I should for the full experience have then spent many hours on the phone with the AA RTW desk attempting to book this ticket. I feel slightly cowardly for not having done so, but much as I now no longer cut my own hair or fix my own plumbing, I felt it was time to bring in the professionals.

I worked with the good people of Propeller Travel to book the trip. This was all very straightforward, just involving a bit of back and forth to fix availability issues with a couple of the flights, and I like to think I didn’t annoy them too much .

I should at this point say a word about pricing. I had in mind the rule of thumb that the taxes and fees would add around 20% to the cost of the ticket, but I knew our costs were likely to be higher given the use of BA flights (and their surcharges), and a stopover in London. In practice, the taxes and fees ended up adding just under 50% on top. Gulp.

I employed a range of methods to justify this to myself. I calculated the cost per flight and the cost per mile - both extremely reasonable. I factored in that we would each earn almost £900 worth of Avios. I also eased the pain by paying with an American Express Platinum Card, which pushed us above the spend threshold to trigger an 80,000 Membership Rewards points sign-up bonus. After sufficient mental gymnastics I was able to convince myself that these tickets were basically paying for themselves.

The final job was to book the positioning flights. This was all very straightforward. I used one of our BA Amex Companion Vouchers for the Washington DC to London return. Availability was very good six months out, and I was able to get a business class return for two for 170,000 Avios and £750. I then booked a one way economy class flight for two from London to Oslo for a very reasonable 5,800 Avios plus £90.