For those who appreciate pictures with their TRs - apologies. I am of the stage of life where I tend to take pictures of my family when travelling, and tend not to post these online. So this will be words only. It is a long time since I've written one of these, too. Let's see what turns out.

First, we're going to go back a year, to the crazy times that were Summer 2024. We'd just come back from a lovely family holiday in Portugal, trying to get over the post-holiday blues by trying to figure out what to do next year. It didn't escape our attention that I would be turning 50 this year, so a bit of a splurge was in order. Which, for us, means Japan. We'd been three times before and *loved* it. But not since our son was born. It felt like now was the right time - old enough to appreciate it and cope with a long-haul flight.

And that's why we were poring over possible redemptions to get to Japan in Summer 2025, with a mixture of Avios (and 2-4-1 voucher), Flying Blue miles, and a general desire to try and avoid really unpleasant flight times and unnecessary jetlag. The Russia flight ban really doesn't help this, so, as a result of the mixture of availability, timing and everything, we ended up with a routing of LHR-HND/KIX-HKG-CDG-BHX.

Fast forward a year and the logistics of this routing become clear as I end up driving to BHX, leaving the car at a YourParkingSpace spot, getting the bus to the airport, the train to Milton Keynes, an e-bike to somewhere near the concrete cows, a hire car to go home, then drop off the next day at LHR first thing. Surprisingly, apart from the Lime Bike refusing to finish the ride, this all went smoothly. And so, after a year of planning, booking and rebooking, poring over guides and daydreaming over Google Maps during conference calls, we found ourselves getting off the Europcar bus at Heathrow Terminal 5 at 6am.