(nice title, huh? 
after one last breakfast at the northcourt we pack, say goodbye and are off — the weather is brilliant again after yesterday’s rather rainy day, from easy-vauxie’s CD player the national trust “for ever for everyone” CD is providing a very fitting musical backdrop to our tour via brightstone, the military road, freshwater bay and then yarmouth to the ferry.
usually after two weeks of vacation i’m itching a bit to get back home, get back to work, back to hacking ;-)…this time though (for the first time really), i’m sad to leave — have we fallen in love with the island? hmm.
from lymington it goes back through the new forest to the M27. as predicted two weeks ago by steve, traffic coming into the new forest is heavy — as we drive out of lyndhurst there’s a 2 mile long queue of cars waiting to eventually get into the village.
originally we had intended to visit one of the national trust properties (making use of our new membership but decide not to stuff too much into the afternoon and have a little picknick while still in the new forest…after that it’s a straight drive back via the M27, the M3, and the M25 until we reach the ring road around heathrow airport: the challenge now is to find our way back to the ncp flightpath car park where easycar has its heathrow presence — and it’s literally in the last second that i spot the turn-off from the ring road and the right hole to disappear through. the interesting question (of the day really): will the easycar attendant declare easy-vauxie clean (in which case we get our £10 cleaning deposit back) or will he declare it dirty (and easycar gets to keep our deposit) (and, if he were to ask me, i’d declare it dirty, really) — well, he has a look through, returns, and declares it clean! leaving me wondering what a dirty easycar must look like? half the isle of wight in the boot? enough bird droppings to have the colour of the car officially changed?
we board the shuttle bus to terminals 1, 2, & 3 (for some strange reason terminal 4 is not served), get off at terminal 2, make our way through a seemingly endless maze of underground tunnels to the heathrow express station and then on to terminal 4.
getting our boarding cards is easy due to e-ticketing, getting rid of our luggage is not: we are way to early and have to wait for 50min before we can drop our luggage off — it’s slightly overweight…hmmm…strange, it can’t be those books and souvenirs, really…it’s got to be the accumulated dirt from our walks and that pesky dust from the coastal path! anyhow, british airways is nice and accepts both bags (but puts a heavy! tag on both of them)…then it’s through security, the duty free shop, the pret a manger place for something to eat, and then for one final cider and guinness at the terminal 4 pub.
the flight back (leaving a bit late) is at times a bit shaky but calms down on the last leg to zurich. we arrive after 22:00, wait for 20min for our luggage to reappear and then take a taxi home (a rather jerky, that is, dangerous, taxi driver & a bill of CHF 88.00!). while we are glad to be home again, we are also sad to have left the isle of wight behind…
