For Gawd's sake, get me to the Parish Council on time...

I am, allegedly, a responsible adult. At least, I am the Chair of a Parish Council which should, theoretically, make me a responsible adult - I leave that to others to judge. But, in planning our trip to Tirana, I had suffered something of a diary malfunction which meant that, whilst I was starting my day with an excellent breakfast in our Tirana hotel, I was supposed to be finishing it at a Council meeting in Creeting St Peter. And, given that we're a councillor short, we don't have a lot of wriggle room in terms of absences.

There is only one British Airways flight per day to Tirana, and the Monday flight leaves Mother Teresa International at 13.35, with a scheduled arrival time at Heathrow's Terminal 5 at 16.05. That notionally gave me three hours and twenty-five minutes to exit the aircraft, clear immigration, collect our luggage, catch two trains to Stowmarket and have a taxi drop me outside the Church Room. Easy, right? No reason to be slightly on edge, eh?

The weather was still nice, and we were packed and ready to go, so we took the opportunity to take a last stroll around the city centre before heading for the airport where we encountered a rather jolly, helpful chap who turned out to be the local British Airways manager. I did wonder for a moment if he was real, as that's not always what you expect from their ground staff...

The lounge is nice enough, with homemade cake and an interesting selection of Albanian food and wine, but we did need to spend the last of our Albanian Lek - a bottle of Albanian rose did the job - before we headed to the gate a little earlier than we had been told to, only to find that the flight was already boarding. It was all so efficient, indeed, that we were ready to go ten minutes early. I might yet make my meeting...

There is, if you're flying into Heathrow, every likelihood that you'll end up in a holding pattern over East London for ages, but after an uneventful flight, we were on the ground early and, whilst immigration was busy, we made good time through the e-gates. My hopes of catching the 16.50 Elizabeth Line train to Liverpool Street were rising.

And yet, and yet, where was the luggage? We reached the carousel only to find a distinct lack of activity. We waited... and waited, as time ticked on. I was just beginning to give up hope when, at 16.41, there was a flurry of bags and, grabbing mine, we made haste to the Elizabeth Line station where the train was still waiting for us.

The connection at Liverpool Street for the 18.00 Norwich train was a relatively easy one, and I had a taxi waiting for me at Stowmarket when I arrived there at 19.20, which whisked me to the Church Room in the nick of time. 

But a responsibility is a responsibility, right?...

Day 3 - Skopje to Tbilisi, via the world’s meeting point...

Skopje Airport, and not Skopje Alexander the Great Airport, is the equivalent of, say, Leeds Bradford Airport, but without the glamour. It’s functional, no more, no less, but it has the advantage of not being a place you can easily get lost.

The flight to Istanbul was short and uneventful, although Turkish Airlines managed to serve a cooked breakfast which was better than just about anything British Airways have ever served me, and they do this for a flight of just over an hour and a half.

My connection in the new Istanbul Airport was rather less than that, but I bypassed the short connection route and headed into the heart of the airport. And my, is it something, a vast shopping and eating opportunity with convenient parking for aircraft and connections to just about everywhere. Mogadishu? Check. Ulaan Bataar? Certainly, via Almaty. And, unlike Heathrow, it didn’t seem to be particularly stressed, as everyone seemed pretty relaxed. It’s an airport that seems to work, and if there is a flaw, it’s that there aren’t many convenient hotel rooms available.

As an comparison with the fiasco that is Berlin’s new airport, it just shows how ambitious Turkey is, even whilst its government edges ever closer towards authoritarianism.

I made the next flight easily, in fact, so easily that I went for another walk - those steps don’t do themselves, you know.

The Tbilisi flight is another two and a half hours eastwards, and the Turkish meatballs with a vegetable casserole were most welcome. And, unlike most European airlines, business class on Turkish Airlines comes with wider seats, rather more legroom and a fair bit of recline.

