UK2026: Day 12: So Long, London
Location: Home
Alas, after an acceptable night sleep it was time for final packing, an errand or two and then off to Heathrow via the underground.
The errand was a quick trip to Royal Mail to convert our remaining Scottish Pounds Stirling to English Pounds Stirling. Fun fact, the internet says this is a thing you can do at Royal Mail. Not fun fact, they don’t do that anymore.
Our trip to Heathrow was only complicated by the Piccadilly line having some scheduled outages. We took the Jubilee line and then the Elizabeth line. Just follow the signs and all is good.
Heathrow is huge but was not super busy. We checked in and were through security in under 15 minutes.
We attempted to get into the “Number 1” lounge but it was booked up. We put ourselves on a waiting list and got in about 10 minutes later. So far, I don’t think we would pay for one of these lounges. They feel noisier and almost more cramped than the general seating are. You do get some almost acceptable food and drinks. The washrooms seem to be universally bad.
I made a mistake and had us walk all the way to the wrong end of terminal 2 B. Oops. Back we went. What could be better than an extra 800 meters or so of walking at the airport when the flight is about to board?
We shot some pictures out the plane window as we flew over the southern tip of Greenland. Plenty of ice coverage still and many icebergs.
Glorious trip minor hiccups and all. We will do our NC500 tips and tricks within the next week. If you have read along you will know that we already feel it was well worth it. The amazing scenery and fine people made it worthwhile.
Our missions once home were rough unpacking, some food, get in a bike ride and stay awake until local bed time. The bike ride was gentle but confused my “workout” apps. I started the ride at 19:10 local time. For some reason my Garmin app was still in London time despite my phone having already updated to local time so my bike ride did not count for today. My trail of single source workout apps is Zwift->Strava->Garmin->Apple and tonight the Garmin time shift broke that chain.
That’s all folks. Thanks for playing along.
