The journey home

Tuesday 31st October

After the calm of the Black Sea and the Aegean, we hit a stormy patch in the Med. The morning saw a large number of people lying on settees or huddled in chairs clutching their sick bags. Fortunately I was unaffected though this was not what I can claim about the last time I sailed on the Med two years ago. I was rather ill between Benghazi and Tripoli and then off the coast of Italy. Mind you, they were as nothing compared to the crossing I made to Norway three years ago when we saied in the middle of a storm in November!

The Discovery arrived at Limasol in Cyprus at about 1pm, by which time the storm had calmed. We had no time to see anything on the island other than the port and the airport at Larnaka. We were in the air by 7pm at which point watches were put back two hours and we were collecting our luggage before 10pm in Gatwick. We were back to the flat by 11pm.

We then had to go through the irritating process of unpacking everything from the suitcases so that everything that was staying in the flat would not be shipped up to Gateshead. And everyting that was being shipped up to Gateshead had to be repacked ready for the journey home on Wednesday. I got to bed at 2am - seems as though I got back into my routine straight away!