Starting a New Journey

It’s been a while!

Starting a journey has always been a fairly anxious time for me. I actually really enjoy the planning phase: working out start and end points, journey times, methods, stopping points, and working out what there is to see on the way. All great. Yet when it comes to approaching the journey itself, I start to get nervous; I imagine all the things that could go wrong. Not usually anything disastrous or dangerous, but more things like losing passports or tickets, finding out I’ve got times or even dates wrong (I once booked a hire van for the wrong week), or missing connections.

This journey is no exception; in fact it’s been more intense than usual, as it is literally the longest journey I have ever taken: my wife and I are going to Brazil! Specificallly, we are visiting a very dear friend of hers that she hasn’t seen in nearly thirty years, in Goiânia, the principle city of the Goiâs region of Brazil. Goiânia is pretty much at the dead-centre of the whole country, a fact that is commemorated nearby the city with a marker at the exact spot. It’s about three hours’ drive southwest of the Capital, the extraordinary modern city Brasilia.

We’re flying from Heathrow by TAP Air Portugal (Transportes Aéreos Portugueses) so that means a couple of hours to Lisboa, change to another aeroplane, and nine-plus hours to Brasilia. I’ve never changed planes before, so for the time leading up to the trip I had all the usual dreams about getting to the airport late, plus ones about not being able to find the connecting flight gate, or losing bags, or any number of other logistical faux pas.

Naturally the reality is that people do this all the time, so none of that happened, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Because the first flight left the UK at 6am, and we didn’t want to be travelling through the night to get to Heathrow, we decided to stay overnight at a hotel near the airport. So I did half a day of work, including our first Lent Group session using the excellent Paula Gooder’s “Lentwise” book (https://www.gooder.me.uk/books/lentwise-spiritual-essentials-for-real-life/) and left home by train (and a lift from an understanding friend!)

I’ve missed travelling by train. I haven’t done it in a long time, and it was so good to be back on board. It probably helped that I got to have a window seat and be facing the direction of travel. The downside of this leg was that we couldn’t do the whole thing by train. (Well, we could have, but it would have been jolly expensive!) To save money, we changed to a bus service to take us the last stretch of the trip to Heathrow, but that worked really well too.

The first actual problem we encountered was that Heathrow and the surrounding area are really not designed for travel by foot. When we used Google Maps to try to find our way to our hotel (only about a quarter of a mile away) it said there was no possible route. Instead, we had to go underground from the Terminal 2 drop-off point to the Heathrow Central Bus Station and catch a bus for about three minutes out onto one of the Heathrow perimeter roads. Even from there, just standing across the road from our Hotel, there was no actual pedestrian crossing for the next three junctions, so we decided just to cross in a quiet moment.

Our Hotel was the Leonardo Hotel London Heathrow Airport (other hotels do exist!). It was the perfect blend of price and proximity, and the staff were friendly and helpful. We got checked in no problem, had a tasty light meal, and they even advised us when we would need to wake up and booked a taxi for us for the next morning.

What time was that? 3.45am. The guidance for international flights is to arrive 2-3 hours before takeoff to give yourself plenty of time to get through baggage checking and security, and my personal approach is to go as early as possible in that window, but in this case the baggage desks don't actually open until 4am.

It was all straightforward of course - although there were plenty of people on our flight, the airport was quiet and we breezed through security. We went to our gate as soon as it was announced, and boarded in the pre-dawn dark.

Take-off was smoother than I remember, and we had beautiful views as we climbed above the clouds into sunlight, then crossing the channel and the Bay of Biscay to Portugal.

On descent towards Lisboa, we were glad of our boiled sweets to help with the ear-popping changes of pressure, and landed smoothly on the first attempt. We were surprised to find we were disembarking on stairs to a bus, having boarded by suspended walkway, but the stairs were really grippy, even in the rain.

We just had time to refresh our water bottles and take a comfort break before the gate was called for our connecting flight, then we queued to board, which took a bit longer as this was a bigger aircraft.

I feel I should mention both aeroplanes were Airbuses (as I think the whole TAP international fleet are). Given recent issues for Boeing, their old slogan has been adapted by many to read "If it's a Boeing, I ain't going!" Catchy, if perhaps a little unfair.

Ironically, despite being on a larger aeroplane for the second leg, our seats were more spacious on our first flight. Still very comfortable on the second flight, though, and of course a helpful in-flight "infotainment' system with a screen on the back of the seat in front. Many, many movies and TV shows available in a range of languages, and interactive live maps showing the position of the aircraft along the planned route.

There were three toddlers and a baby in our row, from two families. They were a little disturbed and noisy during takeoff and landing, but really well behaved through the rest of the nine hours of flight. Both mums did really well looking after their kids. Even in the turbulence that was mainly over the coasts at the beginning and end of the flight.

Our chief steward looked like a long-lost brother of Jude Law, and the whole staff took great care of everyone throughout. The aeroplane food was also considerably tastier than I remember.

We landed in Brasilia and once again it was the descent rather than takeoff that set our ears to popping. We had a wonderful greeting from our hosts and had our first introduction to Brazilian food and hospitality - they really love a barbeque and know how to prepare their steaks (or bifes) with beans (not baked beans) and rice (arroz), a kind of savory crumble made from cassava, roast potatoes, and salad typically dressed with olive oil and salt (azeite e sal). We were made to feel so welcome and it refreshed us for the final leg of our trip, three hours in the car to Goiânia.

With that, the 22 hours of our journey was over, and we were grateful to get to a stationary bed!