The trip home- Haltwhistle to Singapore

It was less than a week after we sold the van when we set off to fly home.  The prices of the flights were continuing to go up so we booked flights leaving 6 days after we sold the van.

Goodbye campervan!

On Monday we left the campsite and caught the train from Haltwhistle to Carlisle, then changed at Carlisle to train to Manchester Airport.  Our train was late leaving Carlisle and terminated 1 stop before Manchester Airport due to being so behind in schedule.  This meant all the remaining passengers and luggage had to wait on the platform and we were to catch the next train going to Manchester Airport.  Once on the platform a message came over the speaker to say the next train was 13 minutes late.  Then a 2 carriage train came up to the platform and we all had to get on that.  They had obviously decided to get a train from 'out the back' to get us all down to the Airport.

So we got to the Airport a little late and we saw the bus stand before the taxis.  There was a number 19 there, which we both thought went past the hotel we were going to stay the night in.  I asked the driver and he said yes he did, but this turned out to be a big mistake.  We thought it was a short bus ride and after awhile Dale went up to talk to the driver.  We were wrong and had already been on the bus for about 45 minutes.  A lovely lady next to me said that it would be best and easiest to stay on until the end of the line and catch a taxi from a rank close to the bus stop.  This meant another 45 minutes on the bus and looking at each other not quite believing that we could be so stupid!  We managed to get a taxi once we got off the bus and it didn't cost us too much extra.  We did get to the hotel about 8.30pm.  We headed straight to the restaurant for something to eat.

Our bags- the full 30kg checked baggage each

The next morning we got a (15 minute!) taxi to the Airport at 7am in preparation for our 9.10am flight to Singapore.  We left on time and 1 hour 40 minutes into the flight we stopped in Munich for an hour to pick up more passengers and for a change of crew.  The entertainment and food were good on the flight, but we were unable to sleep more than about 30 minutes each.  We landed early at 6.40am Singapore time and caught a taxi to Big Hotel in Singapore for our stay in the city of about 36 hours.