August 2 Leave Tugford and see a little of Gunanxhou

Up when the passerine breaks wind and drive to Birmingham airport.

We had decided that we would, to some extent, follow a suggestion by Google Maps and travel via Bridgnorth.  (Their first suggestion was a little quicker but involved the M6, which as we knew from a previous experience can rapidly turn into a parking lot.)  They went to great lengths - back to the pace notes approach of turning every 900m or less through a set of lanes - to avoid Stourbridge but as we expected to be there before 6am I thought we wouldn't encounter much congestion so just aimed to go straight through.

We were both wide awake at 4:30 so got up packed up and were on the way before the sun joined us.  I assumed that, unlike Carwoola, we were unlikely to have substantial elements of wildlife jump out in front of us.  (Rabbits are not a problem, just cause a slight bump.)  While we had come across many road signs about deer none of these had delivered on their promise and I don't recall such signs around Tugford.  As expected, so it was.

The drive was a doddle with no remark-worthy events, and we were parked in the Europcar lot at Brum airport by 6:30.  This gave us 30 minutes to wait until the check in counter opened.  The entertainment was watching a couple of adults (travelling with 2 kids ) spend the entire 30 minutes (and they had started before we arrived) struggling with the self check in system.  They were obviously experienced travellers and had positioned the kids in the queue!  When we got to speak to someone it appeared that one of the seat allocations made on line hadn't taken (in fact the "missing" allocation was one that hadn't been able to be made) and that, although our seats had been pre-allocated, we would have to pick up our boarding passes for the last leg in Guanxhou.    Whatever: we got seats to Amsterdam and Guanxhou and wandered off to the departure area to fill in a couple of hours.

The flight to Amsterdam was quite OK and I noticed that the weather was the opposite of the flight in.  On that day the North Sea was cloud covered but the UK was clear, whereas today the land was clouded over but the sea was clear.  As we got within sight of the rest of Europe we saw an offshore (at least 5km)  windfarm with 60 turbines, none of which were turning.  Then came another farm with about 20 turbines, of which some were going.    The pilot mentioned that the day was going to be the hottest of the year in Amsterdam  reaching 35C and already (about 11am) up to 28.  Thunderstorms were expected in the evening.

No issues arose in Schipol and we joined our China Southern Airlines flight.  The plane is an Airbus 330.

Before getting to the flight we had to go through security including our first experience with body scanners.  I found this annoying because I reckon the scanners are just the security industry playing on political paranoia to sell more of their toys.  This view was reinforced when everyone then had to be patted down!

The aircraft seemed to be brand new or at least very very clean (as Frances said, cleaners don't get paid much).  We also seemed to have a fair amount of room compared to some other airlines.  There were a couple of small issues as we moved into the journey:

• where we were positioned, in row 50 and thus the last section of cattle class, the fasten seat belt signs didn't appear to work very well;
• my entertainment screen appeared to freeze occasionally (but that wasn't as much of a problem as the positioning of the controls for same, fixed into the armrest, rather than the usual detachable approach.
• the attendant who made the English in-flight announcements had such a thick accent I could barely understand her;
• When refreshments were served the white wine and the beer shared temperature with the red wine - and possibly the coffee.  However the white wine was quite pleasant whereas the red was the first really bad red I have found to come from Chile!.

Whatever we progressed, finding out that the thunderstorms were already happening as we flew South of Moscow.  In fact there little bumps for most of the first 6 hours of the flight.

I think I took the next shot for the exotic names on the map!

So after 10.5 hours we  landed in Guanxhou having been told to go to the transfer desk to get our boarding passes.  We followed signs to to the Transfer Desk where there was a huge queue - at least 100 folk - through what looked like an immigration set-up.  That couldn't be right, so Frances saw an information Desk and asked the young man sitting there what to do.  He jumped up and said "Follow me".  Since

• he was wearing a badge that said 'Police'; and
• this was the PRC

we did so rather swiftly.  He quickly found a young woman in an China Southern uniform to whom he handballed us.  She told us to go to a queue marked Priority Class with 2 people in it, which of course we did, despite feeling the hatred from the other 98+ in the 'normal' queue.  A key observation was that although - or perhaps because -  there were three people at each workstation none of the queues weer moving very quickly.  At about this point I noticed another young lady come in with a sheet of paper with a list of about 6 names on it that she passed to 'our' lady.  One of te names was mine, which I pointed out to her. Immediately, some Cantonese (an assumption there, but Guanxhou used to be Canton I believe) was emitted a desk was quickly cleared we were stuck in there and through in about 60 seconds.

Back to the gate with enough time to take a few images.  Obviously Guanxhou has been taking lessons in Western taste from the souvenir sellers of Schipol.  I particularly like the small child in a panda cossie!

 It was rather hot and humd here.  Guanxhou is at 23N (mirroring Rockhampton) and it was mid-Summer  so that isn't surprising.  Some mountains are just visible through the murk.

 This shot was taken to capture the houses on the far side of the airport.  Then I noticed the figure in orange at the bottom of the image.

 On zooming in, it turns out to be a scarecrow!  I am not worried about my camera's performance in the blurry shot: as noted above it rather hazy; my estimate is the figure was about 300m away; and I wasn't braced on anything!

 These high rises were again barely visible through the murk, but were taken to exemplify the clumps of such buildings seen all over the countryside after take, typically quite close to a cluster of industrial buildings.

So off we went, and I got a few more images before we penetrated the final 10/10ths cloud layer.  The first shows a typical sample of what we saw as we left the area (and pretty much what we had seen on the approach).

 Here is a cluster of industrial buildings and a rather impressive modern road bridge.

Then it was into or over cloud for the next 5 hours until we crossed the cost of Arnhem land.

Although I actually dozed for a bit of it the next hour or so went over really interesting scenery.  This included the many fires in Arnhem Land; the Coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria (we went out over the SW corner - in the image below the wobbles are mine, adjusting a Google earth screenshot)

We landed in Sydney, zipped through the official processes and out to the pick-up area to be re-united with our car by the excellent guy from Discount Parking.  Then to the Ibis Budget Hotel for a bit of sleep - not as much as expected - and at 5am we were going to the Maccas next door for some excellent coffee and on to the Hume Highway. Somewhat less than 3 hours later we were re-united with the small dog and then on home.

Recovery is taking a while as we seem to have picked up a cold somewhere.  As we got damp several times in the last few days, and many people on the flights seemed o have coughs, that isn't totally amazing!


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