Phaze

I check about every 5 hours

tomofmaine

I wholeheartedly agree. To the OP, thank you for the effort, travel safe, and keep it up!

FallenPlat

I would also offer all possible encouragement to continue, which is not something I say that often. The multi-layered narrative is way, way more sophisticated and interesting than what's the norm here.

Great job all the way around.

Lucanesque

Subscribed. Nice change from the usual TRs, and gives me a sense of nostalgia from when I used to be travelling all over the place

DaveNCL

Thank you very much for all of your comments, it is much appreciated and helps to drive me on to get the next report written and posted.

I will have the next section up as soon as Photobucket starts to play ball.

DaveNCL

Week 2, day 6 & 7

After a busy work week I was off to Swansea for the weekend. As was the case last weekend this was to watch a Newcastle United game. In the last 5 years I think I have only missed 3 games home and away. It’s a pretty big undertaking but something that I and the group I travel with enjoy.

With my recent change in role I may miss a few more this season, judging on our performances from last season this is something I am happy to accept. Certainly mid week games will be tougher to schedule in, however the first thing I do when the fixtures come out is to put them in my calendar. When I was mainly travelling in the UK with some EU travel it was easy to schedule commitments around the match dates. With the increase in travel and more external requests, certainly in the next two months, this will have to take a back seat. Weekends still remain unchanged but midweek games are something I will be cutting down on unless I happen to be free.

Generally we use trains as the mode of transport for away games, occasionally I will take the car if the kick off time means the train is not an option. For this distance train or plane is the only option I am willing to do. There are also several operators of supporters coaches but I don’t use these, legroom is tight and the length of trip is even longer. Today coaches were leaving at 4am for the 3pm kick off and they were not expected back into Newcastle until the early hours.

For this trip we were travelling down on the Saturday and returning on Sunday, there was not a train back after the match. I had booked us into a hotel just across from the station for easy access when arriving and departing. It was also central for the Saturday night.





Today was another early start. our first train was at 0623, with two connections our arrival into Swansea was at 1243. Just over six and a quarter hours travel time. gaobest this is probably the best explanation why trains in the UK can sometimes be more trouble than taking the car. Especially when going cross country travel times are slow and can involve multiple changes. North East / West to London and from London out is generally quicker but the rest of the network is slow.



Just a couple of train tickets for the round trip


Breakfast


All trains down to Swansea were on time, so we made our way to the hotel and checked in. Once I had a good wifi signal I booked another football trip to Bournemouth for November. Again this is a train and overnight stay, this time due to BT Sport choosing to put our longest trip of the season at 1245 on a Saturday. It is around a 650 mile round trip. Thanks guys!

In today's game supporters don't even come into the thinking. We've had some horrific timings in the last couple of seasons.

When travelling with football my hotel choice is mainly down to location and price. The quality is somewhat lower than my normal holiday standards. It starts to get expensive if booking a good quality hotel on each trip. It is a similar case on train fares, I book the cheapest fare unless First Class is only a little more expensive. Depending on when I book, first class can sometimes be cheaper than standard. As a minimum there are two of us who travel and often it is four in our group. I make the train and hotel bookings for the group once I know who is interested in going.

Our hotel was across the road from the Virgin Atlantic Customer Service office. My first trip to the US was with Virgin to New York, we were delayed 3 hours due to a protestor on the runway, at this time we had boarded and were kept on the plane. Grim times.

We were second row from the back of economy, fortunately times have changed a little. On my next trip to New York in May I am on the upper deck of a 747.





We went into the hotel bar for a few pre match drinks and at 2pm we got a taxi to the football ground as it was out of the city centre. I don’t want to turn this into a match report but we played atrocious, back to the standards of last season. We had a player sent off after 40 minutes which didn’t help things as we were already 1-0 down. Eventually we lost 2-0, mainly thanks to Swansea taking their foot off the gas later in the match. After the disappointing end to 90 minutes we got on the shuttle bus back to the station and headed back into the pub for a pint to drown our sorrows. What really annoys most fans in this case is when we have made the effort to travel the 600 mile trip, most of us starting in the early hours and the players seem not to have bothered making the trip, mentally at least.





