Sunday 30th November 2025
Our long awaited trip to South Africa starts today. The first leg is train to London for an overnight stop at Andrew’s in Marylebone.
After collecting Hayley, our dog sitter for the first three weeks and detouring back via Clevedon to drop her son off, we loaded our cases into the car and headed off to Jane’s where we are leaving the car and “cadging” a lift to the station. Fortunately this straight-through train starts at Weston Station so getting our seat with a table was easy but noticed lots of the seats were reserved from Bath onwards. When we got to Bath, the platform was heaving, all waiting for train. What we failed to know was that the Christmas fair is an extremely well supported Xmas Market and folk come and visit from all corners of the U.K., needless to say as the train pulled out of Bath station, all the coaches were completely full; end to end of each coach people were standing; good job we had booked our seats!!!
We arrived at Andrew’s at a respectable time and later headed out to dinner. Andrew took us for our Xmas treat to “The Royal China Club” a superb Chinese restaurant where we probably had the best Chinese food I have ever eaten!!!! Thank you again Andrew. Back home and certainly well satisfied we hit the sack. No rush tomorrow as our flight is in the evening.
Monday 1st December. 2025u
No rush to get going as Elton was away, so no school run and the only plan we had was for me to head back to the Wallace Collection to complete my tour of the museum.
The day passed without incident, we all did what we had to and met up around 5pm for a roast dinner. So glad we had travelled up on Sunday as there was mayhem Sunday night/Monday morning due to a nasty, unfortunate accident on the M5 closing both carriageways and causing mayhem throughout Somerset and surrounding districts and not helped by it being rush-our.
We caught the Elizabeth line from Bond Street straight into Terminal 5, up in the lifts and exit straight onto the check-In desks, couldn’t have been easier; we won’t take the car again!!! Minimal queue to get checked in and no waiting for security; never had it so easy. I had booked the lounge but needn’t have as the terminal wasn’t that busy, still we had our moneys worth, including some more food!!!
At the appointed hour we headed to the gate, boarded and settled down, it was pouring with rain outside, can’t wait to see sunshine again😎😎. By using the train and the Elizabeth line, getting to the airport couldn’t have been easier, this has to always be the way now.
After take off, yes you guessed it, we had more food, this time it was a Christmas dinner!!! We eventually settled down but sleep evaded me, too noisy and even though we had up-graded, the seats weren’t that comfortable, I feel BA has lowered its standards; back to Virgin next time.
Tuesday 2nd December 2025
We dropped down from a clear blue sky into Cape Town airport with Table Mountain standing out in the clear morning sun, taxied to a remote stand, and as the doors of the plane opened, was hit by nice warm air; just the ticket.
As we diss-embarked the transfer coach into the terminal, there was a friendly lady holding a board with our names on it. She was part of our service and walked us through immigration then collected our luggage and walked us through customs where there was another chap holding a board with our names on, he was taking over and delivering us to our hotel. Everything went like clockwork and if this level of organisation continues, we will be over the moon with our Tour Operator, “Personal Africa”.
This afternoon was spent relaxing by the pool before heading down to the waterfront for a quick “shufftee” before eating (again!!!) and heading for an early night; it’s been a long time since we got up Monday Morning.
