The long flight

31 hours after leaving a wet, cold and dark Christchurch we arrived in a hot and sunny England. Saying goodbye is always hard when you have no idea when you will see you friends and family again. A big thank you to our good friends Kerry and Dave who put us up for the last couple of weeks. And farewell to Vicki's son Andrew and my daughter Izzie who saw us off at the airport. Tears were suppressed - but only just!

Once aboard the plane we could relax and reflect how lucky we were. Our two biggest - and hence most difficult - possessions left to get rid of were my bicycle and our remaining car. After being offered several "low-ball" values for our car we weren't expecting to get much for it, but on the Friday before leaving we got a good offer, nothing like what we had hoped for, but probably realistic and a great weight off our minds. And then my cycle went the day after and we were down to to just what we were to travel with plus a few leftovers which Vicki's parents duly extracted from us.

Night flying is always the best option if there isn't much to look at and you can get some sleep. New Zealand to Hong Kong fills the first criteria and as the plane wasn't full we managed to bag a row of three seats each so we could at least be horizontal for much of the trip. So we were lucky to get to Hong Kong in what felt a short time and still feeling pretty good.

Hong Kong to Heathrow was the opposite experience, covering really interesting ground (across China, Mongolia and Russia) in the daylight, but we were in the middle rows without a view! Experiencing the full 12 hours awake made for a lengthy trip. The best part was that Cathy Pacific have a video camera under the aircraft looking forward so you can watch where you are going. Really interesting at take-off and landing.

We were so lucky at Heathrow, I got through immigration in about 2 minutes flat, only a couple of people in front in the electronic passport queue. Vicki had a longer wait in the foreign plebs queue, but that gave me time to get the bags and we marched out to be picked up by my sister and brother-in-law Gail and Janos. Then we were driven through the traffic to their grand residence near Reading (more about that later!). Despite the continual bad press, the weather was hot and sunny (well, over 20C). A great welcome!