Thursday 15 December

I left Stornoway by plane at 8.30 this morning (that was the schedule, the plane was about 15 minutes late) and arrived into Glasgow at 9.30 without major problems. The snow-capped Scottish mountains peeped through the clouds and the fog was lifting from Glasgow when the plane touched down. An hour later, a large plane (capable of carrying 200 passengers) departed Glasgow for London Heathrow, and it had so much tailwind that it arrived over London 20 minutes early. It was held in a holding pattern for those 20 minutes, giving me the same inspiring view of the town of Luton (Bedfordshire) four times over. I was able to go straight through to departures for my connecting flight to Amsterdam. I had brought some sandwiches from the Tesco in Stornoway, saving me the overpriced sarnies from WH Smith at Terminal 5, and I had plenty of time to eat them. The Amsterdam flight was 40 minutes late leaving Heathrow. We landed at Amsterdam at sunset, 4.30pm, in pouring rain. Between actually disembarking the plane and jumping on a train at the railwaystation in the airport was only 20 minutes. At 5.05pm, the direct service to Arnhem rolled out of the tunnel and into the stretch of line which sits between the opposing carriageway of the A10 Amsterdam Circular motorway. Whilst I scooted east at 90 mph, traffic was at a crawl in the early evening rush. Reached Arnhem, 75 miles away, in 80 minutes and only had to wait a short while for the number 21 bus to my father's town. I close this post with a few images shot from the plane's windows on the flight to London. I try to get a window seat on a plane anytime to alleviate the grinding boredom of airtravel.