The Joys of Travelling Cattle Class

Let’s get one thing straight from the start, £70 for 2 people to travel 1,500 miles is a good deal by anyone’s standard.

Now the plus point is out of the way, here is what £70 buys 2 people in cattle class.

Yes it was Easter Monday, not the quietest time to jump on a train at Carlisle, but we got our allocated seats, albeit occupied by the remnants of the previous passengers drinking habits. As I was lifting our ‘cabin sized’ bags onto the shelf above us, Rachel handed me the 2 beer bottles to dispose of, I was never adept at juggling, so the remnants of the beer trickled down my jeans, but it would dry by the time we reached the airport.

We had the misfortune to be sat just in front of a large man with a constant cough, but the other seats around us were unoccupied until Penrith, where a large family boarded straight from McDonald’s. Most of the food found its way into the respective orifices, so the carpet remained fairly close to its original pattern.

On arrival at Manchester airport we were left with the simple task of finding Terminal 3. This was obviously tagged on as an afterthought, and during our ‘decent’ walk there I did start to wonder if we had got off one stop too early.

Eventually arriving at the terminal we had the joy of escaping the queue at ‘check in’ as we had been savvy enough to do it online beforehand. So we skipped that queue and joined the next one, which resembled one of those snaking affairs you get at theme parks with no idea where the eventual end was. At least we were moving, although I was beginning to wonder if we were just going to end up back at the airport’s railway station.

After about half an hour we made it to the security scanning area. Now I’m all for this, our safety is paramount so no complaints there. However, what used to be a case of putting your loose change, belt and mobile phone in a tray has long since gone. I think Rachel and I used 5 trays, to be honest they may as well have told everybody to strip naked, at least it would have brought some amusement to the proceedings. Oh well, after being scanned we could collect all our belongings and spend the next 10 minutes getting dressed and repacking.

Clear of security we entered the robbing arena, or as it is officially signed ‘The Food Court’. If you need to ask the price of a pint then you obviously don’t have sufficient cash on you to buy one! Well, to hell with it, we had certainly earned it so we pushed the boat out and bought some food and beer as a reward.

It was just turned 7pm when we were summoned, with the rest of the cattle, to Gate 54 to join another queue to board the flying sardine tin. Our fellow passengers seemed to be mainly Spanish (understandable as we were heading to Spain), with a smattering of Scouse families en route to Benidorm for a week of getting blathered by the pool. The main air hostess was a buxom Spanish girl who had obviously been employed for her ability to get everyone into the party spirit. If ever there was a moment to drive me to stand up on a plane of 150 people and shout “Will you all just shut the…..up” then this was it! My biggest fear for doing such a rash thing was that it would ignite a chorus of 'Agadoo' so being the mild mannered English sexagenarian I am, I just sat there quietly and tried to switch to chill mode.

We were pleasantly surprised to escape the mayhem half an hour earlier than expected, apparently due to a tailwind. We met our shuttle bus as arranged and found Harry just as we’d left him. It was then just a short 3 mile drive to our beach plot where we could relax, have a nice English cuppa then off to bed!