Planning and the journey

I'm not sure that we've ever been more organised for a trip. We've had plans on our dining room table for the last couple of months and have slowly added to the things that we have organised.

So the day finally arrives, after a fun evening the night before at the Painswick golf club, Karen very kindly picked us up and dropped us off at Cheltenham railway station for the first leg of our journey, an overcrowded cross country train!

Arriving at Manchester airport we checked in and boarded on time. There was some issue with baggage though and so we departed around 45 minutes late, not ideal when we only had 1 hour 20 mins to transfer in Frankfurt!

On arrival at Frankfurt we were bussed to the terminal and managed to locate our flight quite quickly. After a brisk walk through the airport we arrived just as they were boarding and we managed to walk straight on.

Just over 11 hours later we landed on Hong Kong and we're greeted off the plane with a notice asking us to check with ground staff. It seems that whilst we made the flight, our luggage didn't. We were advised that we needed to go through immigration and report our bag as delayed. However arriving at the baggage claim area they seemed to think something different and told us to check back in and report to the bag as delayed in Sydney. Either way, it took a little bit of time to sort and so we didn't really have time to head into Hong Kong. Instead we spent a couple of hours playing cards in the lounge before boarding our Hong Kong airlines flight to Sydney at 10pm.

The flight passed with a couple of films, some food and a sleep and we landed on time in Sydney at just before 11am and we're treated to our first view of the opera House and harbour bridge.Read more