Houston to the UK - The Journey to Mum's

Friday, July 31st 2009

The hallmark of a good start to a trip is that it is completely uneventful. This was a good start. The drive to the airport, parking the car at Fast Park, checking in at Continental, passing through security, grabbing a bite to eat at a sandwich joint in Terminal E and boarding the plane were only slightly marred by the rudeness of a Continental employee at the terminal counter who barked at us to stand in line so we could hand in a pre-printed form volunteering to take a later flight if they were over booked. We decided the potential reward wasn’t worth standing in line, so we went to the sandwich place for something to eat and drink.

There were more people in the airport than I have seen for a long time. We boarded the plane on time and found our seats on the last row – the only place in the cheap seats where there were only two seats in the row - and the plane gradually filled up with people. Severe weather in other parts of the country had delayed several incoming flights so we sat on the ground for an hour waiting for connecting passengers to arrive for their flight to London. When we took off an hour late, every seat on the plane was taken.

The trade winds were blowing hard and the pilot announced our flight would only take 8.5 hours rather than the scheduled 9.5 hours, so since we were a captive audience, we sat back and relaxed and for the next 8.5 hours we drank a little, ate a little, slept a little, watched a movie and regularly checked the GPS tracking to see where the plane was as it traversed the Atlantic.

Saturday, August 1st 2009

Saturday was a day of tribulations and Patricia had to keep reminding me that we did not have to be in Scotland until Wednesday and everything before then was fluid, so we managed the trials of the day with good humor and a few laughs.

Here are a few pointers for anyone contemplating hiring a car from an off-airport car-hire agency.

1. Our car-hire company was located in the Ibis hotel and we were instructed to take the “Hoppa 6” bus from terminal 1, 2 or 3 to get to the Ibis.

2. Terminal 4 at London Heathrow airport is approximately 1,000 miles from the central area of London’s Heathrow airport, where terminals 1, 2 and 3 are located.

3. There is a free underground rail service from Terminal 4 to Terminals 1, 2 and 3.

4. From the landing gate in terminal 4 to the underground station and then from underground station to the to the Hoppa bus stop requires navigating several miles of pedestrian tunnels with confusing signs for the terminals and no signs at all for the Hoppa bus stop.

5. Change dollars into pounds in the terminal since the bus fare is four pounds and they don’t take dollars.

6. Bring the leaflet issued by MasterCard that serves as written proof that your credit card covers CDW insurance for hire cars so you won’t waste 2 hours of your time convincing the agent and making frantic calls to MasterCard in the US so the MasterCard person can persuade the agent that coverage is standard.

7. Even after all the telephone calls have apparently convinced the agent of that car is insured be prepared to leave a significant deposit (of 750 pounds for a 310 pounds car rental).

8. Concentrate extra-hard when leaving the parking lot or the first 100 yards of your journey will be on the wrong side of the road – they drive on the left in the UK.

We landed at 9:30am and originally planned to eat lunch in Oxford. The hassles with our rental car, and lots of traffic on London’s outer loop – the M25 - seriously affected our timetable.

After pulling off the M25 and getting on the A40 traveling north-west the beautiful countryside lightened our mood, but by 1:30pm we were still 30 miles south of Oxford and feeling hungry. By chance we pulled into the parking lot of The Lambert Arms - a promising looking country inn with a sign outside advertising lunches. It turned out to be an excellent place to stop. The inn had a small dining room and a well stocked bar. The food was excellent –two types of homemade bread with homemade butter and dips, lamb burgers without the bun with salad and wedges of fried potatoes- and the real ale was delightful. So, refreshed and once again in great spirits we left the restaurant and headed north.
A slight detour through the center of Oxford with stops at to look for a digital photo frame for Mum’s birthday present took a little longer than expected in heavy rain so at 5:00pm we pulled into a motorway service center for a cup of coffee to stay awake and to call mum and say that we were about 2 hours away.

The Costa coffee was excellent, though they do not know what a caramel macchiato is, but trying to use a public phone box proved challenging, perhaps because we were not completely sure of mum’s number so I gave up trying and used the US cell phone to call.

This lesson showed us that we needed a local cell phone so we stopped at Asda – the UK supermarket chain owned by Walmart - close to mum’s and with the excellent help of an young Asda employee in the electronics department we bought a T-Mobil cell phone for use while we are here and we also managed to find the digital photo frame that had proved elusive in Oxford.

This was also our first introduction to the “chip” on UK credit cards. The chip contains information about the card holder and a pin number that unlocks the card for charging. The store credit card reader extracts information from the chip, the owner of the card types in the pin number and the charge is made. Cards that have to be swiped are no longer used in the UK. It took some time for the store clerk to figure out how to take a credit card that did not contain a chip, but he prevailed, found how to swipe the card on his card reader, and the charge was made.

We arrived at mum’s at 8pm and were rewarded with a delightful meal of roast lamb, roast and boiled potatoes, mint sauce, steamed vegetables and meringue with strawberries, all washed down with a Wolf Blass Cabernet Shiraz.