Above: At Ely Cathedral.
Short trip to Ely
We had spent all of yesterday with family, in Norwich and in Kings Lynn. Today, we have a good chunk of the day to kill before our evening departure to Guernsey at 1840 tonight, to visit my other sister.
Mike lent us his car so we could do some final exploration. We took a drive of about 20 mins to Ely where we attempted to visited Cromwell’s house and Ely Cathedral. Both required fees so we went to the tourist information office and the entrance at each place respectively. With the cathedral, we managed to see most of it anyway except for some stained glass windows.
We bought some sandwiches from Waitrose supermarket for lunch and also had tea and pastries at a lunch bar.
Inside Ely Cathedral.
Flying to Guernsey
Back at the house, we still had time to relax before being taken to Stansted airport by Mike around 1515.
We met with a bad traffic jam caused by a bad joint on a bridge, meaning that traffic was restricted. We arrived at the airport after a 2h drive rather than the expected 1h30. With 1h25 till flight departure, we headed swiftly to the check-in area. The bottleneck came at the security check-point to go airside; we had to wait more than 25 mins.
Stansted airport seems to have grown since my previous visit in 1992. We had to take a train to our gate where we boarded a rather worn Saab 340 operated by Aurigny Air. Once airborne, looking out the window, I realised the scale of Stansted airport now.
There were far more piers and gate than I remember from my first visit but the main terminal building seems unchanged. The bottleneck at security seems to suggest a mismatch in the capacity at main terminal vs that of the gates.
There were two cabin crew on this small plane of about 30 seats. That’s highly unusual until we realised one was under training. I was offered a glass of wine but she didn’t tell me that I had to pay for it until she had given it to me. There had been no price-list in the seat pocket so really didn’t know. Anyway, the flight attendant waived the charge. As Kim is crew, we chatted to her and she said she was ex-Saudi Airlines based in Bangkok.
Next came a big surprise. On this little plane on a short flight, they sold duty free alcohol and cigarettes, with the process aided by a handheld computer. Then I remember that Guernsey is not part of the United Kingdom but a dependency of Britain.
Landing in Guernsey at 1950 we were met by my brother-in-law David and my other sister. We stopped to grab Chinese takeaways before going to their home. We supplemented the takeaways with home-cooked vegetables from their own garden and some Indian leftovers. It was a beautiful meal followed by grapes, melon and cheeses.