Coimbra; Friday, 14 February, 2014

Heading out of work into the rain that had been plaguing Britain for the previous 8 weeks it wasn’t to the thought of sunnier climbs as the weather forecast made it clear that Portugal had been hit by pretty much the same continuously wet weather.

With a degree of coordination not normally found in British transport the train was pulling into the platform as I arrived, and at Clapham the same was repeated. By the time I emerged from Feltham station straight onto a 285 bus that had just pulled up my concerns were really up – just how delayed or cancelled was my flight going to be as transport karma had to be re-established.

In the end it was the same underlying theme from the previous few weeks that helped restore the karma, the highly active jet stream that was pushing storm after storm into the UK was also making for some particularly turbulent and unpleasant flying conditions. A flight that on a good day was doable in just about two hours took three, and they were three pretty bumpy ones.

We landed, very heavily, into the teeth of another hefty shower in Lisbon, and the end was still passing through as I trudged the 10 minutes or so uphill from Sete Rios station to my hotel for the night.

The original plan was to drop my stuff off and then head into the centre of Lisbon to do some late night sightseeing. Instead I grabbed my kindle, my wallet and headed for the bar.