When travelling this frequently to matches you learn not to let it affect the rest of the trip. I no longer let the match dictate the trip, it’s only one part of it. After a quick shower we headed into town for a few drinks and then back to an Indian restaurant we had visited on last seasons trip. A nice meal tasted even better when the bill turned up and they had missed off a bottle of wine. This being a Saturday night the restaurant was very busy. Obviously I didn’t want to take up any of their time so I payed the requested amount with tip and we walked back to the hotel. After an early start and busy week I was in bed for 11pm.

The following morning I was up at 0730 to shower, get breakfast and make the 0954 train. Again it was a long trip back, however due to engineering works it would take 7 hours 45 minutes to get back to Newcastle, with only one connection this time.

We had about a 15 minute delay in leaving. Several engineers were walking the platform with the one carrying a big set of bolt cutters. I'm not quite sure what the issue was or how the cutters fixed it but we were soon on our way.







Connection at Bristol Parkway


On board I bought wifi access for a reasonable £4 for 4 hours in the hope I would be able to watch the two football matches via Sky Go. However I think access was blocked to the server for this app. I had to make do with some TR catch up, general Flyertalk browsing and internet shopping. I managed to finish intuitions TR and also catch up the one posted by MarylandFlyer244.

Once I made it back home it was time for some dinner and I posted Fridays report which I needed to proof read and add photos. By 10pm I thought it was time for an early night, the good news is that this coming week isn’t so busy. Currently I have no hotel stays planned so it will be nice to spend the week in my own bed. I will however need to go to the supermarket for food.

churchy

This is like Gogglebox for travel geeks, i'm hooked

techie

a) That is one sorry-looking Virgin Atlantic flag. Looks like it's almost as old as the building.

c) Is it a northern "thing" to use "of" as opposed to "have" at times? I am referring to the "...the players seem not to of bothered making the trip..." passage.

LDNConsultant

This is a nice change of scenery in TR space. Very similar to my travel patterns #lifeofaconsultant

Enjoying the reading~!!

DaveNCL

Not sure about the "northern thing" but it shouldn't have appeared in my report. It is now amended.

Please Sir, not the cane again.....

DaveNCL

I hope that's a compliment, I have seen some oddballs on there!

Once again thank you for the kind comments.

Need to run now for a train to London.

DaveNCL

Week 3, Day 1
For the next 2 weeks my travel is cut down due to my passport being with the Russian Embassy. I needed to leave a sufficient gap in case there are any delays, therefore I have focused this period on UK travel and used the time to book in a couple of meetings.

This week will be nice as I should be at home each night but I have day trips to London for my Russian visa, Edinburgh for a new product test and Glasgow for a meeting. The following week I am back in hotels as I am in London for a meeting and training session and then onto the Midlands for a UK team meeting.

You might wonder why I am detailing this. Well I thought it might be better if I set out my plans for the next few weeks, but also because this is the first quiet day since I started the report and there isn’t too much to report.

I had conference call at 10am but that was only for 30 minutes, a colleague had just returned from holiday so we spent half the time discussing what she had been up to. She had visited Florence so I got some tips before my visit next month.

The rest of the day was spent pottering around on email. I have two presentations I need to complete but today was just not the day for those, I will look at those on Wednesday. I also submitted the document from the first day of this report which needed to be resubmitted to our customer.

I have been enrolled on a weeklong training session in September, the timings and agenda were confirmed today. I will be attending this with the same colleague I was with in Dusseldorf last week and I had wanted to travel on BA, so I could meet him on the LHR segments. In the end BA prices were twice that compared to KLM for similar timings, so I booked with them.

One small problem is that the course is not scheduled to finish until 1700 on a Friday, my return flight is at 1810. If I don’t take this flight then I need another night in DUS or somewhere on my trip back. As this trip is a back to back with my Moscow visit I want to get home on the Friday night to have the weekend to relax. I have booked flights the next day flight before in similar situations and I always finds the course finishes earlier as people have flights to catch, on this occasion I will take my chances and be the person leaving early if needed.

As today is relatively unexciting I thought I would give the reason behind my airline and hotel choices.

Airline Programs
At NCL there are several scheduled airlines however KLM and BA offer the best flight frequencies and connections. As a result I am a Flying Blue and BA Executive Club member.

Generally KLM offer better connections throughout the year. They have a flight departing at 0600 and returning around 2200 in their winter and summer schedules. This offers the best opportunity for well timed connections across Europe and hotel nights are reduced per trip.

