There’s a lot that’s fragile in a tour. A way to add to the resilience of challenges that the route, distance, equipment, weather, people and singularity can throw up is to plan, have support at home and carry contingency solutions that at least make dealing with a change or a problem easier. It has to be added that on a tour that you also juggle time constraints and weariness. Neither of these latter things add to your comfort or pleasure.

Flights to Australia have always been a challenge. In 2020 I was told to evacuate in a couple of days due to Covid closing down the airways. I was 150 miles from an airport, on a bike, and needing a bike box from a city that was closing down. In 2023 I had no challenges other than explaining to fellow passengers that I was travelling with my wife but, of course, she was upstairs in Business and here was I down with the poor people. 2024 saw the lovely Qatar Airways stop me boarding a flight due to a passport they said Australian immigration would reject due to its condition. That was absolute bs and put my trip back a week and added the cost of a new flight. However, 2026 trumped all that, literally, when the USA attacked Iran. My return flight was due to layover in the war zone: Dubai. In the ‘agony’ of the flight crisis unfolding I had to wait near weeks until Emirates cancelled my flight. Everyday you wondered what would happen. When they did cancel Anna procured another flight for over £1,800. Not a particular issue other than this cost was greater than the cost of the original travel arrangements that included flying in and out of New Zealand (to Australia) and then flying back to the UK. Obviously the nature of the event, force majeure, meant there was no recourse to travel insurance. Additional costs were then added to the new flight for luggage and for coping with a long layover in Los Angeles by booking into an airport lounge.

When Anna resolved my return with booking a flight through Air France one of my carefully planned arrangements came under pressure. Namely, getting a bike back to the UK and working within the luggage allowances. You may be surprised to learn the airlines all have different allowances and costs. Emirates allowed me to put 30kg in the hold. Air France only 23kg and if it included a bicycle you must contact them 48 hours in advance and also pay a fee for the privilege.

So on reaching Brisbane I went on line to do this. The Air France help line correspondent said they could do this but wanted some booking references. I had the main one but not a ticket number(?). I was told to recontact them when I had this information. I obtained it and tried to contact Air France again. The help line had gone from the App! After searching on the App and website I found another contact line. I opened this and was told they were busy and ‘it would take some time’ to respond. This turned out to be over 12 hours. Clearly long French lunches and a ‘work to rule’ was probably impacting on dealing with desperate paying customers in far away lands.

I asked Anna to help. She went into York to ask the Travel Agent to help, they may have other ways to contact the airline? (Anna heroically got in the car to drive into York and got a puncture on the way there. Cue more of her time being spent on this project.) The Travel Agent couldn’t make contact with Air France. Anna, on the same contact line came up against ‘it would take some time’. Neither could she get through on a telephone number from the Air France site in London. With our respective topsy turvy time zones I went to sleep.

At 3.30am the lovely millennials/Gen X men from Ireland, in the adjoining apartment came back. This was later than the 1am the night before. They proceeded to shout and stomp for 30 minutes. I was now awake and decided that the only way to remotely make any progress on this, and to book the bike onto the flight, required me to actually go to the airport in advance. Air France didn’t have a presence there but a partner airline, Delta, did and they were flying me to Los Angeles on an Air France ticket. Delta had a morning flight that day and would have open Check-In desks and so I could talk to someone.

I got up, had some breakfast, and got the train to the airport. I went up to the Check-In desks and a member of staff directed me to the wonderful Diane, who was a supervisor. A haggard, elderly bloke badly dressed and a little over wrought explained the Emirates cancellation, the booking with Air France and his challenge of taking his trusty steed back to Blighty. The upshot was that Diane saw my anxiety and soothed away all problems. Firstly, as the first leg of my flight home (to Los Angeles) was with Delta then Delta rules applied. The bike could go and no premium fee was necessary. Just make sure it met the baggage allowance of 23kg. Any excess luggage could also go but there would be a fee. I could take up to another 23kg. I had nothing like that weight but it was a fix. Diane then actually checked me in, gave me an aisle seat and said ‘go back to Brisbane and enjoy your last couple of days’.

(On a different matter Anna had some issues with an American Express card. From my hotel room in Brisbane I went onto their help line, explained the issue and got an immediate resolution. All done in minutes. Obviously not French Express.)

The Delta flight eventually went a little late but was quite comfortable due to not being full. The food in ‘Main Cabin’ was awful though – tasteless, small in volume and served in cardboard trays that were the same specification and colour as hospital disposable commodes. It gave the impression that ‘as you’ve selected Economy then we’re going to make the point you’re a cheap skate and serve you this miserly fayre’. I absorbed the blow for the 14 hour flight.

Landing in a US airport, even on an international layover, is a drag. You have to go through passport control, collect your luggage and then go through security before handing it back to be checked in again. I must Google why this procedure is in place. I had no desire to see my large bike box before Manchester, let alone lug it around a US airport. I did as I was told and started this process by visiting Border Control. ‘Have you brought to the United States any fruit?’ I had a peach in my rucksack. At this point the regular Tony Ives thought ‘say no’, they won’t check, if you do it’ll activate some weary US bureaucratic activity. However, reflecting on Paul’s previous advice for NZ I declared it.

