Arrecife; Monday, 16 March, 2020

As my flight wasn’t due to take off until 4pm my transfer was only booked for 2pm, but checkout was at midday. The hotel said that I could keep the room until 1pm, but then I would have to just sit in the lobby for the final hour until my transfer arrived.

So, after breakfast I hung around in my room for several hours – making sure I’d packed everything and ensuring that my phone and tablet were both fully charged, whilst at the same time monitoring the inbound flight to make sure that it was running.

For a little while things were looking dodgy as it’s original departure time came and went, but eventually, nearly 40 minutes behind schedule, it pushed back and began its journey towards Lanzarote, meaning I could checkout of the room relatively confident that I would be getting home.

After an hour and a bit sat in the lobby of the hotel my transfer arrived and I was quickly whisked off to the airport to checkin and start my journey home.

The airport was a little chaotic – with everything except a single newsagent closed airside and limited seating with all the restaurants closed and not really much to do.

However, the inbound flight was almost empty so we were able to start boarding earlier than normal and were soon all ready to go, albeit having to wait over 30 minutes to get a take off slot due to restrictions back in the UK.

We eventually pushed back 20 minutes after our original departure time and headed back to the UK and an almost deserted Gatwick.