TheFlyingDoctor

After a late night of food, games and general catch-up, a 5AM alarm called us to action. Neither Luke nor I are morning people, and thanks to the jump forward to British Summer Time we were operating on less than four hours sleep. Nonetheless we were functional enough to make it into the taxi a half hour later, although our answer of "we don't know" to the driver's enquiry as to where were flying might have implied otherwise! At this (otherwise intolerable) time of day the 6 miles from home to Heathrow can be covered in a fraction of the time it takes for my commute, so by 5:45 we were standing under the departures board, ready to pick our destination.

I attempted to film the decisive roll of our twenty-sided die, but cheerfully threw it completely out of shot. So you'll have to take my word for it that we hit a six, which from our wave 1 chart corresponded to... Larnaca! This was a pretty exciting outcome, and one that Luke had been secretly rooting for, as both the furthest and warmest destination from our original longlist. For me Cyprus was a new country, whilst he had only dim childhood memories of a trip to elsewhere on the island. But we weren't necessarily going yet, since of all our outbound options, the 07:15 to Larnaca had the fewest empty seats...

At Terminal 5 BA's staff travel process used to involve 'listing' for flights, then proceeding to a special room - fittingly, next to the prayer room - to watch your booking on a giant screen until it turned green or red. These days, of course, there's an app; ten minutes of wrangling with that, and we apparently had confirmed tickets (those last seats hadn't filled, and there were no other standers-by to compete with). Better still, as we checked in (on the usual machines) we discovered there was not just a pair of adjacent seats still available, but that we could potentially have a block of three to ourselves. Presumably these had been freed up by a late cancellation, and although the odds of anyone checking in later than us were slim, we picked the window and middle seat just to ensure we didn't get stuck with a stranger between us.

Security took a full thirty minutes, as despite decanting everything correctly, my toothpaste was deemed sufficiently mysterious as to warrant a secondary liquids check, which was delayed until four less savvy passengers had had their luggage picked over in detail. Fortunately Luke was able to pick up bottled water as I waited, and we still had enough time before boarding to hit Starbucks (the Aspire lounge was unsure whether I could guest for free, and it didn't seem worth gambling for a ten minute raid of the breakfast buffet).


We were amongst the last passengers to board; doors closed at 07:10, confirming that we had scored seats 20D/E/F - who needs Club Europe? We were ready to depart on time, always welcome with over two thousand miles / near five hours of flying stretched out ahead of us. Of course, being Heathrow, the first twenty minutes took place on the ground, with a jaunt around the airport followed by some queuing. But at 07:35, we were aloft!

I have little to report from the flight itself - there's nothing too exciting to discuss about an A320 in shorthaul economy, and although this was my first flight to offer buy-on-board, nothing from the menu convinced me. From the moving map, we soon realised just how far we had to go, as other potential destinations from the longlist passed by.




Luke and I therefore both tried to work on the sleep deficit by claiming a couple of hours of shut eye. These were immediately stolen back from us as the pilots began their descent and informed us of local time. Cyprus had also moved forward an hour that morning, to EEST, maintaining their two hour advance on the UK. This also brought official time back into sync with that used in the north, who had followed Turkey in not introducing daylight savings last October; my first introduction to the complexities of this, Europe's only divided country.

We had a long approach to Cyprus which afforded great views from above - it's far more geographically diverse than I imagined, with both more greenery and mountainous terrain. Particularly surprising was the dusting of snow, but apparently the island's Mount Olympus has Europe's southernmost ski slopes, allowing a 'beach and ski' holiday at some times of the year! More in line with my assumptions was the sun-soaked coastline and beautiful green-blue sea, which we looped out and over for our final run into LCA, touching down just before 2PM local. Clearly my arctic-proof clothing layers would not be necessary...