Day 38: Oct. 11, 2018 - Home

We rise to a fine October day in Winchester. This is our last day in England and we get it started with a fine Full English Breakfast cooked by our host Alex. We thank him for the dining suggestions of yesterday and then chat a bit with him about what we have done on this trip since leaving London. He nods, commenting that we really did get a good taste of the high points of Wessex.

Our Host Alex and Amy at the Breakfast Table

We finish our breakfast, pack the car, return the parking permit to Alex and are off for our last bit of driving. Next Stop: Heathrow. We bid adieu to our last abode of the trip, …

10 St. James Villas, Winchester

We set the airport location into MapMe and I decide to go straight through town on our way to the M3. We pass the Chesil Rectory, site of last night’s wonderful dinner. We blithely proceed on our route, then somehow discover that we are on the wrong side of a river. MapMe fails us again! Some humorous detouring later and we are on the M3, heading northeast.

About 45 minutes later, we are close enough to Heathrow. We stop at a service off-ramp and fill the gas tank to return the rental car "full". I look for a machine to put the credit card into and don’t find one. Asking the clerk inside, he explains that you just fill up the tank and bring the card into the shop afterward to pay. Are they that trusting here in the UK? Upon considering why the procedure is so much different than in the US, we notice signs warning potential evil-doers that the station is covered by CCTVs. Here in the UK, if you fill up your tank and don’t pay, you won’t be on the road very long as the video record and the license recognition system will allow the police force to quickly apprehend you!

We get back on the road and face ever higher levels of traffic. We must cope with that and some challenging signage at the Airport before we pull into the Europcar lot and return our rental. The rest of the trip home is unremarkable except to note that the Heathrow Terminals have no restaurants. Once you pass through security, the only options for food are Coffee shops and Magazine Stands vending pre-made sandwiches and such. We will get better food on the airplane, but we realize our vacation really is ending.

We land at SeaTac and have no problems at either Immigration or at Customs. An Uber trip takes us home and the multi-day struggle to adjust to an 8-hour different time zone begins.

We have been abroad for 38 days. We had a glorious stay of 4 weeks in London, some of which we shared with our family. We had a good road trip to Sussex where we saw some amazing sites. It really was a great trip. We start wondering. “Where to next?”