Corfu; Thursday, 18 July, 2019

It was an early flight, but I was up even earlier than I needed to be as the Premier Inn at Heathrow had decided it was a good idea to install fridges in each room, but rather than hotel mini-bar fridges that are either quiet, or can be silenced overnight, these were just bog standard small kitchen fridges which make quite a bit of noise just before 5am when the chiller kicks in. Consequently, I was out of the hotel and at the terminal checking in at 06:30, which made what followed all the more annoying.

I wandered through to departures and had a relaxed breakfast waiting for my plane to land (on the satellite terminal once again) and for the gate to be called. Little did anyone on the flight know but at this point in time the BA baggage system was in the process of melting down with nothing being able to be checked in. You would have thought that bags that had already been in the system for over 90 minutes would already be heading to the plane and wouldn’t therefore be impacted…

It was a smooth flight over to Corfu and we landed a little late, but nothing untowards until people started switching their mobile phones on and a cacophony of incoming text messages greeted us all with the phrase – We have been experiencing baggage systems issues… …there is a possibility that your baggage may be subject to a delay arriving – so we all went through the airport and waited at the baggage carousel waiting for bags to come round. The belt started and the handful of cabin items that were placed in the hold because of lack of locker space came up, and then the belt stopped. We could also see at this point the tugs taking the luggage for customers heading back to London over to the plane and having it loaded, so it was clear that possibility was actually none of the luggage made it.

By now there was a very lengthy (i.e. the passenger count of a fully loaded Airbus 321) queue at the baggage handling agents desk and the one person on duty was clearly overwhelmed. I was also now receiving texts from my transfer saying they were here and would only wait for a few more minutes, so I decided it would be easier to claim online. I headed, with no luggage, through customs and out into the arrivals hall to meet my transfer who swiftly whisked me away to the hotel.

Whilst on the way to the hotel I tried to fill out the missing baggage claim, but BAs systems were all falling over because of the chaos. Instead I looked online to see if there was anywhere in Corfu that I’d be able to get some clothes to tide me over – at which point I discovered all of the shops would be closing in the next 20 minutes bar one – very conveniently there was a Marks and Spencer in town that would be open until 21:00.

Having checked into the hotel I caught the bus into the centre of Corfu and brought myself a new summer wardrobe – well it was cheaper to buy a back of 3 M&S basic T-shirts that purchase individual designer ones, and you can’t get boxers or socks in anything less than multi-packs. In the end I spent nearly €100 on clothes but decided to take BA at their word that my actual luggage would arrive before I headed home so didn’t splash out another hundred on a new suitcase.

After my shopping I headed out into town and spent a couple of hours wandering around the centre of Corfu Town doing some limited sightseeing (it’s more difficult to do when you’ve got a quite heavy M&S bag to drag around, along with the camera), taking in the outside of the old fortress and some of the gardens around the Palace of St Michael and St George. I then headed back over to the bus top and picked up the bus back to the hotel.

I dropped off my shopping in my room and went for a bit of a wander through the hotel grounds and took the hotels funicular down to the private beach at the bottom of the cliffs the hotel was on, then wandered a bit further round to the small harbour. At the end of the harbour wall is a small monastery which I was going to visit, but on looking at the time I realised that dinner was about to be served, so instead I headed back to the hotel and down to dinner.

After dinner, and with the sun setting behind the hotel, I headed back down to the harbour and out to the little monastery to take in the view and the last of the days light. I had a long wander round before heading back to the hotels beach and using the funicular to get me back up the hill to the hotel and my room.

By now the BA systems had finally stabilised and I was able to put my lost luggage claim in, as well as submitting my M&S reimbursement claim at the same time. Once that was done I turned in for the night.