Travel pain

Inevitably, Debrah was awake before her alarm and on an earlier train than she needed to be and first in line at the gate. Equally inevitable was that the flight was late leaving Stansted. However there was such a breeze blowing up there at airline cruise height that the flight only took an hour and twenty five minutes, instead of the usual hour and forty and a lot less than the scheduled two hours which meant it still landed at the scheduled hour. The most important thing is that she arrived, finally.

We have since heard that the flight that Debrah so spectacularly missed on Friday was three hours late getting to Carcassonne anyway! - maybe she could have got the flight?, but who knows and who cares now.

My good friend, Pierre, who rescued me some weeks back with a last minute dash to the airport in his battered but trusty old Peugeot, was due to come up to the airport with me to meet his niece, who was supposed to be on the same flight as Debrah - but alas, her connecting flight from Glasgow to Stansted had problems and she failed to arrive.

Our new guests today drove from Lincolnshire this morning to East Midlands airport, only to find it covered in snow - two hours later than expected they set off for Carcassonne and finally checked in here at 3.30pm after more problems at this end with their hire car.

When the travelling stuff works as planned it's absolutely brilliant to be able to shoot from one country to another in no time at all, but when it all goes wrong it is such a massive pain in the arse. Which is one reason why I am glad that I will be doing the trip a lot less often than I have done over the last two years - bookings mean that I will have to be here more of the time and letting go of the London job means I will have to go back less often too - all of which will improve my rubbish carbon footprint, which would mean a lot to me if I felt it would make a difference - but it won't, so it doesn't.

Debrah and I went straight out to lunch, had a half litre of rose and went home for an afternoon nap before drinks with our guests and then, one week later than planned, dinner at 'La Roulotte' where we had turned up so disastrously late the weekend before - I see a lateness pattern that isn't good.

It was a great evening and a great dinner - lovely food, lovely hospitality, lovely ambience - we will be recommending the place to our guests and going there ourselves as often as our wallets allow.

This evening we cooked dinner for all our guests in the manner that we had planned our dinners when we first put together the idea for our offer and our weekend packages - that is, three groups of two sitting around the dinner table together, getting to know each other a little bit and sharing food and wine - hopefully good food and wine, but that is for our guests to judge.

So, with most of the washing up done and breakfasts looming - I'm off to bed.