Travel Blog Section One: 3-5 July 2010

3 July 10.50  - Fly out

Ed Tappenden gets used to driving our People Mover, and I'm initially frowning.  Hang on — he flies planes!!!  Why  am I worried?

3 July  (or is it the 4 July?)

I’m showing off how — typing this from Singapore.  Tried Facebook — and end up chatting with Leanne Marshall at 12.45 in the morning (her time!!!)

4 July  Some-un-Godly-Hour  - Arrive Munich Airport

So get this.  We are customers paying a significant sum flying 5 people across the world.  Correct?  Well, tell me what other industry throws their customers out of their comfortable seats, turfs them into an unfamiliar building, subjects them to an hour-and-a-half of queuing and  security checks, then finally files them back into their seats dragging the luggage which they were required to haul with them — for no real reason than to change the people servicing the customers?  Uh oh - I feel another letter coming on……

Here’s a message and thanks to the security lady who scanned our luggage:  I hope your period finishes soon.

4 July 8.50am  -  Arrive Manchester Airport

Phoebe expresses her complete comfort
at being Callum's unwitting car pillow

Oooooooh, it’s big.  I feel such a hick.  There are MASSES of people and cars everywhere.  I felt a bit cheeky, so we went through the “EU Residents” section at immigration.  When we got to the front of the queue, we were told to go to the OTHER immigration section  -  AT THE FRONT OF THE QUEUE!! Score!!!!!!!!  But the next in line (the couple we effectively pushed in front of) weren’t too impressed, as we’d just saved ourselves a 2-hour immigration wait.  Can’t blame ‘em, really.

There are no free airport trolley’s and we have no UK coins.  We drag our entire belongings for the next 7 weeks to the Hertz rental office.  Getting our car was harder work than emptying an elephant’s bowel cavity.  At least we had a free upgrade Ford I-MAX and the kid’s seats were there.  Off to Dunfermline and a 5-hour car journey.  Thank goodness for our portable DVD player..

4 July 3pm GMT — Arrive Dunfermline !!!!

Minutes after our arrival (click
to enlarge)

Arrived at Liz and Norman’s house (my old home in Dunfermline) in good time, Munich and Manchester considering.  Took us an HOUR to find our way out of Manchester’s myriad of confusing motorways.  We’re here now, all safe and sound, and that’s the main thing..  I felt quite subdued in my old home.  Everything in my old home looks much the same!  Nice to have an oasis of predictability in the chaotic sea of change..  Showed Callum my old bedroom, and Glyn and Phil’s room that they shared.  Glyn and Caroline took us to their rental home  in Torryburn (near Dunfermline) -  our home for the next 5 weeks.  It’s perfect; warm, spacious, comfortable.  Too comfortable — I crashed at 7pm, Karyn at 8pm, while the kids run around completely un-tired.  Great parenting.

5 July  - Rest Day, Shopping Day

Drove past Rosyth Dockyard on the way to our supply run.  Gosh, it’s been stripped.  Don’t know how they’re going to build these new carriers.  The large cranes are gone.  At the moment, the old underground oil tanks are being demolished.  These were oil tanks that were built, then covered by tones of earth to hide them,  The planners even went so far as to graze sheep on top of them!!

We have our supplies now, and I am in Junk Food Heaven.  Delicious morsels of malnutrition that I have thoroughly missed; Pot Noodles, Monster Munches, Hoola Hoops.  I also hear tale (from my brother Glyn) of an enormous “King Kebab Special” that requires my investigation.  It’s essentially a pizza folded in half, and stuffed with mouth-watering lamb doner kebab meat.  Ohhh,  mmmmm…...