Wandergliding: Back in Jolly Ol' England

July 7^th, 2014

My flight to England had a stopover in Kiev, Ukraine. Not exactly en route as Kiev is north and a little east of Tel Aviv plus I had an eight hour layover between flights but it was one of the cheaper flights I could find with decent departure and arrival times. I wanted to arrive in England during the day with adequate time to catch the three hour train ride down to Weymouth where my aunt and cousins live on the south coast of England.

The Kiev airport was not overly large but quite modern and clean. I was able to catch a bit of sleep before the boarding time for the flight. The gate was on the ground level and they called out for boarding. The other passengers and I were loaded onto a bus but after a few minutes we were called back into the terminal for about half an hour. Not sure what the delay was but we were then shuttled out across the tarmac to the awaiting plane in the beautiful sunlight of a blue sky morning. In the distance I could see a number of military transport planes sitting idle. Ukraine has been dealing with some turmoil as of late with pro-Russian rebels fighting in the Crimea and the city of Donetsk but supposedly Kiev was safe...at least I was hoping so until I got out of there. Within a week of arriving in England a Malaysian airliner with a few hundred passengers was shot down in eastern Ukraine. Bad things seem to keep happening to places soon after I leave...so note to any travellers out there, stay ahead of me!

The Kiev tarmac, with the military planes off in the distance:

Immigration in Gatwick went smoothly. I wondered whether there would be any issues due to my Indian saga but thankfully there weren’t any. Encumbered with my large tandem paraglider backpack weighing in around 25 kilograms and my smaller pack at 7, I was glad that I didn’t have to wobble far to get to a counter to purchase my train tickets to Weymouth. To add to my already relatively pleasant reintroduction to my original motherland, the ticket vendor found a way to save me half of my expected cost of the train fare by routing me through Southampton instead of changing trains at Clapham Junction...sweet.

I grabbed a sandwich and a few beers for the lovely ride through the southern English countryside. Fluffy white cumulus clouds were popping off over the small rolling hills and fields dotted with cows and sheep. We rolled by some quaint little towns straddling a small river and its skyline usually dominated by the steeple of an old church.

Arriving in Weymouth I was to call my Aunt Shirley to get a lift back to her place but I could not locate a payphone, nor could I find Wi-Fi for my smartphone so I opted to just hop in a cab. I knocked on the door of her house in Sutton Poyntz (yes that is the correct spelling) and surprised everyone who had planned to surprise me at the train station with a wonderful banner that read “Weymouth Welcomes Dastardly Dave”. My cousin Gemma and cousin Sid have had three babies between them since I left England for India 3½ years earlier and it was super sweet to see their young girls, Pippa, Amelie and Annabel holding the sign for me with colourful balloons on the walls of the sitting room as well.