Category Archives: Air Travel

27th October picture of the day…

27 Tuesday Oct 2020

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Work hasn’t been at the forefront of my mind today, mainly because it’s my Birthday and Dawn was determined to make it a good one for me – despite the awful weather we’ve had today which has rendered any idea of a long walk in the country out of the question, unless you fancy pneumonia for a birthday present!

Instead, after a lazy (ish) morning the pair of us went out for lunch to La Luna in Halifax as a rare treat. Due to the madness off this year we can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times we’ve eaten out recently, especially as the increased restrictions have meant we’ve had to cancel plans several times.

Despite it being a Tuesday lunchtime La Luna was very busy which was good to see. They’ve stripped out a lot of tables inside but they have another seating area undercover in the arcade outside so they still have enough seats to make the place viable economically. We shared dishes off the small plate menu and mixed a Greek Meze plate with Singapore Crab Springroll (fresh white crab seasoned with chilli, ginger, coriander and served with sweet chilli jam and avocado mayonnaise) and Gambas Pil Pil (pan-fried extra-large king prawns with paprika, chilli, garlic, lemon, parsley & olive oil served with ciabatta). I washed it down with a rather nice glass of Merlot (well, it is winter!) whilst Dawn had a Peppermint tea. The portion sizes meant three dishes was plenty for us and the quality of the food and the presentation was very good indeed. It was such a lovely break from what’s become normal life.

Afterwards we drove over to Wakefield as Dawn wanted to buy me a new waterproof walking jacket, sadly the selection on offer at Go-Outdoors wasn’t what I was looking for but hey ho – we’re not going to buy something just for the sake of it. On the way back the appalling weather caught up with us. Wind and driving rain made the trip back fun to say the least as the cars windscreen wipers went into warp factor 7. The views from the hills above Huddersfield can often be very attractive – but not when rain reduces visibility to a few hundred metres and drops light levels to the equivalent of dusk. Even the giant Emley Moor TV transmitter was lost in the low clouds.

Back at Bigland Towers we’ve settled in for a quiet evening at home in front of the fire although we did decide to take a risk and book a long weekend away in Hexham, Northumberland next month. It’ll be the only time we’ll have this year to get away together and – as it’s an apartment – we’ll be self-contained and independent if any more restrictions kick in. I’ve always wanted to explore parts of Hadrian’s wall and more of the Tyne Valley, so this seemed like the ideal opportunity.

The rain’s battering the window as I write this so we’re both happy to relax and enjoy a chicken stew that’s been simmering in the slow-cooker whilst we’ve been out, which meant we returned home to some delicious smells! We might even stretch to something as adventurous as a play game of Scrabble, or even watch a film. The outside world can take a backseat for once. Anyway, we’re being sociable (at a social distance) tomorrow – so this is our time. After all, I’m only Sixty..X once!

And so to the picture of the day, which has been chosen totally at random by putting a name into the ‘search’ facility on my picture website, and it threw up this…

Here’s the main hall of the old Berlin Templehof airport, just a few weeks before it closed in 2008. Built by the Nazi regime between 1936-1941 it’s an impressive building that a few of us were determined to visit during one of our regular German forays.

The site and associated building have a fascinating history. You can read more about them here. Sadly, I never got to fly in or out of Tempelhof, but I’m glad I saw it before it closed.

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Thank you!

29th July picture of the day (and a spot of musing)…

29 Wednesday Jul 2020

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Today’s actually been quite a varied day. In these strange times that normally means the weather around here’s produced sunshine and rain, instead it’s meant that I’ve been juggling household DIY jobs, work, shopping and cooking as well as managing to get out for some exercise – oh, and I’ve finally finished scanning yet another album of old railways slides from 1995. There’s only 3 albums left to do now after 31 years (Woo – hoo!). You can view the latest batch here. They’re the first ones that come up in the gallery.

These mixed exertions have certainly passed the time and allowed me to play catch-up on a number of fronts so the day’s flown, which brings me to the picture of the day, which was taken Mid-Atlantic in April 1999.

T9168. Boeing 747 wing mid-Atlantic. 1999.crop

Pictures through aircraft windows are always frought with difficulty, especially when you’re shooting into the sun because of the chances of flare in the window layers as well as the optic elements of the lens (which is why I use prime lenses in these situations), but this one worked quite well and it holds a lot of memories. It was taken from a Virgin Atlantic flight from Los Angleles to London Heathrow on the final day of an epic 18 month trip around the world, from 1997-1999. Lynn and I were heading home with no idea how we’d feel about being back. As we crossed the Atlantic the plane banked just before sunset, allowing me to capture the final shot of the trip.

