Scottish Weekend - Part 1

Took a trip up to bonny Scotland this weekend, couple of days in Edinburgh and a couple in St. Andrews visiting our lad who's at University there. Decided not to drive up this time (bit of a slog) but fly instead so we departed home for terminal 5 on a sunny Wednesday afternoon. The passage through T5 was a complete nightmare, things went wrong from the very start. Ditching the bags at the bag-drop area and my boarding pass barcode wouldn't scan so I got someone to assist and log the bags manually, unfortunately she (helpfully) reprinted me a new boarding pass but for the wrong person in our party; I didn't notice that the name on it wasn't mine, an error which would plague me the whole day.

When I got to security the machine wouldn't let me pass, the photograph (taken at the bag drop) didn't match the one associated with the check-in, 30 minutes later and after lot's of tapping of keyboards and calling of managers, I was assured that all was in order and I went through. Once through security (the busiest I've ever seen it!) we eventually made our way to the gate where, surprise, surprise the error with the boarding pass was spotted and I wasn't allowed on the plane! The delay was such that the gate closed and I was the very last person to board, after a lonely jog down the boarding ramp, I had to do the walk of shame up the aircraft aisle as I'd held everyone up by 15 minutes! We missed our take-off slot and had to queue up to take off, which seemed to take ages, I snapped this photo out of the window showing the line of planes behind us..

We eventually took off around 60 minutes late, much tutting ensued. Luckily the flight was uneventful and we touched down in Edinburgh around 70 minutes later. I managed to snap this picture of the new Wembley stadium just before disappearing into the clouds.

Door-to-door the journey took about 7 hours, not that far off driving all the way! Edinburgh was drizzly but we didn't care, after the ordeal through the airport system we needed a drink, so we decamped to Leith and installed ourselves at a brilliant pub I know on the quayside there and had a couple of scoops before heading out for dinner.