Staying at the Rydges Hotel at Wellington Airport was a new experience for us. It certainly makes for a relaxed and stress-free departure for flights leaving very early in the morning. And it came with one complimentary drink (to share !!) at the bar, always a good way to start a new adventure.

The hotel is a strange modern version of Art Deco, done almost exclusively in black and white. The bathrooms especially are an eye-popping contrast of black and white tiles in a zig zag pattern and matt black plumbing fittings.

It was extremely quiet, the best noise insulation I have ever experienced in a hotel, has very, very comfy beds, and it is only a couple of minutes lift and escalator ride from your room down to the check-in kiosks.

There were a lot of artworks about and for me the best were three beautiful bikes on display. They originally wanted a classic car but couldn’t get it through the doors so the next best thing for cycling enthusiasts and non-art lovers was a display of the finest road bikes on the planet.

The first was a Pinarella Dogma F10, currently the fastest road bike in the world, ridden by Team Sky to three Tour de France titles in 2016, 2017 (Chris Froome) and 2018 (Gerrant Thomas).

The second was a Greg LeMond Team Z from 1991. Hand made with a CrMo frame. Lemond won three Tour De France Tours and two Road Race World Championships.

The third was a Factor O2 Disc, built with no compromises of carbon fibre, disc brakes and blue tooth wireless gear changes. It is only for the fastest riders in the peleton, and The Wobbly Wheelers!

It was a smooth and uneventful flight from Wellington to Sydney except that we now know why New Zealand and Australian soldiers were called ‘diggers’. On a perfect sunny, calm Sydney morning the aircraft landed with an almighty jolt, the pilot seemingly trying to dig a trench the length of the runway. Everyone was tossed violently forward and I had to grab hold of the back of the seat in front.

The least said about waiting around for seven and a half hours in Sydney Airport the better. The flight from Sydney to Heathrow was surprisingly good and the time passed quite quickly. An 8hr 20mins leg to Singapore where all 474 passengers had to disembark for an hour and a half while the plane was refuelled and reprovisioned, then a 13hr 30min leg to London. Qantas was exactly on time all the way and the only snag was when we got to Heathrow there was some congestion so we flew in circles for about 20 mins.

We arrived at Heathrow at 6.30am all well and with all our bags. We were at our hotel by 8.30am but couldn’t check in until 2.30pm so dropped off our luggage and set off to find something to do for 6 hours. More on that in the next post.

As usual we arrived in London with a guilty conscience. A return flight Wellington to Heathrow produces emissions of 5.71 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per person. The average yearly emissions for New Zealanders are 16.9 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent so we have used a huge chunk of our share in just these flights. We’ll be planting hundreds of trees in QE Park next winter. Our little 1300cc Suzuki Jimny produces 0.21 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per 1000kms so we’ll have to cut back our driving drastically as well.