Well, we’ve had a busy few weeks of visits, both visitors to us and visits back to the UK.
This started with Ed and Emma who came for a long weekend. Living so close to Heathrow they flew from Heathrow to Madrid and then hired a car to drive here. There only complaint was the fact that the airport is so huge it took them an hour to find their way through and get to the car! The drive here was a comfortable 4 hours so in total their door to door travel time was 10 hours. This was aided greatly by the fact they are 20 minutes from Heathrow.
Ian traveled back to Madrid with them, and they flew back to h/r and Ian flew to Bristol. They left here at 11 and Ian arrived at Keynsham at 7.30 (which would be 8.30 here) making his door to door trip 10.5 hours. Coming back Ian traveled with Jim and Viv from Bristol to Malaga and then train and coach from Malaga to home. As he missed the first train there was a long wait. His door to door trip back was 16 hours, however we think that this would have been greatly reduced had he looked at coaches from Malaga and not trains – and had he caught the first train.
Going back J&V left here at 9.30 and wouldn’t have got home until after midnight – making this a huge long trip. However this was partly my fault as I had ‘helpfully’ organised to fly the same day from Seville so that Ian only had to make the one trip, but this also entailed J&V getting to the train station in Seville rather earlier than necessary.
My return trip from Seville to Gatwick and then coach to Bournemouth worked well both ways this time. In fact the plane was early in both directions. The timings of this flight are much better for me – although they are from Gatwick, as there is no hanging around. The door to door trip home is 10.5 hours and this includes getting the ferry from Swanage AND a quick pop into H’s to pick up the things I had forgotten! The coach gets into Gatwick at 2 and the flight is 4.15 so it is nigh on perfect – particularly given the enhanced security.
So 10.5 hours door to door is the figure to beat! If we allow 5 hours of this as check-in and flight time and therefore a fixed time which can’t be improved on, then the challenge is to find routes which give a total of less than 5.5 travel time at either end of the journey. I think that this will be difficult to improve on from Bournemouth given the good timing of the coaches – however never say never!!