Moving on.

Because we were leaving Vigo yesterday the sun decided to come out again after a fair few days of rather foul weather, the "ciclogenesis violenta" which brought wind and rain and general nastiness. But we left Vigo under blue skies once again. By the time we reached Santiago de Compostela, however, the skies were grey once more and a light rain was falling. This was Santiago after all! 

It cleared up later and we had blue skies once more until the moment came to board the plane. At that point the heavens opened and it seemed that the "ciclogenesis" had returned. It's amazing how wet you can get in a short run to a plane and then a walk up the steps. Inside the plane there was the usual problem, even WITH assigned seats, of people insisting on standing in the aisle to sort themselves out and remove from their hand-luggage anything they might need during the journey before stowing their bags away. The idea that they might move into the row of seats to do this is clearly a concept some have never heard of. Appeals from the cabin crew for people to move to their seats as quickly as possible so that those still standing on the steps in the rain could get inside went unheeded. I'm-all-right-Jack-ism and centre-of-the-universe syndrome was rife. 

Eventually most of the damp people were seated and most of the luggage was stowed. Fortunately we had managed to be among the first to board so we were able to put our luggage above our own seats. Not so a very indignant Spaniard who had to be persuaded by the cabin crew to let them put his bag in a locker towards the back of the plane while he was seated near the front. It was only when they began to insist that if he failed to accept that, the only solution was to put the luggage in the hold that he agreed, still mumbling and muttering about the insecurity of his bag being so far away from him. 

When we landed and as soon as we were allowed to unbuckle our seat belts, indeed possibly a little sooner than that, he had elbowed his way through the passengers in the aisle, almost knocking several over in the process. When challenged he protested that his suitcase was THERE and pointed indignantly to the locker he was aiming to reach. Immediately a chorus of Spanish passengers told him, also pointing, "Y mi maleta está allí", each one indicating that his case was, of course, the most important in the plane! 

We alighted to much better weather, calm and almost warm, as if England and Spain has swopped weather! All went well until we reached a point where the automatic door refused to open. It crossed my mind that we might all have died and gone to a special form of hell for plane passengers, one where you stand for all eternity in a queue of Ryanair passengers waiting to go through a door! 

Our indignant fellow passenger, he of the important suitcase, was vociferous in his complaints and suggested that we should all turn round and go back and find another door to go through. This despite the fact that the remaining passengers were piling up behind us, making retreat impossible, not to mention the fact that we almost certainly had to go through a specific numbered door for security reasons. 

But in the end all was well. At last, after about five minutes, one of the airport employees became aware of our plight and opened the door. All we had to do after that was stand in the enormous queue for passport control, a good half hour of waiting I should say. Eventually we were officially back in the UK and onto the Stansted Express into London so that we could catch the underground train out again to go to visit offspring number one. 

Some ten and a half hours after walking out of the door of our flat in Vigo we walked in through the door of his house. Such are the joys of travelling!