From Bangkok to London, people were trying to sleep and all the windows were shut. I snuck the occasional look and was treated to glimpses of sparse Russian landscapes, but nothing spectacular.
However, as we began our descent into the UK and everyone came to life, we crossed the English Channel, and for the first time ever I saw England with my own eyes! So many farms, towns scattered everywhere, and it didn’t take long to find the Thames river mouth, which we followed all the way to London. Flying in, you could immediately recognise landmarks such as the Millennium Dome and Wembley Stadium. I could just make out the centre of London but not distinguish many of the land marks due to a hazy layer of smog, which seemed to hang in the air but wasn’t too bad.
On our approach to Heathrow, we flew over a magnificent castle, I think it might have belonged to one of the Royals, it was massively impressive! I don’t know the name of it but I will find out soon enough I’m sure.
(edit – turns out it was Windsor Castle! Fanastic!)
Anyway, naturally I was very excited, and when we landed, it was a pleasant 29 degrees, and felt just like summer! Heathrow airport was an even bigger mess than Sydney Airport. I think most of the work was to do with widening the space around the terminals to accommodate the new Airbus 380’s which are coming into service. But also Terminal 5 has just opened, and it was an 18 minute bus trip from the terminal we landed in, to get there. Bloody hell this airport is huge!
At around this point, one of the Wanda SLSC blokes realised he’d lost his passport, which held us all up for a bit, while they went all the way back to the plane to find it sitting on the seat. (I see a fine coming!) An hour later round trip, they were back with us and we tackled security and immigration. This was a walk in the park really, immigration was nice, and security definitely over the top, but the security lady was having a joke with anyone who had a sense of humour.
It must have been a busy day (or is it always like this?) but we did seem to do a lot of ‘sitting in the plane’ waiting for permission to be able to move around the airport. It took us nearly 20 minutes to get to the terminal when we landed (and we didn’t even get a terminal, we unloaded onto the tarmac in the end) and to take off, there was a line of about 15 planes queued up. Once in the air, the traffic was insane – everywhere you looked out the window you could see planes, some quite close and often crossing your path but just above or below.
Once in the air again, our British Airways flight didn’t take long to move on out over the channel again, and we headed for Germany. Looking down over the Netherlands, it was amazing how all available space had been utilised (just like in England) with the farms, towns and streets all laid out in such an orderly fashion!
The flight to Hamburg lasted just over an hour, so London to Hamburg ends up being about the same distance as Sydney to the Gold Coast. This really put into perspective how close everything was in Europe (we flew over four countries on just this flight), and I suddenly realised that getting around was going to be a lot easier than I first thought. Now I just need to find the cheapest way to do it, and figure out which direction I want to head first!
MATTHEW BRUCE
Foreign Correspondent | Cronulla SLSC