I’ve still many many pictures from our adventures to scan, but you can find the ones I have here.

 

 

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Rolling blog: The Viennese whirl, Part 1.

28 Sunday Apr 2019

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18:56.

It’s Sunday evening and I’m on my way from Halifax to Heathrow in readiness to fly out to Vienna in the morning for a press trip to see what Siemens have been up to ahead of the UITP conference. We’ll be seeing the latest cutting-edge transport technology, but the start of my trip is on the antithesis of all that – an old BR built ‘Pacer’ eking out the last months of its life after decades of service acro2ss Yorkshire…

19:45

Having bounced our way sedately and peacefully to Leeds (the train was very quiet as only a handful of passengers were aboard) I’m now on something a little more modern, but also soon to be displaced. I caught LNERs 19:46 Leeds – Kings Cross which is worked by a Mk4 set of coaches pushed by a Class 90 (90026) hired in from DB.

The joys of TDM control mean the set judders like it’s got St Vitus dance. The effect is magnified by the fact I’m in the coach nearest the loco, thank God I’m only on this to Doncaster as it’s taken me 10 mins to type this ‘cos my fingers are all over the place and my ‘spull chucker’ is working overtime!

21:13.

I’m on my way again after a pause at a rather deserted Doncaster. Much of the station had shut up shop and from what I could see the town wasn’t far behind. The platforms were patrolled by the British Transport Police, who clearly expected some form of fracas, although the place was quiet when I passed through. The only thing that was open was a branch of ‘Subway’, which was doing steady business.

The train I’m on now is LNER’s 18:00 Edinburgh to Kings Cross. I took a stroll from the coach I’m sitting in (C) to the buffet and did a head count. It’s good! I don’t know what the ticket yield is, but judging by the number of folk on the train, it’s certainly more then paying its way.

23:20

I’m heading for Heathrow on an old friend – the Piccadilly line. There are so many memories attached to it – apart ftom Heathrow. Back in the very early 1980s I used to use it to get to Manor House in North London where an old friend from Southport lived. Mary and I had a fling for a whole, so I used to hitch-hike from Southport to London at weekends to see her. Mary had rented a room with a very orthodox Jewish family, this meant I had to make sure I turned up before sunset, otherwise the door wouldn’t be answered & Mary would have to throw her keys out’ve the window! A decade later, when I was living in London with Lynn in Crouch End, the Piccadilly was one of our local lines. We’d have to get the bus to Finsbury Park to connect with the Picc or the Vic, but they took us to so many places, and to do many memories. Now, Dawn and I use it to head North from Heathrow- although the journey nowadays is a bit further north than Crouch End!

Looking around this train I realise what I miss with living in West Yorkshire. There’s 40 plus folk in this car and I’m probably the oldest one! It’s a young multi-racial crowd, a world away from some of the ‘old’ bits in West Yorkshire who’re still re- fighting the second world war.

New Zealand update: pictures of trains, planes and automobiles – and even a couple of videos.

31 Thursday Jan 2019

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Despite the jet-lag I found a second wind after a couple of hours dozing, so I managed to  edit a few more New Zealand pictures and get them onto my Zenfolio website. There’s a real mixture – hence the title of this blog! You can find the gallery here.

There’s still many more to sort out. I’ll try and get them on Zenfolio over the weekend. I hope you enjoy them. Oh, if you want to see a couple of video’s of flying out of Queenstown and landing in Auckland, go and have a look at this blog I’ve just added them to the end of.

Rolling blog: Back in Britain…

31 Thursday Jan 2019

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06:20.

It’s a bit of a shock to the system but we’re back in the UK after flying in from Houston. We’ve actually had a very good flight. Our plane was well over half empty. The food was very good and crew were friendly and helpful, my only observation was that this was an 11 year old 777-224 (N69020 for the aviation geeks) so the seat-back entertainment system was rather clunky.

We arrived nearly an hour ahead of schedule after an easy flight. It’s the first time I’ve flown out of Houston and across Texas, so I was surprised to see just how green the state was. After a childhood spent watching cowboy films the last thing I was expecting was to see how green it was with huge tracts of pine forests, winding roads and arrow straight roads. We also crossed Louisiana and Arkansas only by then the clouds had rolled in. leaving little to see but this.

