Sunday 4th Monday 5th January 2026
Sunday morning and for the first time we were worried we might be late for breakfast; that’s a novelty on this tour!!!! So a lazy morning packing etc then sat down to a half bottle of “bubbly” curtesy of Rovos Rail; we hadn’t felt the need to drink that on the train!!
We headed to the restaurant for a light lunch as we won’t have anything ‘till we’re 35,000ft in the air, probably around midnight SA time. Again we experienced poor “delivery service” in the drinks department, and I pointed out to our waitress, had my first two drinks come a little quicker, I would have had another or maybe two more, but I don’t think the “business side” of this registered😤. Still another good meal, thoroughly enjoyed before heading back to our room.
Mid afternoon we were back in our room finishing “things” off and patiently waited for the guy to come and collect our cases. We had planned for a part of the day to be around the pool to get some sun. The weather during our tour has generally been brilliant, sunny and hot but as we were always on the go, no time to sit in it😩. Today was the day but no, today we had thunder and lightening and outbursts of heavy rain, so still white!!!
exactly on time the porter arrived and the transfer arrived soon after, so no hanging around. Again we had another big 500 Mercedes with all the “tit-bits” including wifi!!! It’s a pity we arrived at the airport so quickly!!!
Most of this holiday Christine has been suffering with her bones and pills have got her through but on Friday, whilst enjoying the short boat ride at “Cradle of Humankind”, as the boat came out of the water it tilted rather severely and jolted her back causing her severe pain, still the wine we had at lunchtime and in the afternoon sorted her out!!! Anyway the thought of queueing at check in, security and passport control was concerning her and fortunately for such moments, I produced my fold-up walking stick and it did the job. To the front of the checking in, 👍 out the back through a “secret” walkway where we collected a wheelchair with “lady pusher”👍 who then pushed through a dedicated security channel and immediately into passport control, done-and-dusted very quickly. The lady then took us to duty free first then took us to the gate, where we waited. We had already decided to give the lounge a miss as we decided to “save ourselves”.
Eventually we boarded but it was a chaotic affair, the girls on the gate let the wheelchairs head to the plane but the crew hadn’t been on board long enough so weren’t ready so we waited at the start of the air bridge, fine. What happened next was totally un-expected; the rest of the passengers had been processed and followed us causing a real bottleneck, and the assistance people couldn’t get through!!! In the end I just pushed Christine to the entrance, parked the wheelchair and we got aboard.
The plane was the big Airbus 380, two levels of passengers and with crew, just under 500 people, no wonder the ground staff wanted to clear the gate area!!!
All aboard and then we waited as a local plane pulled off the boarding gate before us and then they discovered liquid dripping from one of the engines, oh dear. The investigation was swift, it was some residue of rain dropping down, phew!! By now we were about an hour overdue, still on the way.
A very comfortable flight then we got to the south coast and because we had been late leaving, we’d missed our landing slot so joined in the “stack”; another delay. Eventually we landed but then being out of sequence couldn’t get onto the stand. The A380 loads and unloads its passengers through two doors, upper and lower and there are only a handful of these facilities at terminal 5.
We had train tickets for the 1030hrs direct to W-S-M and had the plane arrived on time, there wouldn’t have been rush at all, but now the race was on. We arrived at Paddington on the Elizabeth line and got to our platform with seconds to spare, but no, by now they had closed the platform gates so missed it👹👹. Next train 1100hrs but have to change at Bristol Temple Meads.
This morning the sky is blue, lots of sun but cold, earlier, just before landing we observed a sprinkling of snow and with a frost; a wake-up call after 5-weeks in the South African Summer.
Changing at Temple Meads was straight forward in spite of going from one side of the station to the other as they had numerous lifts to the various platforms. We arrived at WsM station to be collected by Jane, after five fabulous weeks in South Africa and nearly got bowled over when we caught up with Tom-Tom and Rosie, our two Cocker Spaniels