Breakfast was a chance to eat up all the remaining consumables, but we had been fairly accurate in our planning so we only had a slight excess of fruit to get through and ended up leaving some milk, butter and muesli.
By the time we had a clean up around the flat, the weather had brightened to the point of only needing a T-shirt for the trip (one of us anyway) and the rest in the luggage.
An interesting installation at Danmarks Plass rail stop.
We are called to the gate but Eric is concerned that there is no plane in sight.
A little later it turns up, apparently snow in Oslo had caused some delays with other services into Bergen, and Heathrow had been congested this morning, which had also held up our aeroplane.
The flight takes off just a few minutes after the scheduled departure time and we are on our way home.
Plenty of views as we take off
The steward comes around to take orders for food and the necessary bacon roll is requested. He informs us that cold orders will be taken as the trolley comes down the aisle. The bacon roll appears quite quickly but the drink and cold snack trolley takes a long time to get to us, even though we are only in row 14 of 32. Unfortunately by now all the requested edible items are sold out, and the hot chocolate and tea are only luke warm. Customer service a little lacking today, even though the staff are pleasant enough about the shortcomings. We debate whether a tweet to either BA or M&S would be the best approach.
The flight was otherwise uneventful which is always good. Next challenge is to make the connections with the services out to our daughter's house. Find the Heathrow Connect service was not as straightforward as billed, but we get to it eventually. It may be the cheaper option to make it to central London but it's only for those not in a hurry.
After two more train connections, which are all very quick, we wait for the final leg by local bus. It takes a while to discover the correct ticket to buy as we find that our discussion with the driver over the location we are headed to is confused by us each talking about different Tesco stores on the route. He ends up just giving us a fairly cheap ticket, I think to get rid of us.
The bus sets off, but 30 seconds in to the trip, at a pretty busy roundabout, a car runs into the side of the bus. This could be the cause of some delay! The bus driver remonstrates with the car driver wondering if the guy's eyesight was good enough to spot the large blue vehicle he had just hit. As one can imagine a bus parked across a mini roundabout starts to create major congestion and quite a few drivers start hurling suggestions, most of which are not printable here, but were generally relating to moving the bus out of the way. It ends with the bus driver seeming to say "call the police if you want or I'm just going" and we leave the scene.
A meal out and then it's to bed
A casual start and then a happily uneventful bus/train/train journey to Reading to wait for The Intercity back to Bridgend.
Whilst waiting at the station Eric spots the work being undertaken for electrifying the rail link to South Wales. He thinks, whilst the change from steam to electric may make things a lot quicker and maybe less polluting, aesthetically, a plume of white smoke is much prettier than all this metalwork.
Food shortages seem to be the order of the return trip. One of us was looking forward to the "cheap" British Rail bacon roll, obviously only in comparison with our recent experiences on the cost of food in Norway. Alas, no bacon rolls, they were sold out and the train had only made it from Paddington to Reading.
It looks like we may have a bit of work to do in the garden and it's even a bit too scary to go down the allotment today.
Home at last. Where to next Eric wonders?
