Santa Cruz de La Palma; Wednesday, 22 February, 2023

When I’d originally booked the trip, nearly a year earlier, the flight times had been later in the evening with just about enough time to get from home to Heathrow for checkin after finishing work, but with the flight time having gradually crept forward over the intervening months by the time it was due to travel getting to Heathrow from home after finishing work would have been impossible.

Instead, after working in the morning I used my lunch break to head over to Hatton Cross and the Hilton Garden Inn there where I’d booked a day-use room for the afternoon, which meant I was able to finish off the working day and then it was only a 20 minute quick hop from the hotel to the checkin desks at Terminal 3.

Checked in I headed through into departures and after a smooth journey through the airport and onto the plane a hassle free journey down to Madrid.

Perhaps because it was so late in the evening we were parked on a gate a long way down the T4S terminal building, which meant it was a good 10 minute walk just to get back to immigration, though it was empty at the time of arriving so I was through in seconds and on my way down to the shuttle train back to the main T4 building.

Despite the long walk I still made it back to the luggage carousels a good 10 minutes before the luggage started to arrive, but in the end it turned out not to be a major issue as I made it out to the front of the terminal just as the shuttle bus to my hotel for the evening was pulling up.

The shuttle did a quick tour round all of the other Madrid terminals collecting nobody and dropping nobody off before making it back to the hotel about 15 minutes later, where I was able to quickly checkin and head to bed.