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Admittedly, US cities look rather spectacular when you fly over them at night…

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It was still night when we entered UK airspace and flew past Bristol and up the Thames valley before looping back on ourselves before lining up for our final approach to Heathrow, where we encountered mist and very low cloud. Now we’ve got to re-adapt to UK climate, which isn’t at its best. It looks like we’ll be returning to snow in West Yorkshire. We’ve a few hours to kill before then as our Grand Central service back to Halifax isn’t until 10:57…

09:16

We’ve braved the cold to get on the Piccadilly line tube to Kings Cross. In truth, it’s not a bad day to come back to. The sun’s shining and it’s a beautifully clear but frosty morning.

12:17

After brunch at the Parcel Yard in Kings Cross station we’re now speeding North through a Narnia style landscape courtesy of Grand Central trains (my first UK rail trip of the year). We ran out of sunshine North of Peterborough, swapping it for freezing with visibility down to a couple of hundred metres at most. Doncaster almost looked attractive in the frost (no mean feat) although the further West we get the more the frost’s fading. I don’t envy the guys we passed, working on the station platform extensions at Pontefract, they must be freezing – despite all their PPE.

19:17

We’re home, unpacked and knackered! Having travelled halfway around the planet on two flights, one of 12hrs 30m and the other of 7hrs 45m plus a layover of 2.5 hours as well as having crossed the international dateline has caught up with us. Now it’s time for bed and a chance to begin resetting our body clocks to UK time.
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Rolling blog: New Zealand day 31. Auckland and the first flight home…

29 Tuesday Jan 2019

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10:15.

Our time in New Zealand’s finally come to an end – just as the heatwave arrives! We’ve spent the morning at Lisa’s packing our suitcases and working out what we can leave to create room for some of the things we’ve bought. Later we’re all going into the city for a farewell lunch at the Crab Shack before heading out to the airport. Neither of us are ready to go home – especially as we’ll be returning to a country that’s increasingly looking like it’s lost it’s marbles thanks to the utter shambles they call Brexit…

I’ll post some pictures throughout the day.

12:27.

All packed up and ready to go…

15:37.

It’s Crab Shack time!

18:20

We’re now at Auckland airport waiting for our Air New Zealand flight to Houston, Texas on the first leg of our trip home. Lisa was brilliant and gave us a lift after the meal, although it was an emotional parting as we don’t want to leave and I’ve not seen her for donkeys years!We’ve had a fabulous time here and I’ll sum up our experiences in another blog. Right now we’re drinking overpriced alcohol in the departure lounge, drowning our sorrows before catching our plane…

We’re on the plane now and trying out our “if we smile they’ll serve us wine” look…

See you on the other side of the pond!

15:55 (US time).

We’ve landed at Houston, Texas and gone through the faff of having to collect your luggage even though it’s checked in all the way through to London. When the carousel breaks down whilst you’re waiting it only adds to the stress levels! Now we’re on our connecting United Airlines flight 880 to Heathrow on another Boeing 777. Thing is – I thought it was always sunny in Texas?

New Zealand day 27. Queenstown to Auckland

25 Friday Jan 2019

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Our time on the South Island’s come to an end today. We’re currently sipping coffee in the “Fat Lamb” cafe in central Queenstown before heading out to the airport ready for our Air New Zealand flight to Auckland this afternoon. I have to admit, there’s hardly anything I recognise about the town since my last visit in 1999. The place has grown and changed that much! As well as being a magnet for adrenaline junkies thanks to all the extreme sports activities based here, it’s also a magnet for a lot of young English people who’ve found jobs. Last night we were sat outside the 1876 bar having a drink and watching all the tradesmen (carpenters, builders etc) having a drink at the end of the working week. The range of regional British accents was quite entertaining! They mingled with others of their generation who were working in the hospitality industry. Tourism obviously generates a lot of money here – not to mention traffic jams! This is the only place we’ve seen on the whole of our trip where traffic is queuing to get in/out of town…

13:30

Now we’re sat at the airport, all ready to go. For an ‘international’ airport it’s a small place where you hang around in the terminal to eat/drink/shop rather than doing so airside.

dg318190crop

Killing time at the airport. Every so often things are enlivened as a domestic flight lands and passengers wander into the terminal off the tarmac to the right of the picture…

Last time I flew from here the turbulence was so bad the plane was like a bucking bronco, which meant the staff weren’t allowed to serve any hot drinks due to the risks. Hopefully today will be a little calmer when our Airbus A320 takes to the skies…

UPDATE (31st January).

