Madrid; Friday, 11 November, 2022

My first evening flight from Gatwick since before the pandemic – and I’d forgotten quite how easy the journey down was, and quite how full the trains get.

I had a very smooth journey through the airport clearing security and getting into the lounge in just a couple of minutes after arriving at the terminal.

easyJet had been reporting the flight as likely to be delayed for some time, as the inbound plane was delayed getting into and leaving Valencia on it’s previous journey because of weather, so it wasn’t particularly surprising that we didn’t even start boarding until after we were originally supposed to push back.

We eventually took off about 45 minutes late, and hand managed to make a reasonable amount of that back up before we got to Madrid only to be put in a holding pattern for about 10 minutes and then landing about 20 minutes taxiing from the gate.

The gate turned out to be a bus, so despite being at the front of the plane I was one of the last to join the lengthy and slow queue for immigration. We were originally due to land around 22:30, but the time I made it through to landside it was already a couple of minutes before midnight, and then it was a good 10 minute hike through both Terminals 1 and 2 to get to the metro.

Thankfully it was only one stop to get to my hotel for the evening and pretty soon I was in my room and enjoying sinking into the comfortable bed.