Oban; Friday, 27 May, 2011

By the time I left work I already knew the flight was going to have a substantial delay on it, as my electronic boarding card was merrily updating itself regularly with the estimated departure time creeping further and further away from the original 21:00. To compensate for the inevitable long wait, I booked myself a space in the business lounge and headed to the station.

Of course, travelling down to Gatwick on a Friday evening at rush hour is never a particularly pleasant experience, but add on that it was the Friday of a Bank holiday weekend at the start of the school holidays it made the train just that little bit more “busy”

An event free journey down to the airport and a quick run through bag drop and security saw me sitting in the lounge less than 40 minutes after leaving work.

The flight was eventually called 20 minutes after the originally scheduled departure time, and by the time everyone had boarded and push back had started it was nearly 22:00. The advantage of that was we accelerated away from the gate and just carried on picking up speed straight onto the runway and into take-off.

With a heft head wind as well it was gone 23:00 by the time we finally landed in Glasgow, by which time it appeared most staff had gone home as it took an age for the bags to come round.

I had originally intended on getting the bus into town, but by now it was nearly midnight, I was tired, and it was raining so instead I decided to take the hit and get a cab straight to my hotel.

A quick checkin, but even with that it was still gone midnight when my head hit the pillow, knowing I had to be up early the following morning to get the train West.