Here’s a couple of camera-phone video’s for your entertainment. The first is taking off from Queenstown and heading for Auckland.

The second video is approaching and landing at Auckland on the same flight.

 

 

 

Rolling blog: New Zealand here we come…

28 Friday Dec 2018

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06:00

The alarm’s gone off and we’re rising, bleary eyed from bed. Why is it that you so often have a lousy nights sleep when you’re about to embark on a long trip? Nerves, excitement? I’ve been doing this for decades but it still happens. Then one disturbs the other and you’re both tossing and turning! Add in a surreal dream too – at one point I woke up and thought “hang on, I’ll get arrested when I land in the USA!” After a moment thinking “where the hell did that idea come from?” I realised this was tied in to a scenario in a previous dream! I wouldn’t mind, but I’ve not eaten any cheese (renowned for triggering dreams) this Christmas.

Right now, I need coffee – and a shower – in that order!

08:29.

We’re being chauffeur driven to Heathrow T2 by Darren, Dawn’s brother. Mercifully, the roads ate quiet due to the Christmas shutdown.

10:04.

We’re through check-in, security (which was efficient and surprisingly painless) have stocked up on a few bits and now we’re enjoying a bacon and egg muffin washed down with more coffee. Terminal 2 is remarkably quiet compared to how I’ve seen it so it’s quite relaxed.

From here we’re off to Chicago aboard a United Airlines Boeing 767, Then to Auckland aboard an Air New Zealand Boeing 787-900 ‘Dreamliner’ which I’m looking forward to as I’ve never flown on one before.

Whilst hanging around in airport lounges is great for people watching it’s a waste of a few hours that could have been spent sleeping, or doing something more productive. It’s my great complaint about modern air travel. By the time we take off at 12:05 we’ll have been up for 6 hours.

11:16.

Our chariot awaits…

Right, where’s the wine?

11:42.

Boarding’s complete and we’ll be in the air for the next 9 hours, so we’ll see you on the other side of the pond this evening!

15:04 (Chicago time) 21:04 (UK time).

We’ve just landed at Chicago O’Hare. The temperatures a chilly -4 and snow’s forecast but as we won’t be leaving terminal 5 we’re not too bothered.

This hasn’t been a bad flight 3,254 miles in under 9 hours. There’s plenty of legroom on these 767s but the seat pitch is poor. You can’t recline far to get some decent sleep.

The food was pretty good. Due to her allergies Dawn ordered the vegan menu, which produced a very acceptable curry!

The salad accompanyment was just as tasty.

22:58 UK. 16:58 Chicago time.

Getting through Chicago O’ Hare’s a bit of a faff. This is the first transit flight I’ve been on where you have to collect your baggage to go through customs before dropping it off again. At least we already had our ESTA’s after being in New York in May. Even so, it’s quite a bureaucratic process. Now we’ve made it through to T5 departures. I must admit to being a little disappointed by the airport. Considering T5 is the international terminal, it’s not a patch on many. We’re both dog-tired at this stage and desperately hoping we can get some decent sleep on the next flight.

Dusseldorf bound…

13 Wednesday Jun 2018

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Here we go again for my second trip of the year to Dusseldorf and visit to Siemens. I suspect I’m going to be Arabica powered over the next few days, it’s only 06.36 and I’m already on my second cup here at terminal 5!

The next couple of days are going to be very busy but I hope to have time to post an update – a process made much easier now that the expensive mobile phone roaming charges have been removed thanks to EU legislation. Talking of the EU, i’m going to resist the temptation to comment on the Brexitshambles right now because if I get started on that I’ll probably miss my flight.

After being bussed around what seemed the entire perimeter of Heathrow i’m now occupying seat 27A on BA936.

The weather’s looking good too, let’s hope it’s the same in Germany. Here’s the view from my plane.

See you on the other side…

12.24 (UK time).

Phew! It’s already been a busy day. We wasted on time on arrival as Siemens whisked us straight to their press preview at Krefeld. The morning was spent getting a briefing on Siemens products, including their new high-speed train, the Velaro Novo.

