Well, that was Edinburgh

Location: London Heathrow
Distance travelled – 331 miles/533 km

It was a slightly rushed visit home trying to sort lots of things out in 2 days. Luckily a couple of important letters were delivered to the place where I was staying while I was actually there which meant I could deal with them immediately and in person.

I was staying at the house of friends. I've stayed there many times but they were always there at the time while this time they were on holiday. It's still a lovely house and I still felt very much at home, but it certainly wasn't the same. The catering wasn't nearly as good, for example... And without children there, who was there to show me how to work the Wii? That said, there wasn't much free time for watching anything on it, so it wasn't that big a problem.

Because of the last minute re-arrangement of my luggage in Amsterdam, I basically tipped all the bags with clothes out onto the floor and resorted them. Some then got washed and some went into the storage unit I've hired.

Since I have many saintly friends, I was able to secure a lift to the airport which made the start of the journey a great deal easier than doing it all by bus.

And so the 25,000 mile (40.000 km) journey began, and as Lau Tzo might have put it, it began with a short hop down to London. The flight was fine, but Heathrow is an awful place. Despite transferring airside, another security check was required involving another long wait (though not as long as the one in Edinburgh) but the hellish place that is T3 isn't somewhere you're really in a hurry to get to.

After seeing Heathrow, I am even more in love with Schiphol where all the terminals are in one building with lots of different areas to wander in. T3 is just a giant cattle pen attached to a giant duty free shop and an expensive mall, with a load of overpriced food outlets round the edge. Ah well.

I got a couple of nice photos on the departure – this, for example, is the BA Airbus that I travelled on:


Once airborne, I got a fabulous view of the Forth bridges:


And this is Edinburgh itself:


And finally, something to scare the kids with if they're acting up. Threaten to abandon them in Heathrow Terminal 3, a place that even Danté couldn't have envisaged: