I cannot believe I finally get to write about this trip! 477 days of painstakingly planning and organising came to fruition. This trip report is going to be broken down daily with all the juicy bits of information and plenty of pictures.
This is by far one of the most exciting days. We made the decision to travel down to Gatwick the day before our flight, just in case traffic was bad the morning of travel day. We went and collected my mom ready for her staycation at Casa Dawson-Ash.
Once we made sure all the cases were packed into the car and that we had our passports (for the 5th time that morning), we got in the car at about half 12 and headed towards the hotel. While driving, Troy checked us into our flights for the following day. It stated that we needed to head to a check in desk for checks!
The drive down was reasonably good (considering we had to go on M25) we pit stopped at Beaconsfield for drinks and food, before arriving at the Travelodge Gatwick Central at 3pm to check into our two rooms for the night.
Me, Troy and Ellia shared one room, while Rubi and Layton shared the other. We were on Floor 1, and they were on Floor 2. The rooms were big and clean, with a double bed and double pull-out bed in our room and a double bed a single bed in Rubi’s room.
We were all hungry and managed to find a local Toby Carvery to go to. The experience there wasn’t great! The staff seemed like they weren’t interested, not all their meats were available, the deck was messy and we had to wait ages to get the chef out to serve us. Overall, not the vibe we wanted for our pre-travel day. We decided to go to their local B&M to see if there was anything to occupy us on the plane.
British Airways offer twilight drop-off on long haul flights, if the flight is before 1pm the following day. We utilised this option to give us more time in bed. We parked in the drop off point and took all our cases down to the check in desk. We let them know we had been advised to come to the check in desk. No issues, just wanted to look at our passports. We waved goodbye to our cases, got our boarding passes and headed back to the hotel.
We got back to the room, had shower and then ended up ordering a papa johns as we were still hungry. It was delicious. We all settled down ready for an early start the next morning.