The answer is in its hutch back in Bristol! Why you may ask yourself? Well, it turns out LOT Airlines (who we are flying to Vilnius with) has suddenly decided to deny Superbunny passage due to the dimensions being ‘too big’ (even when they stated that it would on the phone!), does that sound familiar to you? The one thing that I have learnt thus far on this trip is how cheeky ‘budget’ airlines can be, ahh well, life goes on, it’s a manual wheelchair job for 9 days! The issue is that countries like Lithuania and Belarus are only served by these low cost airlines from the UK by small aircraft hence you are screwed whatever you do (apart from getting the train across Europe which could take a few days!).
Anyway, London, the prospect dawned upon us last week that our strategy was missing a trick! Instead of faffing about with someone else driving the van from City to Gatwick airport, we could simply drive to the latter, park and then catch the Gatwick Express into the capital and then Uber it to the hotel, genius!
… and it is this that we did! Surprisingly, it all went to plan despite the complication with Superbunny. Albeit it was a little strange arriving at London Gatwick with all our luggage but not actually going anywhere. The train station at Gatwick is basically like any other station so I felt right at home! The one thing that humoured me was the fact that as you get closer to London the railway’s technology becomes so much more advanced, I wonder when that will reach Bristol Parkway… a hundred years?
During my times in London over the last few years (which is more time than you could count), I have travelled through London Bridge underground but never wandered around the majestic new station that sits on top of it! The one thing that really excited me at the new station was that platform humps are installed on every platform making the platform and the trains the same height… if only the staff knew where to send people. Now, I have never used Uber before in my life, primarily due to the fact that it is difficult to order wheelchair accessible taxis, but today was the day! It’s surprisingly easy, yet rather creepy watching the little car sliding along the screen making its way to the pick-up point!
It’s an early start tomorrow (well 6am…could be a lot worse!) to hop over to London City for our 3 hour flight to Vilnius in Lithuania…see you on the other side 🙂