Sometimes it is easy to go, other times it is harder and Tuesday 17th May 2016 was to be both.  Mostly it was to prove the former but there was a tense wait to see if the hire car was to turn up.  We had decided to drive down to Heathrow rather than fly.  Yes I know flying down would be quicker and ordinarily easier, but my back was an unknown entity and we didn’t know how it was going to play out with it and flying, but we knew how to manage it with driving, and so we had chosen to drive down to Heathrow rather than fly down.  I had this worry that if I established it was going to be very painful flying because of the position sitting up, something I’m not actually that good at even now writing this up, almost 2 months to the date since arriving in Australia, that I might not want to/could not actually continue with the rather long flights we had ahead on us (22hrs and then another of 75 minutes).

Driving down also meant that we were able to call in at my parents’ home for lunch and goodbyes which worked out rather well really.

The weather held out nicely again, as it had done for both Sunday and Monday, and so we were able to get some photos outside of everyone.  And before long we were on our way down to Heathrow.

The plan was to meet up with David at Heathrow and he literally arrived as we did so timing could not have been better.  We were able to find a space in the disabled car parking which made life much easier, but sadly the car company Stuart’s work use didn’t have a branch anywhere in the actual terminal buildings so once Stuart had installed David and I at a Costa Cafe inside the relevant terminal, he had to go and return the car then catch a terminal bus to get back to us.  At least David and I got chance to talk again before we left and his help inside the terminal until we had registered with the assistance people (previously attached) was enormously useful and we were both very grateful for it because it had been a very busy few days and we had 6 suitcases plus me in the wheelchair holding onto my crutches to negotiate through to the plane.

(find pictures from phone and edit them upload).