Capable of 250 to 360 km/h, the Novo is an update to the Velaro platform, which uses 30 percent less energy than previous Velaro models, it’s reckoned this translates to average savings of 1,375 tons of CO2 a year. Thanks to its lightweight construction, the train’s weight has been reduced by 15 percent. At the same time, available space for passengers has been increased by ten percent.

I’ll have more details later,

Time to go home…

29 Tuesday May 2018

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We’re sat at JFK airport waiting for our American Airlines flight to Heathrow after a great week exploring New York and celebrating Dawn’s 50th birthday. It’s been a fascinating trip that I’ll write more about later. I’ve also got a huge backlog of photo’s to sort out too as the camera’s been kept busy over the past few days. Yesterday we took a ferry trip right around Manhattan, which proved to be far more interesting than I expected. Dawn also booked for us to go to the top of the Empire state building, which I’d never visited before. Despite the hazy weather it was a fabulous experience.

Flying home is always tinged with sadness. You never really want a trip like this to end, but American Airlines have done their best to make it an even more dispiriting experience than usual. Dawn tried emailing them to check about food allergies (foolishly, I’d forgotten to do it when we booked the trip). They never got back to her. Yesterday I checked in online only to find that – if we wanted to sit together, AA wanted to charge us between $75-150 a seat for the privilege! They seem to be a Transatlantic version of Ryanair now. At JFK the AA staff insisted we had to use machine check-in and wouldn’t let us talk to counter staff (so there was no chance to ask for a seat change). Not only that, but the machines then tried to sell us ‘priority boarding’ for another $40 apiece! To say I was less than impressed would be an understatement. I’ve never encountered this on any of my trips to India or Southeast Asia. I’m told this practice is spreading amongst airlines. All I can say is that I’ll be making sure that I’ll be avoiding any long-haul airlines that are tempted to ‘ching’ passengers in this fashion.

Once, flying had a certain cachet, it was an exciting, even glamourous experience. Not any more…

DG297810

Our plane. A Boeing 777-223 (ER), No N760AN being prepared as AA142, the 10.10 to London Heathrow.

UPDATE: 30th May 2018.

Credit where it’s due, our AA flight to the UK was a really good flight! Despite the fact we’d both been allocated middle row, B numbered seats (one in front of the other) we managed to sit next to each other due to the number of other passengers who’d also been split up all playing musical chairs to swap seats! I can’t help wondering how much extra revenue this policy creates compared to the ill-will it causes. What I can’t fault was the condition of the plane or the service. Although the airframe was 16 years old the interior was far more recent, the seats were comfortable, the legroom reasonable and the facilities (electrical and USB sockets) were good. The seatback TV screens were excellent, with really good definition whilst the entertainment system had a wide variety of films and other programmes on offer. The cabin crew were a also a delight. Unlike many crews, they were all older (and more experienced) women who were both extremely helpful and polite. This combination made the time on out six and a half hour flight fly by – literally! Mind you, this was aided and abetted by the large glasses of wine the Stews were happy to serve!

As our flight didn’t land until late in the evening I’d booked us a hotel near the airport so that we could get our heads down before heading North this morning. Right now i’m typing this update from the 10.52 Grand Central service to Halifax, which could be an interesting journey as the East Coast Main Line’s up the spout again. It seems that a lightning strike took out signalling in the Newark area earlier this morning! As we’re on a DMU we’re could be diverted via the GN/GE joint line from Peterborough to Doncaster via Lincoln. Luke Barty, our Train Manager is doing a sterling job trying to keep passengers appraised of the situation, although he doesn’t know himself which route we’ll take yet. To his credit he’s not hidden behind the meaningless ‘operational incident’ phraseology loved by GTR, instead he’s spelled out to passengers exactly what’s happened and what’s going on.

In the end we stayed on the main line to join the queue of trains being hand-signalled through Newark. Whilst this happened Luke talked to the passengers like adults and explained exactly what was going on whilst apologising for the fact that he couldn’t (yet) establish how late we would be. It was a text-book example of how to talk to passengers when things go wrong.

(12.20) BEST LAID PLANS…

Poor Luke! Just as he was making an announcement to passengers after passing through Newark, our train suddenly swung to the Right and it became obvious that we were being diverted via Lincoln after all – just on the shorter diversionary route! To his credit, he coped with aplomb.

We’re now crossing the Lincolnshire flatlands under misty skies. Still, neither Dawn or I are in a hurry. We have coffee and a plentiful supply of biscuits, wifi and a view, so we might as well enjoy the experience…