My typical itinerary through KLM will allow me to reach a destination by midday with a 1-2 hour connection in AMS. When returning, KLM normally offer a late afternoon flight from most destinations which leaves me with a 3 hour connection to arrive back in NCL at 2220.

My Flying Blue (FB) Gold status level is achieved through 30 flown segments. This allows lounge access, fast track security, priority boarding, extra baggage and half price seat charges for extra legroom seats. As I connect on all but AMS trips a round trip gives me 4 segments each time, 8 trips gets me to Gold.

Flight pricing can differ between routes when comparing KLM and BA. For most planning I will choose flight times ahead of price, but sometimes there is little difference in times but a big difference in price.

Ideally I would award all to one program but due to the reasons stated above it is just not possible. I am also a member of the British Airways Executive Club (BAEC). When booking personal holidays I also find BA offer better flights to the US with the possibility to included hotels and gain an Avios bonus. Finally ex-EU on BA often offers an attractive price if the extra travel does not put you off.

My main status target in BAEC is Silver. This allows me to book seats at the time of booking (including exit seats on European flights), lounge access, extra baggage and priority boarding. This is achieved through 600 tier points (TPs), with TPs being awarded based on cabin flown, fare bucket and distance. Since the devaluation back in April this has become a little more difficult as the lowest TPs per flight were reduced from 10 to 5 for cheaper, shorter flights. With the addition of my personal flights on BA I can get close to the 600 mark each year.

The two issues I have with FB are that award miles can be difficult to spend on flights, for this reason I tend to use them for seat bookings rather than flights. I find BA award miles (Avios) are easier to spend. Before the devaluation in April I managed to empty my account on a Club World trip to SFO over Easter 2016.

In my opinion the KLM lounges in AMS are poorer for food choice at meal times than the BA options at LHR.

The main drawbacks with BA are delays via LHR, this especially the case on the later flights back to NCL where they are often subject to knock on effects from the day. BA also don’t offer an early outbound or late return flight all year round. In the winter the first flight out can be around 0800 and sometime the last flight back arrives at 1900. This drastically cuts connection options and increases the nights needed in a hotel.

After booking my Dusseldorf fights today that puts me on 30 flights for KLM this year. Ideally I will now fly BA where possible. It worked out nicely that BA were cheaper than KLM to Budapest for my trip in September. After I had booked the DUS flights today I immediately booked the BA option to BUD. This really sums it up perfectly, for the DUS trip BA were double the cost but for BUD BA were cheaper. There really is no way tell this until you check.

So currently 30 of 30 segments are either booked or flown on KLM to renew FB Gold. With BA I currently have 345 TPs which are booked/flown, with a further 155 needed. I will need to book a few more trips before my year end in February so I hope to have these by the end of the year. If I manage to bag a cheap Christmas holiday in Club World I will be over the 600 TP threshold.

Hotel Programs
My main booking preference for hotel bookings is to use Hotels.com. I chose this over loyalty to one brand as it can be difficult to get a brand in a particular location. This allows me to collect night stays but choose from a wide range of hotels as well as smaller independent hotels.

They have a rewards scheme where for every 10 nights booked you get the average price per night to redeem against a later stay.

For occasions when I am staying in a hotel not booked by myself I have memberships with the main brands but these points accumulate slowly meaning I have no status with them. The points can come in useful to spend when prices are high, as I do not aim to collect the points I am happier to spend when available.

I am also a Quidco member, which is a cash back site, which often has 10% cash back offers for hotels.com . I also get 2 or 3% back on airport parking when I book in advance.

The main chain in the UK outside these points is Premier Inn. They are a good quality value chain with over 700 locations in the UK. If staying here I will often pick an out of town location with free parking and a good restaurant/pub option for the evening.

So that’s it for today, sorry for the lack of photos. In the end it was nice to have a slow day after two weeks heavy travelling but back on it tomorrow.

Feel free to ask any questions.

BAflyerNCL

Carling!! ;-) Classic Drink of Choice Mr DaveNCL would have picked exactly the same :-D HOWAY THE LADS!!!!!!

Greetings from the Lake District!! Excellent TR

SeamasterLux

What an excellent TR!

Though my pro travel cannot compare to yours, I'm on the road approx. 5-6 months a year by 2-week-timeframes.

Interesting way of presenting things. I have to admit I had thought of something similar but never found the courage so cheers and congrats!

MisterTanaka

Like so many others, I love this trip report. Thanks!