Hand luggage ?!

As you know, we are going by Ryanair to France for our holidays. With Ryanair you have to pay so much per bag of hold luggage. We opted for one 20kg bag between us. Normally when we go away for a fortnight that's around about the weight we take, sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less. Knowing Ryanair's reputation for putting swinging excesses on if you go over the weight, & so many people goggling at us only taking the one bag between us, has left me feeling nervous.

It occurred to me that maybe we should each take as large a bag of hand luggage as was allowable so there would be some spare capacity just in case we were tempted to buy some souvenirs of some sort. I could always put my handbag inside it or the Fox's favourable bit of hand luggage could easily fold up & go inside it so he could still carry around the smaller shoulder bag while actually on holiday to carry camera, water, maps, spare woolly etc. I duly looked up the dimensions of maximum hand luggage according to the Ryanair website. I was staggered.

The dimensions stated are 55cmx40cmx20cm to a maximum weight of 10 kg per passenger. In other words we could take 20kg of luggage through without even having to pay for hold luggage! 

At the weekend we had a measure of our cases. Sure enough we could find what I would call a small suitcase, rather than hand luggage, that was less than the dimensions stated. No wonder so many passengers stagger on to planes with such huge bags in hand. I'm even beginning to wonder whether we even need to take hold luggage, though I suppose we must as we inevitably take some scissors, razors, creams etc which are not these days permitted in hand luggage. And of course there's a bed cradle which may be rather big to go in the hand luggage & is certainly rather heavy & awkward for so doing. But at least we could save money by going for the minimum amount of hold luggage possible which seems to be 15kg & carry the rest by hand.

The only difficulty is that taking two biggish bags in hand plus pulling along a bigger suitcase & pushing a wheelchair along is not easy. It's no problem once you're at the airport where you can get a trolley to make life easier, but to self-propel a wheelchair & balance a bag on your lap is difficult. We're contemplating seeing if we couldn't invest in a bag of appropriate dimensions with a shoulder strap so I won't need to keep worrying about the bag falling off my lap. We'll see.