TRAVEL LOGISTICS TO ENGLAND

A LONG DAY’S JOURNEY ON THE SHORTEST DAY
On the shortest day of the year, on a trip that used to take us just 8-9 hours door-to-door, we nearly traveled for an entire 24 hours.

St. Mary's Church, Nantwich

Getting to Manchester England, the nearest airport to Nantwich, used to be relatively easy. It’s a 45-minute drive to the Philadelphia airport and the same from Manchester to our second home in Nantwich. With a direct flight between the two destinations that lasted about 5 ½ hours we could do that holding our breath.

American Airlines is our carrier of choice. We’ve collected a lot of frequent flyer and loyalty miles and we tend to travel exclusively with them or with one of their partner airlines, but because of the COVID pandemic they gave up the Philadelphia/Manchester route. Now we must fly on AA’s partner airline, British Air, to Heathrow in London, clear customs there and then take a 45-minute flight to Manchester. Heathrow is a sprawling airport and we have just over an hour to make the connection and there is no dawdling.

On this particular trip on the shortest day of the year, December 21st, we were not lucky. There was a computer glitch with British Air which delayed our departure from Philadelphia. We would miss the connection. There are other flights, but they we were told they were all full. So, they put us on a 3:15 pm flight, a full 6-hour layover in Heathrow. By the time we arrived in Nantwich we would have been on the “road” for 24 hours!

We recently flew all the way to Fiji in less time.

Thankfully, we were able to negotiate stand-by seats on an earlier flight once we landed in Heathrow, so the cramped flight with unforgiving seats seemed a bit less arduous.

We may have to rethink using American Airlines. Other options are flying Aer Lingus to Dublin first or through Frankfurt, Germany with Lufthansa. We could also fly out of Newark, NJ or NYC, but that “quick” jaunt from Philadelphia to Manchester is now gone. Ugh

By the way, we were lucky to get out of the country when we did. I understand it’s around 7°… that’s in Fahrenheit not Celsius back in Philadelphia. Here in Nantwich it is sunny and nearly 50°, thank you very much. And, Nantwich is such a lovely place it was worth all the troubles we endured to get here.

Thanks for reading

Merry Christmas

Love Janet and greg

© 2022 by Gregory Dunaj