06:00.

We’ve made it to Manchester airport in a hassle-free journey. The taxi we’d ordered arrived on time and the roads (even the M62 motorway) were clear. The only anxious moment was when we hit a bank of thick fog just before joining the motorway at Rishworth. Thankfully, it only lasted about half a mile.

We’re flying from Terminal 2 which is much more civilised than the older terminal. There’s plenty of space and lots of staff. Qatar had us checked in very quickly, it was only the bag drop that took time. Looking at the airport codes on people’s suitcases I could see diverse destinations such as Sydney, Bangkok, Islamabad and Lahore – although no-one else seemed to be flying to Jakarta. Curiously, we’re one of the few long-haul flights. There’s another to Beijing and a couple crossing the pond to the states, but the majority are Europe bound.

Security was a breeze. There’s no faffing around with putting liquids in plastic bags anymore, the scanners were fully staffed, the people efficient and we breezed through. Even my camera bag escaped extra scrutiny!

Now we’re killing time until our flights called. We’ll be boarding a Boeing 787-9 ‘Dreamliner’ for the 6hr 50min flight to Dohar. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get some sleep en-route as it’s going to be a long old day. I doubt I’ll have time to blog from Qatar. Our transit time’s an hour so I suspect we’ll be going straight to the gate to board our next flight. The next you’ll be hearing from us will be when we arrive in Jakarta tomorrow morning (07:05 local time).

See you then!