A night in a hotel

It was Gaz, the owner/manager of the Pub, who first suggested it. Before his last holiday, he stayed overnight at one of the airport hotels. "You get transport to & from the airport. They checked in us & the cases so we just had to make our way over to the airport & more or less walk straight onto the plane. And the car was safely waiting for us for when we got back."

I have wondered about this before now but I had always assumed the bus would not be wheelchair accessible. No. Gaz reckoned the buses were all low-loaders.

We have contemplated driving down before now to Manchester, but the price of airport car parks are extortionate, especially if you're going to be away a couple of weeks as we usually do. And then there's the problem of maybe being so tired that you don't feel like driving back that day, especially if the plane doesn't get back in until midnight or so & you've just had a long long flight.

"What's more, we had a lovely relaxing evening. We had a swim in the hotel pool, a good meal, everything. And all for less than the price of the taxi to & from the airport from here," Gaz continued.

We decided to look into it. The return taxi to Manchester airport from here is around £95. We're now booked into a hotel for £68.10 with two weeks parking. We have family & friends in Manchester so we may even see them for part of the evening before we set off to Italy. We won't want to be up too late as the flight is at 6.25am. If nothing else we'll have an extra couple of hours - the time it takes to drive down to the airport - to sleep comfortably in bed. Mind you, I'm usually far too excited to actually sleep, but at least it will be a couple of hours of comfortable relaxation. We return just after lunchtime so we should be fine for the drive back that afternoon.

So fingers crossed everything's organised now. Just those last few things to do like haircuts & packing.