The last few days of our trip had always been scheduled as spending time with family and consequently very little of holiday travels.
On leaving Paris on Wednesday we took the Eurostar back to London, turns out we were lucky as there had been a few cancellations on Tuesday so every train was full. They were making announcements in Gare du Nord that no more bookings would be taken for travel on the day.
After a very smooth ride back to St. Pancras it was a short walk round to pick up the hire car ready for the journey down to Somerset to see Jane's aunt Sheila. We had originally booked the car to be picked up at Heathrow, then changed to Euston to save the hour getting from St. Pancras to Heathrow. We should have stuck with the original plan as it took us 1&1/2 hours to get from Euston to Heathrow by car, finally making it to our hotel at 6pm and where we settled in for a very nice evening including dinner. We stayed at the Mount Somerset hotel which for style was only rivalled by our stay in Shildon on the 7th night of our trip.
Thursday morning it was up and off to see Auntie Sheila, which after 30+ yrs of not seeing each other was going to be something, finding the cottage was the hardest challenge, in the village there are no street numbers, every house has it's own name. After driving past twice we finally found it and had a lovely day with her before setting off to Bedford for the last 3 days.
In Bedford we stayed at the Barns hotel so we were midway between all the relatives and managed to see all we needed to over the 3 days before making our way back to London, returning the car and checking into the Heathrow T4 Hilton hotel.Monday morning up and out, off over the walkway from the hotel into the airport and onto the plane home, first leg a brand new A380 which was very comfortable and quiet, although they seemed to be having a few problems with the Thales in flight entertainment, almost everyone had to have their system rebooted at some point. Then onto a A350 for the leg to Adelaide, first time either of us had been on one of these new generation of aircraft, just like the 787 they are equipped to have the cabin pressure at a lower altitude than the older aircraft and I can honestly say it did feel different.It has been a great trip, hope all of you who have received this have enjoyed it, here's to the next trip.