So here we are back in the UK where today has been quite pleasant and mild and I’ve been out admiring the bluebells. Mind you, for a while there it was touch and go whether we would get back. OK, I exaggerate a little; it was just the Vigo to Oporto leg that was a little problematical. On Friday, we set about trying to book tickets for the bus to the airport online. There are two bus services which do that route: Autna and Alsa. It’s terribly confusing having two similarly names bus companies as one insists that you have to buy your tickets in advance and I can never remember which is which.
Anyway we had a look at both of them, with the idea of booking our tickets whether they demanded it or not, just to save a little time and hassle. And we found that Autna, who don’t insist on pre-booking, has different information on its on-line timetable to what is on its online booking service!!! Useful! This meant that the bus that we might have caught was not actually available. We could travel first thing in the morning or risk not getting there before the gate closed for our flight. So Alsa it had to be. Alsa let us go through the booking system and then told us there had been an error - un error en los datos???? – at the point when we wanted to print tickets. Had they actually sold us tickets? Had they charged us? The system would not let us go back in to find out.
So off we went to the bus station to book in the old fashioned way and arrived 5 minutes too late. The ticket man was just leaving. He stopped long enough to ask what we wanted but was clearly in a hurry. He advised us to return on Saturday morning. His parting shot, “there are not many places left for Sunday”, gave us more than a moment of panic. What if we couldn't get the bus!!??
The booking office opens at 8.15 am, so at 8 o’ clock on Saturday morning I was at the bus stop in the rain and by 8.20 I was at the bus station. I had a brief chat with the ticket man and waited for a few minutes while he went to check all was well with bus about to leave downstairs. He checked on his computer that I had not in fact paid for my tickets already and sold me two for Sunday. Hooray! Phew, what a relief!
I walked back in the rain and we had breakfast.
The day improved and the sun even came out so we went for a last walk to the. Castro where a noisy children's cycling event - noisy event not just for noisy children, I hasten to add - was taking place. They were raising money to send children with physical disabilities on the Camino de Santiago on specially adapted tandems. Several examples of these were being cycled around the park. 
I politely declined the offer to try one out but bought a raffle ticket which could win me a bicycle. It would be just typical for mine to be the winning ticket because I will undoubtedly have lost it by the time it is the raffle is drawn. Then we had a final visit to the Nuevo Derby for a refresco and to catch up with our emails and then back home to pack.
Our journey to the UK proved to be uneventful, simply involving a lot of hanging around in the airport at Oporto: rather a waste of a sunny day but these things cannot always be avoided.
Oh, one final thing, going against our usual habit of waiting until the last minute to join the queue to get onto the plane, we made sure we were among the first fifty or so in the “other queue”, the one for those who have not paid an extra £10 or so for the privilege of getting onto the plane ahead of everyone else. We did this because Ryanair have changed their policy about “cabin baggage”. Only the first 90 hand-luggage-only bags are accepted into the cabin. The rest go in the hold, although you don’t have to pay the usual extortionate fee for putting luggage in the hold. Obviously they have decided to avoid the free for all, which we have witnessed many times, of people desperately trying to find a place to put their hand luggage. It certainly saved time and confusion during boarding and considerably expedited take-off! Good move, Ryanair!
Also a good move on our part to join the boarding queue as early as we did. No hanging around waiting for luggage off the carousel for us. Oh, no. Straight off the plane, through security and out into the night to travel back to Manchester!
Such efficiency is quite astounding!
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