The journey to the airport

Routes to the Holiday

We have tried a variety of routes over the years to travel overseas. In the days when I used to do a lot of overseas work for the Open University and for the University of Glamorgan (as it was in those days). I would fly to anywhere from Cardiff Airport via Amsterdam with KLM. I have done that trip to Hong Kong, Lusaka, Bahrain, Nairobi, Brussels, Milan, Paris and Berlin. Indeed when Drew and I first travelled to the USA we went Cardiff-Amsterdam-New York. But even though it is very easy to turn up to Cardiff and hand over the luggage the cost of travelling that route (when paying ourselves) always seems to be too expensive compared to travel to London and flying direct from Heathrow or Gatwick. 

Once we opted for flying from London we tried Airport Travel Car/Van companies and on other trips persuaded my brother to drive us up here (the first time being 2009 when my sister and brother-in-law were coming with us). My brother kindly did this on three occasions for us. But we decided in 2015 to try the train and an overnight at an airport hotel, that worked well, it was cheaper than car travel, and meant a far more reasonable start to the day with only a short distance to the plane. So this year we booked our train tickets from Taffs Well, our local station, to London Gatwick, from which Virgin Atlantic fly to Orlando, Florida.

The Journey to the Airport

The day began with the, now traditional, photo of our luggage, being guarded by our regular travel companion Captain Jack before we depart from home.

Captain Jack and the luggage

It was nice to have a gentle morning, up at the usual time, breakfast and four cups of tea before leaving the house at 9.30am. Our neighbour, Pat, who is looking after the house in our absence, came to the door to wave us off. 

The stroll to Taffs Well Station is just under a mile (0.9 miles according to Google) and is a nice walk. Our home village, Tongwynlais, has recently had new village signs, so I had to have a photo of me walking out of the village, so I could share it with you my readers.

The walk only took 15 minutes and it thankfully stayed dry until we were about 200 yards from the station, the rain arriving in time for us to get into the dry waiting area. The train arrived in another five minutes so we arrived in Cardiff Central at 10.10am, in time for a nice coffee. Yes, I know this is two hours before the train was due to leave, but I like making sure I have plenty of contingency time for something as important as a holiday!! (Some would say I'm just weird).

The Cardiff to Reading train departed on time and we had a light lunch on the journey

For no apparent reason the train was 17 minutes late arriving in Reading, but we had a 36 minute gap between trains, so this didn't cause us any challenge. The Reading to Gatwick Airport train, however, was twenty minutes late arriving due to signalling problems. This train was quite full, but we both got seats. However, as the train went along its route it got slower and slower. Three stops before Redhill (the stop before Gatwick Airport) the automated message changed from this 'train is for Gatwick Airport', to 'this train is for Redhill' and when we arrived at Redhill we were told the train was termaniting there and we had to transfer from Platform 1 to Platform 3 for a Thameslink Train. Platform 3 was very, very full, but thankfully the train when it arrived was comfortable and nicely air-conditioned - the wet of Wales had been replaced by a warm and sunny Surry and we arrived at Gatwick Airport station only 30 minutes after our originally planned time of arrival. 

A three minutes journey on the monorail took us from the South Terminal to the North and we arrived at our hotel - the Premier Inn at 4.50pm. 

Time for a wash, rest and blog before going out for tonight's dinner.