In The Cockpit

At midnight we set off to travel to Gatwick to catch the early morning British Airways flight to Heraklion, Crete. Two sets of friends are flying out separately from Bristol and Cardiff to join us. We like BA and the flight times suit us.

The Captain invited Mrs BB into the cockpit and she was gone ages. She's a nervous flyer, despite having flown hundreds of times, so it was good for her. She then came back and got me out of my seat to join her but no sooner had I got into the cockpit that he got the clearance to taxi for take-off. The blip photo shows him receiving the clearance.

The flight went smoothly and we collected the hire car from the airport. It's a firm we have used a few times and the chap and his daughter were lovely - giving is a 1.5 litre bottle of rose wine, and upgrading our car.

About 8.45pm we were back at the airport to collect our friends flying in from Bristol. Their flight was delayed 2.5 hours so we went and did some shopping and found a bar (I had a frappe coffee!) whilst Mrs BB had a large white wine. Total cost 2.5 euros!

The extra photo is of sunset that I stopped and took on the way to the airport. An amazing red sun we watched go down slowly over the horizon. A good start to the holiday.