Tbilisi. Capital of Georgia. Home to some of the world’s most rapacious taxi drivers. My advice is, do your research first so, when they somehow forget to start the meter, the 90 Lari fare they ask for can be negotiated down to something more like the 30 Lari it should be. It’s a pity, as Georgians seem like a friendly enough bunch, but their Tourism Ministry need to do something about that.

My hotel was within a reasonable walk of the main station so, having settled in, I set off to explore and buy my train ticket for the next day. I found the station, even found the ticket office and managed to find out that they don’t sell tickets in advance on the route I would be taking.

I would have an early start the next morning...

Day 1 - London to Skopje, taking the scenic route to the spa...

So, here I am, sitting on a balcony overlooking a small spa town in the South Caucasus. And the water is slightly, but noticeably salty, best drunk warm. You may wonder what I’m doing here and, to some extent, I’m wondering too. But it’s been fun, and a little bit erratically journeyed.

Perhaps I ought to go back to the beginning...

When I arranged this trip, it was on the basis that Ros would be busy travelling somewhere else and, as is our habit, when Ros goes somewhere, I go somewhere that Ros might not be that interested in, or with an itinerary that wouldn’t really suit her. I had thought that this trip possibly fell into both categories, but certainly the latter.

That might be explained by the first leg of the journey, on Sunday morning, which took me to Skopje, the capital of North Macedonia, via Warsaw and Vienna, with a journey time of just over fifteen hours. There is a catch to using frequent flyer miles for your journey, and in this case, it meant either some fearsomely early starts (which I’m not good at), or arrival times in the middle of the night (which aren’t high on my preference list either).

Using the Lufthansa lounge at Heathrow’s Terminal 2 is strongly recommended - they have jelly beans and a typically Germanic breakfast (hearty) - before LOT Polish Airlines safely conveyed me to Warsaw, where I spent a happy(ish) hour walking laps of the airport - I’m doing the Society for Civil Servants walking challenge, and attempting to do 15,000 steps a day. I then found their lounge and ate their free snacks. Their onward flight to Vienna was very civilised too, on time, and with a perfectly decent inflight meal.

Into Vienna, and more airport laps - my, is Vienna Airport big? The Austrian Airlines lounge was surprisingly ordinary though, enlivened only by the sight of Sir Nicholas Soames catching up on his reading before heading home from a NATO Parliamentary Assembly meeting in Bratislava. I didn’t disturb him, although if I had, it would have been to say how much I enjoy his Twitter feed.

Their inflight meal on the short hop to Skopje was pretty good though, with a hot, breaded chicken breast with potato salad as the highlight.

We arrived in Skopje just before midnight, and I had only one goal - to get to my hotel room and crash. I made it without drama...

Time to make like a snowbird...

It was snowing in Ipswich. Admittedly, whilst it was surprisingly heavy, it wasn’t destined to last, and it was mere coincidence that, beside my desk at work was a large purple suitcase, packed with a surprising amount of warm weather clothes... For it was time to head for the airport again, and despite the weather, I made my way to Heathrow’s Terminal 5 without alarm to catch a British Airways flight. Next morning, I would awake in Latin America.

The Santiago flight is, by long haul standards, pretty civilised. You leave London at 10 p.m., and arrive at 9.45 a.m., which means that, if you can sleep, you arrive reasonably fresh and can emerge into the bright sunlight in good order.

Best of all, our hotel room was available despite our early arrival, and we could freshen up with a shower before heading out into the warmth. From snowfall to temperatures in the high eighties could be a bit of a shock to the system (albeit not as much as the switch in the opposite direction), but we’re fairly adaptable these days. I was able to organise a massage to get the knots of travel out of my aging body, and a walk in the area around the hotel enabled me to nail down another 10,000 step day.

So, what brings us to Chile so soon after our last visit?

Simple really, we rather like the place. Warmth is pretty much guaranteed unless you head south, the food and wine are great and, unlike much of Latin America, things work here. Hotel staff are efficient but friendly, there are no unexpected surprises other than good ones, and you do get the impression that they’re glad that you came.

And so, another adventure begins...

Hello jet lag, my old friend...

