


I spent the rest of the day at home lounging around trying to finish another of my holiday books. They were: Mr Gupta's hardware store by A.S. Karla, The Keeper of Lost Things by Ruth Hogan, and The Carer by Deborah Moggach.