Big "day" to get to Southampton - 17&18 July

2.30pm pick up for our 6pm flight, so plenty of relaxing Lounge time at Tullamarine.  A quite pleasant 7+ hours to Singapore for a brief layover and a good leg stretch before another 7+ hour leg to Dubai.
Both flights about 85% full, with good service and chance for a few hours of shuteye. Very pleasant food, good scotch and French red.
Long transit walk in Dubai but all handled pretty efficiently.
A bit disappointed at this stage at not needing to pull out my hip replacement card at either Tullamarine and Changi. Dubai fixed that when the bells went off!!

Very interesting at the differences in security screening between the airports, Tullamarine,  watch off, belt off, coins out, Changi, all those were ok, Dubai, belt off, but coins and watch ok. Dubai took the cake however in requiring boarding pass and passport presentation 5 times in the space of 50 metres.

Once again a few spare seats to Gatwick and we had a baby and a 12 month old in our immediate proximity. Both amazingly well behaved. Landed about 45 minutes early, but that time disappeared with the immigration queue - fortunately we were pretty quick to reach its tail and waited "only" 40 minutes.  For the slow ones It would have been over an hour. With that wait we soon had the bags and were out the door to locate our driver.  Just clear of the airport boundaries,  we struck road works - it's an international plague!!

Interestingly,  Southampton is 90km as the crow flies from Gatwick, but the quickest drive covers about 140km using the Motorways. With most of the drive at 120km per hour, however, it did not take long.

Our apartment at Portcullis House is very new in the interior but in an old Port building. Looks very ordinary from the outside with unmowed grass and rusted fencing. Kitchen/lounge a good size but the bedroom is pretty tight. Had a wander and picked up a dinner snack and an early night.

Weather is very pleasant as England has been having something of a heatwave - and the next week forecast is all 23 - 29C without any likelihood of rain.