I’ve arrived safely in Manchester, despite severe delays in London Heathrow and last week’s threat of a British Airways strike. Fortunately the strike was averted due to court order and my flight was still scheduled. I left Sunday night and we were late leaving from YVR (Vancouver, BC). I was worried I wasn’t going to make my connecting flight up to Manchester. I was running through the new Terminal 5 in Heathrow, which is owned and operated by British Airways.  There were about three security checkpoints and insane queues, I didn’t think I was going to make my second flight.

Fortunately (for me) it was delayed about an hour so I was able to make it to my gate on time. Then it began to snow and we sat on the plane for hours waiting for a de-icing rig for our plane. All the planes in Heathrow were in the same situation — there were only seven de-icing rigs for the entire airport. Incoming planes had no gates to unload at and were sitting on the sides of the runways. Outgoing planes were stuck until we could be de-iced, and any flights originally scheduled for after 7:00pm takeoff were completely cancelled. Finally, after three hours on the plane, my flight left around 8:45pm. We finally arrived safe and sound in Manchester where Craig had been waiting for me.

Yesterday was spent recouperating, I slept in pretty late and then we went into Manchester city centre to finish our Christmas shopping. The city was pretty busy and it hailed several times while we were there. We took a walk around some of the German Christmas Markets scattered around the city centre.

Last night we took Craig’s dad’s dogs for a walk, and they absolutely adore the snow. This is Harvey jumping up for a snowball as Craig tosses it. And yes, that is the scarf I knit for Craig.

Today we’ve already taken the dogs for a nice long walk around the Racecourse in Salford. Salford is a city within Manchester and where Craig and his family live. The Racecourse was formerly a racetrack for horses and now is a playing field for football (soccer), etc. The Racecourse used to be really huge and also includes a lot of forested areas with walking paths along the River Irwell.