Funchal; Friday, 08 April, 2016

I’d been working from home during the day, so I was able to finish work and be on a train to the airport within a few minutes. Not that it did me much good as the train got to just outside East Croydon and then ground to a halt for almost 30 minutes because of an incident at the station. Driver didn’t have any information, but from twitter it appeared to be a disruptive passenger on the platform my train was heading for which required the assistance of both the regular transport police and some armed officers, so I was quite glad I was stuck outside the station.

By the time the trains started moving again the entire evening rush-hour had been wrecked and Southern were in panic mode making alterations to trains left right and centre. Thankfully this worked in my favour as it meant trains that wouldn’t have stopped at Gatwick were being stopped there to meet trains that were starting there rather than in London, so in the end I was only about 25 minutes late getting to the airport.

I took the shuttle over to the North Terminal, and after picking up a few essentials (dinner and sun tan cream as my previous bottle had run out in Belgium on the last trip) I headed over to the hotel, checked in and after a pleasant M&S dinner in my room turned in for an early night as I had a relatively early flight in the morning.