The Long Road Home

After nearly 6 weeks in the UK, by May 10 it was time to go home. Thoughts of gardening, splitting wood for next winter and home-cooked meals had started intruding into our holiday bliss. So, after a morning walk around a small neighbourhood near the hotel and across the M4, we packed up and made our way to Heathrow.

Having spent a couple of days figuring out some of the ins and outs of the local bus system, this part was dead easy. Rather than take the Hotel Hoppa bus at ₤4.50 each, we walked a block with our packs to catch the 140 transit bus and used our Oyster cards for the 10-minute ride to Heathrow's Central Bus Station for ₤1.20. We’d been taking this bus for 2 days because it was the easiest way to join the London Underground for our trips into the City.

There were no queues (er… line-ups) at the airport, so check-in was quick, although the Air Canada counter person didn’t know what to do with the Air Canada plastic bag that we’d saved from Edmonton to put our packs in, so I had to do that for her. Likewise, security wasn’t crowded, so by noon, we were airside with nothing to do but wait. Well, eat, shop and wait.

Pushback from the terminal was right on time, there was a short delay waiting for our turn on the runway, and we were off. Unfortunately, although the day was nice enough, there were clouds, and we couldn’t see much of the English countryside. At one point, we were pretty sure we could see the area north of Liverpool and maybe the Isle of Man, but Scotland was buried under cloud. And so it remained for a few hours until western Greenland, when views appeared.

Western Greenland, definitely a land of snow, ice, and glaciers running down to the sea. Not long after, we passed over Baffin Island. Even from 37000 ft we could see the terrain features. Having left at 3:15 pm, we basically chased the sun west so it was 5 pm when we landed in Edmonton where the weather was sunny and warm. All the snow we had seen 6 weeks earlier was gone. Leaves weren’t out, but, hey, it was only May 10 in Alberta….

The drive home the next day was uneventful, if long. The summer road maintenance season was in full swing and we were stopped a few times. We took the route through Kootenay National Park to Cranbrook, Creston and Kootenay Pass, avoiding the ferry because we’d heard of 2-hour waits. The big bonus? Clear skies the whole trip. Not “just” sunshine, but clear air. No haze. Not a cloud in the sky. Warm. What a welcome home. As usual, once we passed Balfour and headed up the Lake, roads were quiet and the scenery went from merely mountain “nice” to magnificent. It was good to be back.