Saying goodbye to somewhere you love isn’t easy, so we reluctantly left the apartment on Thursday morning. We found a taxi very quickly and he dropped us off at Placa Catalunya for the Aerobus which took half an hour to get us to Barcelona Airport.

We checked our suitcase in with Transavia and then, after eating one of the most disappointing sandwiches I’ve ever had (see, I managed to work a food reference in) we trundled to security. Seeing that Susie had a stick one of the guards showed us to a fast track lane and we breezed through, I didn’t even have to take my boots off..

The flight was delayed about 40 minutes and a line built up to board the flight. When they began boarding, Susie and stick moved towards to the ‘old and infirm’ boarding queue and we were on before most of the others. Guess what will be the first thing we pack next trip..

The flight was totally uneventful, apart from being freezing. I turned the air ‘fresheners’ off but it was still cold enough to have people wrapping themselves in jumpers etc. I stopped short of asking if the pilot could roll his window up and when we landed at Orly and rolled to a halt, the plane was actually above zero.

We found the shuttle bus back to the Hilton where we’d left our car, loaded it up with luggage and set off for home. Now you know how much we love satnavs, it was ok to get clear of the airport but traffic was very slow, sometimes at a standstill and every time we came to a bottleneck the satnav tried to take us off route to get round it. Eventually, in almost torrential rain we gave up following his instructions and found the autoroute to Chartres and Le Mans. Some three hours later, we were home….