All Good Things Come to an End

Sunday December 23, 2007

A foggy morning with a bit of weak sunlight filtering down saw us heading out for one last walk with Guinness before our departure. There is a manor house, Gorhambury, on a private estate just a couple of blocks from the house. The locals are permitted to walk the roadway and thus we were able to wander near the grazing sheep, free from traffic, with just the sounds of the church bells ringing on a Sunday morn.





Now it was time to head to the rail station one last time. Goodbye to St. Albans.



Cora and CW accompanied us into London and left us as we entered the tube system for our hour ride to Heathrow airport. As always, tears on my part as we had to bid them farewell. How can we thank you both enough for the fantastic week we had with you and for all the wonderful places you went with us?

For quite awhile, the tube runs underground as it wends its way through London, but once in the suburbs, the tracks come above ground. We were less than thrilled to see how foggy it had become! The day seemed to be improving weatherwise in St Albans as we were leaving. What happened?! The usual airport security measures (alot more thorough in England) were followed after unloading our luggage at the ticket counter. As always, there is alot of time to spend awaiting flights, but I indulged in a Chanel purchase and Michael finally got his fish and chips!

Since this whole area is windowless, we only got to see how dense the fog had become once we were at the gate. Now I understand the term, pea-soup fog! We could barely see the plane housed at the next gate and after awhile that visibilty disappeared too! Our plane was not even at the gate, but standing somewhere in the nether regions of the tarmac! A motorcoach was brought for the over 300 people awaiting to board and thus began the slow process of loading a few at a time, driving out to the plane and then returning for the next group. Our departure was delayed 2 hours because of this. I really do not know how the pilot managed to take off. CW said that later the airport was closed down because of the severe fog.

It was an uneventful flight home, with another palatable meal. This time I watched the latest Harry Potter flick. As we approached Newark airport I realized that we were not attempting to land. The pilot announced that it was 60 degrees and a severe thunderstorm was occuring! Oh indeed it was! We jounced around the sky as lighting flashed all around us! Finally we were able to land, but obviously much later than expected. So, we experienced every kind of weather there is on our two flights!

Once on the ground, life improved. We again were quite tired, but our luggage popped out early; no one wanted to inspect anything; the passport control officer did a quick look and then greeted us with, "Welcome home"! So, we retrieved our car and proceeded to drive 3 hours home to our own bed!! Again we owe sincere thanks to our friends, the Northups, for shoveling away the results of 2 big snowfalls--a dry driveway awaited us. The end, fini, that's all she wrote, folks!