Alright, so I’ve made it home after the best part of two weeks in conditions so cold that, without multiple layers of clothing, you might die of hypothermia fast. Despite getting four hours or so sleep - the East Coast is about six hours away if you’re heading downwind - the journey from Heathrow to Suffolk was a bit of a drag.

But I started on the laundry, and once Ros had reached home too, we made a surprising amount of progress. The suitcases were unpacked, clothes sorted or put away as appropriate, and we were able to get to sleep reasonably easily.

What is increasingly obvious though is that I handle jet lag less well as I get older. In my youth, and even in my late thirties, I could almost disregard the impact of crossing time zones. Now, I feel sluggish unless I can get a decent amount of sleep, and it takes days to readjust my body clock.

Yes, I’ve learned some of the tricks - picking flights to suit my circadian rhythm, adjusting my waking hours a little at a time whilst I’m away, that sort of thing - but I’m afraid that I’m just going to have to accept that middle age is that bit less tolerant of disruption...

To the Maine Shore by air, but not necessarily the conventional way...

When it was decided that, by way of respite from our two big city destinations, we would probably need some oxygenated air, Ros came up with the idea of Bar Harbor, a small resort town on the coast of Maine. I was sceptical at first, but discovered that, whilst there were no trains, or even buses, there was an airport.

And so, I set about finding flights, only to discover that no major American airline flies there. On the other hand, United would sell me a ticket to get to Bar Harbor from New York, with an aircraft switch at Boston. And yes, I did note that the connecting flight was on a Cessna 402...

Anyway, having made it to Newark's Liberty Airport, our first flight was somewhat delayed. Indeed, it was late enough to jeopardise our connection, entailing a breathless dash through Logan Airport in Boston to get to our gate. We were, thank heavens, just in time to be questioned as to our weight, which seemed not to be problematic.

And then, with seven other people, we were led down a flight of stairs and out across the tarmac to a mosquito-sized aircraft, where our hand luggage was taken from us and a rollcall taken by first names. Seats were assigned and we were off, the pilot's window open so as to allow some fresh air into the cabin.

We taxied across the airport before taking our place in the queue for take-off, dwarfed by the Boeing 737s and the like all doing the same thing. Frankly, we could have been run over and I don't think that many people would have noticed.

On a Cessna 402, every seat is a window seat, especially 1B, which would be the co-pilot's seat were Cape Air to have any, but instead increases the passenger capacity to nine. There is a rather good in-flight magazine, although it does take second place to the incredible views of the New England shoreline.

However, after an otherwise uneventful flight, we arrived at Bar Harbor's Hancock County Airport in bright sunshine. As a final reminder that we weren't on a big faceless airline, the couple waiting in the arrivals lounge turned out to be our pilot's mum and dad.

So, Cape Air is probably not recommended for nervous fliers. However, it got us to our destination on time, and in time for a lobster supper...

A new tax on frequent flyers? Have you really thought this through?

It would be fair to say that I do a fair bit of travelling. I have, in the past, joked about having a carbon footprint the size of Wiltshire (an utter exaggeration, I admit) but I have, over the years, flown a lot more than most people do, and for a range of reasons. I pay, as a result, more than my share of Air Passenger Duty (APD). Do I begrudge that? Well yes, a bit. Do I accept that it is inevitable given my lifestyle? Yes, actually, although I would rather see a more nuanced APD that encourages airlines to fill flights or put on less of them. And so, the news that a group are proposing a tax on frequent flyers is of obvious interest to me.

In their letter to the Observer, they propose that anyone making more than one return flight a year should be taxed, by HMRC, using data supplied by the airlines and linked to their passport number. Further, the level of tax levied should increase as the number of flights does.

In fairness, they have considered some of the issues. However, there is a sense that it is a means of making rich people pay so one of their supporters feels it valid to say;

And the most popular destination of this small cohort of frequent flyers? Tax havens.

— Alice Bell (@alicebell) June 21, 2015

Now, pardon me, but I'm not aware that tax havens have scope for a lot of second home owners, and I certainly wasn't aware that France and Italy, which have large numbers of British second home owners, were tax havens. However, I'm not that sympathetic towards second home owners abroad. The model depends for the most part on cheap flights. But then, they do pay a lot of Air Passenger Duty now.

But there are a lot of people in this country, an increasing number, who have family and loved ones overseas. In our increasingly international world, it is not unusual to have a scattered family. And, in a Europe of open borders and freedom of movement, people have cause to travel home to visit. A Romanian working here to feed his or her family back home will use budget airlines to see them, and possibly visit as much as monthly. They aren't rich, their journey isn't for business, so under these proposals, we would tax them until they couldn't afford to go home at all.

Someone with an Indian family, like me, might make a trip to see them in February and then, in March, have to go home for a funeral. They would be taxed for attending a funeral, or a family wedding. And, the proposers admit that;

We’d like access to better data on this but from what we can see, although low-income migrant communities are more likely than others in their income bracket to fly, they are still unlikely to fall into the frequent flyer category that this tax reform will target.

In other words, they don't know, and possibly don't care that much. The cause is more important than the collateral damage.

The proposal would be intrusive too. 

First, HMRC would need access to data that is already captured by the Home Office, on passenger movements in and out of the country. This would have to be stored in an automated database that airlines could access in real time when selling tickets to customers. Second, airlines would need to start recording customers’ passport numbers at the point of ticket sale - instead of before boarding as is currently the case.

And, as for the impact on those businesses trading overseas;

The best option is probably to charge the levy to companies for their employees’ business flights rather than the individuals flying, with each company having a tax-free flight allowance based on company size.

As if that is a reliable yardstick. But again;

We would like to commission further work to look at the market impacts of this proposal in more detail, both for the aviation sector itself and for other sectors that are currently heavily reliant on air travel.

So, in other words, this is an intrusive, untested, ill thought out proposal which is likely to punish those with families overseas and businesses, without necessarily raising as much money as Air Passenger Duty does, some of whose supporters appear motivated almost more by a dislike of wealthier people than a practical sense of designing something that would work.

My advice? Go away and think again. And please skip the arguments that wealthy people need to be punished...

Sometimes, a layover is a good thing...

I have to admit that I wasn't looking forward to the latest leg of my journey, Osaka to Rotorua via Tokyo and Auckland. With a 4.30 a.m. start, a nine hour layover in Tokyo and a four hour layover in Auckland, it didn't seem very promising...

But what of Kyoto? Well, I'm not a great temple person, it seems. They're all very pretty but I get greater pleasure out of feeding the koi (carp, and big ones too...) than out of the temples themselves. In the end, I took a day trip to Nara to visit the world's biggest wooden structure - coincidentally, a temple, I admit - with the most enormous statue of Buddha. I also took the opportunity to feed some of the national treasures wandering around the grounds.

Yes, the big thing to do is to feed the deer. Special biscuits are baked and sold to visitors, who then feed the deer. Watching Japanese schoolgirls squeal as they are assailed by hungry deer is quite amusing but these creatures mean business and will take a bite at your trousers if you aren't being sufficiently attentive. They are cute though...

I also got some shopping done. Two of my favourite stores are Muji and Uniqlo, both of which are ludicrously expensive at home. Not in Kyoto, they aren't. So I have some useful things to bring home with me.

Anyway, back to the journey. I got to Tokyo easily enough but what to do? I decided to go to Chiba by train and arrived to find quite a decent sized city. Best of all, it has a monorail, and not just a silly little thing to serve the central city area but a real commuter line. Well, I had to go for a ride, didn't I? I managed to fill about six hours, what with getting there and back by train, lunch and some browsing in local shops.

And now, here I am in Auckland, awaiting my connecting flight. I've grabbed a shower, some decent snack food and a very decent glass of sauvignon blanc (Koru Club lounges are wonderful) and feel like a human being - again.

The next stage is a relaxing one, with my annual day at the spa and another chance to go zorbing. Should be fun...