GWoC: 4.11.15 Beijing to Newquay

Wednesday 4 November 2015

We had to meet in the Rainbow Hotel lobby to leave at 07:30 on this, our final morning in China, so we got up about 06:30, ate breakfast and got ourselves ready. We checked out and got on the bus for the final time bound for the airport.

We had enough time to have a bit of a wander around Beijing airport before boarding the Finnair flight which took off on time at 11:10. There were loads of spare seats on the flight so we all moved around to give ourselves more space. It was an 8 hour flight so I watched a movie called ‘True Story’ starring James Franco and then had a bit of a doze.

Our Finnair plane

Reindeer and mushrooms: delish!

We landed at Helsinki on time and most of us went to the Nordic Kitchen for something to eat. I decided to try reindeer, which was really tasty, similar to parma ham, and had a blueberry smoothie as I had done when we had visited 2 weeks before.

Back aboard our final Finnair flight there were again plenty of spare seats so we could spread out. 

After 3 hours in the air we landed on time at Heathrow and claimed our bags from the carousel. The only person who was missing her bag was Amy and this was because she had left a battery inside her duffel bag when she checked it in at Beijing. The rules in China are that all batteries must be in carry-on bags and, because they had detected a battery in Amy’s bag, they had kept it back to remove the battery. The bag would be put on a later flight and delivered to Amy at home. 

We went to the coach area of Heathrow and said our goodbyes to our trip leader, Dean, and our coach arrived about 5 minutes later. We then had our final coach journey of the trip, back along the M4, M5 and A30 back to Cornwall, stopping at Gordano Services en route. We finally pulled into Air Ambulance HQ about 23:30 exhausted and jet-lagged. We had been awake for 26 hours!