We left Perth at about 10.30 pm last night and arrived at Gatwick Airport, London at about 12.30 pm today. As England has daylight saving we only go back in time seven hours. The featured image is a distorted version of a photo I took near Burswood, which suits our feelings of disorientation with the familiarity and strangeness of our travel.

We had a very uncomfortable 11 hour journey for the first leg, with no extra space, then a far more comfortable and enjoyable seven hour second leg. It might also be that travelling during the day is nicer. The sun rose as we were waiting to board our connecting flight in Dubai.

Our allocated seats were two next to a window, which they must have changed because it isn’t what we would choose because of being locked in by a third person. Fortunately there were spare seats and our third on the row decided to sit elsewhere. We were able to enjoy having a window and also being able to share the three seats. Much better for napping.

View of mountains with snow as we passed over Turkey. Or in that area anyway.

I think this was taken over Iraq.

We didn’t get photos of the White Cliffs of Dover because of cloud cover. The White Clouds of Dover? We are tired enough to think this is very funny.

We struggled a bit with our baggage and the train, but thanks to the kindness of various men who helped with lifting bags, we managed. Our train, the Gatwick Express, was cancelled due to a derailment, but we found that there were other trains making a first stop at East Croydon and we didn’t actually need it. There were no large baggage racks so all we travellers had to fit our baggage on a normal train. There was a bit of drama as the door wouldn’t open to let us out of the carriage at East Croydon, so I went ahead to the next available door and called out to the guard some distance away to hold the train so Stephen and another man could get our bags off.

We caught a cab from the station to our apartment building, a very short journey for him, but saved us a lot of drama. A young resident was leaving as we arrived and carried the heaviest case up the steps.

Gary has left us some basic food and has done a big cleanup of most of the stuff left here by various visitors. There are new curtains in the living room and the old iMac Stephen used on our first visit here has been restored. Stephen finds it very useful for planning our adventures.