Pod

Up and about at 9am. Scrambled egg and chorizo breakfast. Packing and cleaning. I even washed the filter in the Dyson as it takes ages to dry and being on holiday seems like the perfect time to let it dry out. A quick run to the Post Office for some Euros and to Boots for travel size toiletries (that they didn’t really have). The Raynes Park branch always feels under stocked and unloved. 

We were on the platform for 3:30pm taking the train to Heathrow using the Elizabeth Line (which we picked up at Bond Street). The Elizabeth Line was a lot busier than we expected and we could not board the first Heathrow T4 train. Luckily, the next one was a T5 train and, I suspect, we hadn’t lost much time. 

After a brief stop at a much better stocked Boots at the airport we found our way to the pod station in the car park and took an autonomous vehicle to the hotel. They are really fun. In a post I wrote about them a few years ago, I said, “It's not jet boots but it feels a little Tomorrow's World” and I stand by it. Although we nearly didn’t go anywhere because neither of us pressed the start button. 

When we arrived the gate was unblocked which saved us a charge. We checked-in and paid for tomorrow’s pod, dropped our bags in the room and then walked all the way across the entire hotel to the restaurant. The restaurant had a view of the airport and tonight the nearby runway was being used for takeoff. While we drank some wine and ate our delicious chicken burgers we watched flights taking off every couple of minutes. After we’d eaten, I fired-up Flight Radar so we could work out where they were going. 

After dinner we picked up some chocolate from the self-service inside the hotel and went back to the room. As we wound down for the day we watched a Michael Portillo railway documentary. He was travelling in Thailand. We could hear planes taking off the whole evening.