With both my children currently working in Europe, there has been a desire to travel over to visit. Suddenly the high cost of the flights was not an issue when I learned that we could buy a return ticket to the UK for around $1000. Initial nervousness about choosing to fly with China Southern Airlines vanished by the time of arrival.
The flights were on modern aircraft through Guangzhou airport are actually the shortest possible route between Brisbane and London. The second sector from Guangzhou Baiyun to London Heathrow flying the great circle was chasing the sun all afternoon, and took us well north over Russia.
The ground over China, Mongolia and Russia was shrouded in cloud, but as we came over the border with Finland, the cloud cleared to show us an ice encrusted landscape, with only rivers and occasional cities to give us a reference to the navigation maps in the aircraft’s entertainment system. We were soon over the Baltic Sea, and could identify the coastline from Finland, around to the north an west, and back to the south where we crossed the coast again over Stockholm. The solid ice mass gave way to green patches over Sweden, and the multitude of lakes near the coast could be seen as dark water rather than white ice, though it took a while to realise that the white fringes on the southern edges of the lakes was not sand, but ice. We were about to plot our path over Gรถteborg and then Frederikshavn in Denmark, and it was fascinating watching the flat landscape that was scattered with lakes and windmills.
We arrived into Heathrow just before sunset, but it was dark and cold by the time we left the airport on the London tube.
