United Kingdom

Managing several five minute power sleeps, we had just fallen properly asleep when at 3am in the morning, the cabin crew woke up the entire plane, turned on all the lights, and served everyone a sandwich! And by sandwich I mean the most insignificant, air filled, nothingness that you could imagine! And five minutes after collecting everyone’s rubbish, they turned the lights off again! Why they bothered is anyone’s guess! But I wasn’t best pleased and spent the next couple of hours trying to get back to sleep, to no avail!

About the only good thing about this entire flight was the very first meal we had on boarding. Everything else about it I could write whole novels on it’s inadequacies! And one of the strangest things about the flight is that they made no attempt to acclimatise the passengers to the time difference between Lima and Madrid. On every Trans-Atlantic flight I’ve ever been on, you will get served breakfast around breakfast time in your destination country. On this flight, we were served breakfast at 1 pm Spanish time! Just one of the many failings for this journey!

We arrived in Madrid airport around 2:15pm, and decided to go through the exit and get some fresh air before our onward flight to Heathrow a couple of hours later.

The heat outside hit us like a sledgehammer! It was easily around 40 degrees Celsius, and we gasped for air more here than in the altitude of the Andes! So, very quickly, we forgo our “fresh air experience” and headed back to the safety of the air-conditioned airport!

We got onto our 27th and final flight on this trip (not counting the Nazca Lines flight) and waited for take-off.

Whilst waiting, we noticed a luggage trolley approach the plane, and be turned away. Joking that with our luck it would be our luggage on the trolley, we thought nothing more of it and sat back as the plane started its journey to Heathrow Airport.

In what seemed like a blink of an eye, we were crossing the English Channel and caught our first sight of England in over six months.

Hitting London soon afterwards, we descended on a scenic route over the Thames, taking in such sights as the Millennium Dome, Tower Bridge, the London Eye, the Houses of Parliament, Wembley Stadium and errrr…… Brentford Football Ground! And then we finally touched down at Heathrow Airport, six months, five days and several thousand miles after last being there.

And at this point, we had officially completed our circumnavigation of the planet!

So, passing through passport control, we went to get our luggage. Of course, as you would’ve no doubt guessed by now, it wasn’t there! And it wasn’t only us; there were at least fifty other people whose luggage hadn’t arrived!

We got in the line for reporting the luggage missing, which took three hours to process as they only had one staff member to deal with everybody! So, the company that had flown us “bus” style from Peru, had not only left our luggage behind in Madrid rather than risk their “on time departure” percentages but had made no provision whatsoever to deal with the amount of passengers affected, despite having been aware of this hours earlier!

And to make it worse? There were three other flights from Madrid to Heathrow, all with the same company, all half full, and they hadn’t had the decency to put any of the missing luggage onto one of these planes!

After arriving in Heathrow at 5:30pm, we finally left the baggage collection area at 9pm and went to pick up our hire car. The first one we picked had a flat battery, which wasn’t a good sign, but we swapped cars and drove to Toddington Services on the M1, reaching the Travelodge that we had last stayed at on 30th January.

And so, checking into our room, we finally completed our journey, exhausted beyond belief, more depressed than we’ve been in our lives so far, minus the majority of our luggage, but with an immense sense of achievement at having travelled Around The World In 187 Days!

We set off on Friday 30th January, and headed down to Rotherham to drop our cars off and say goodbye to our parents. We then headed south to stay overnight at Toddington Services on the M1 South.

What a great first night we had! We had planned to get up and have our last English breakfast for a few months, but the whole services had a water cut when we got there! We went back to the room at the Travelodge, and the water was also out there! Then to really add insult to injury the power went down. So overall, a great way to say goodbye to England!

The flight to Beijing itself was great. We could see the glow from Moscow in the distance as we flew over Russia, and dawn broke as we flew over the frozen wastelands of Mongolia.

As we approached Beijing, we were flying over mountains covered in mist and clouds – it actually felt like we were entering a different world. We touched down in Beijing at 11am local time (GMT +8 hours) and, having cleared passport control in less time than it takes to get back into the UK, finally arrived in Asia and the start of our trip.

Just woke up to my last day at home before we set off tomorrow to Heathrow.

We've both now finished work, Mandy on Friday and myself on Tuesday. We spent the entire day yesterday deciding what to take with us and what to leave here. Finally finished packing and unpacking at 11pm last night. It was then that the full horror of what i would have to lump around with me for 6 months became apparent!

I now know what a pack mule feels like!

Got various last minute stuff to sort out today, but hopefully should be finished tonight. Will be driving down to Rotherham tomorrow to say goodbye to our families, and then picking up a hire car to drive down to Heathrow. We're stopping at a Travelodge tomorrow night, and then flying out on Saturday.

The next blog entry will be in China and we'll be finally on our trip!!!!

I'm Jim, 37 years old and currently living in Manchester, UK.

After years of thinking about doing it, and months of research, my wife Mandy and I are now ten days from our round the world trip!

We're now at the stage where we are counting down to quitting our jobs, driving down to the airport, and flying off to Beijing.

We're planning to go to :

China
Hong Kong
Vietnam
Cambodia
Malaysia
Singapore
Australia
New Zealand
Cook Islands
Tahiti
Easter Island
Chile
Argentina
Uruguay
Brasil
Peru

Stay tuned to see if we make it in one piece!!!!