| We started our 2008 tour in sunny Bordeaux in France. It is cheaper to fly to England and then to the US rather than direct from
France, just one of the many peculiarities about the pricing of flying.
Bordeaux in late afternoon was warm, in the high 50s ºF,
and sunny, and it seemed a shame to leave. |
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The trip up to Luton takes less than two hours. EasyJet is a 'no-frills'
airline where you can only take one bag and even that you have to pay for.
There are no meals but on a short flight this doesn't really matter. They are
cheap and the flight was comfortable enough. That is until we arrived at Luton
where it was below freezing and snowing a blizzard. Welcome back to England! We spent a week in England, back with our daughter and visiting family and friends.
We also visited a couple of English water mills studying the way they work so that we can better understand the construction of our own mill in France.
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| Then it was time to fly from Heathrow to the
USA. My sister dropped us at the airport and we walked into total chaos. We
knew there were problems at the new Terminal 5 but we were flying from
Terminal 3 so we thought we'd be OK. However United Airlines had
grounded all its Boeing 777 jets (which are used for most transatlantic
flights) apparently for some technical problem. But we were travelling to Washington Dulles and that route uses
767s so we were not delayed. Check-in is automated with an assistant to
every machine to 'show you how' which kind of defeats the object, I think. And
I hate questions I can't answer without lying like 'what address are you
staying at in the US' - we're staying in an RV! At last half the visitors
won't know the answer. |  |
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United has a variable reputation but they seemed OK to us. It helps that we
are not the largest people in the world so we can be quite comfortable in
economy class seats. Dulles is a strange airport with elevated bus shuttles between the
terminals. We had allowed three hours for the connection but we got through
immigration, baggage and security in about 40 minutes. We changed terminals to
catch our flight to Cleveland, along with 35 girls from a marching band who
had also travelled from London, which meant that both flights were full. The
plane to Cleveland is much smaller. The flight is just over an hour and was
fine. Cleveland airport was like many smaller US airports and thus quite
survivable.
We were picked up by a friend and had a meal before going to bed to
recover from the 24 hour trip. |
| We spent a couple of days in Cleveland collecting
the RV from where it had been stored and serviced over the
winter. We also went shopping to stock up with food and get ready
for our tour. We decided to go and visit our friends in
Springville first since otherwise we would not see them this year. So we
travelled east and stayed with them for 3-4 days.
We also discovered that we had come to the US a little too early
since almost all the northern campsites are closed until at least
April 15th and most until May. It was also quite cold, in the low
40s ºF, so we decided to go south until we found somewhere to stay
which was warmer. |  |
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