‘Please step to one side and follow this Officer’. Oh, for crying out loud. It’s a bloody peach, here you can have it, leave me alone (I was tired, my body clock told me it was after midnight Oz time.) So I was led to a waiting area and told to wait. I joined a man from Mexico with a bag of roasted chicken! Eventually another Officer appeared and advised we should collect my other luggage from Baggage Reclaim. This is never easy as baggage handling often deposit the bike box late at a different place to the carousel. We found the Oversize Luggage area and then I asked the Officer to help me load the bike box onto the trolley. I suspect the look she gave me suggested that this wasn’t in her job spec.

So off I wheel all my worldly goods another 100 metres to a special investigative area. These officials look at the bike box and you can see they’re not interested to open that. Too much like hard work. They establish that I’m on a layover and unlikely to escape the Airport to decimate California’s fruit industry with pestilence and disease from my one sad supermarket small peach in a see through bag and give me my passport back and tell me I can go. Make America Great Again.

I had a 10 hour layover and desperately wanted to sleep. LAX is a spacious airport with lots of seating but I’m unlikely to get comfortable to get any sleep as the seats aren’t conducive to sleep and understandably there’s a continual tide of folk coming and going. So I pass a sign pointing to where the Air France lounge is. I return when they open at 10am. Now I’m not on a Business ticket and if they do let me in I’d have to pay $95. However, I could sleep and it’d be a haven for the next 5 plus hours before I board. I return when it opens and the Receptionist says I could only stay, in any case a maximum of three hours and she’d have to speak to her boss in any case. I’m discouraged but around me are similar long layover passengers on the wrong tickets. Now as a respectful Brit I withdraw feeling all is a lost cause even if I get in (then over $30/hour for some scrambled eggs and a comfy seat is not worth it.) However, the other waiting French passengers with their scant interest in Air France rules just ‘camp’ in the Reception area until the Receptionist capitulates and agreed they can come in and stay longer. 

I observe and follow and get the same concession. It was a fabulous lounge – food, booze, showers, comfortable seating areas, a Clarins face massage area and, not least, calm and spacious. I sleep briefly, have something to eat and shower. I board the flight to Paris and it’s a complete sardine arrangement in Economy. I am the sandwich between two American ladies. They’re both lovely but the lady in aisle seat is a large person; not much surplus space!

As I’m reconciling myself to 10 hours of this small hutch the man in front seems to go into a sort of frenzy and vomits. He’s drunk. At this point I wonder why on Earth would you ever want to be a flight attendant. The drunk gets up and lurches toward the toilet, the neighbouring passenger in the aisle seat who seems to have narrowly avoided being covered abandons the seat to another location and the Flight attendant cleans up. When the drunk returns his wife has to endure him collapsing onto her as he sleeps off his excess for several hours. Later, on waking, she launches into a 15 minutes scolding that includes how the attendant suggested they may need to make an emergency landing to unload him/them (nonsense, it never was suggested by the steward), how humiliated she personally was and how he must never get in this state again. For good measure he gets the same dressing down a couple of hours later. I’d give the marriage months not years.

Meanwhile one of my neighbours, Nel, tells me about her son who is a major and works on the staff at The White House, her upcoming holiday in Algeria, how she’s been to 79 countries (and many twice) with Africa a favourite destination and that annually she goes up to Alaska fishing. All this is accompanied with photographs or videos of smart young men in uniform, brilliantly decorated Christmas trees inside The White House, dancing Sierra Leone school children, cod, halibut and salmon. Apparently you catch it and after preparing it they post it home for you, judging by the size of the cuts she must have several freezers. Sadly struggling for similar impressive boasts I have to play the Prince Charles card. Pathetic, I know.

Thanks to Nel and a paperback I’m reading, Earth to Moon, by Frank Zappa’s daughter, Moon about her life not least with the genius. The time passes and soon we’re touching down at Charles de Gaulle. This time my luggage is being forwarded. Only another three hours to kill before the connection to Manchester. Here I witness a stressful scene as a couple lose a small child in the area around the Departure Gates. The child, around 3 years old, had disappeared and the parents supervising other offspring had failed to note his scurrying off. As they’re searching their panic and anxiety is palpable to all around. Fortunately someone saw a barefoot child and the mother pursues to capture the child.

A new feature on airlines now is inflight wi-fi. It’s free. Inevitably it’s unreliable and predictably Air France require you to complete all sorts and sign up for newsletters etc. before you can connect. I don’t, I’m happy for a trial separation after they get me home. Another thing I’ll not miss is the dual language announcements over the aeroplane tannoy. The first edition in French drones on for seemingly hours and then the English version is so heavily accented you’re about 30 seconds into the briefing before you work out it’s English. So eventually after about 3 hours sleep in the 40 travelling I emerge into daylight and find Anna at a Pick Up point. I am looking forward to that bed.

Thank you to everyone for reading and sorry for some of the time gaps. As I looked back on some of the photos there were some marvellous moments including scenery and the people met. It’s maybe a downer that hides the fabulous times to finish with my challenges but it’s a story that completes my adventure.

Till we meet again.