It’s All About The Destination

As wisdom prevails, it’s all about the journey, not the destination. This was proved not to be the case, for today, at least! Today it’s been all about the destination and trying to ensure that our group arrive safely in Bodø and when we arrive, that our bikes arrive at the same destination, preferably at the same time, intact in their boxes, undamaged and we are all reunited and live happily ever after. We might be hoping for a fairytale ending but there was definitely nothing fairytale about the start of the day.

Six bike boxes, six people, six hold bags and a busy airport terminal were never going to be easy but…….

Heathrow was chaos. Total and utter chaos. We had phoned the airline a few weeks previously to check that they could cope with so many bike boxes. No problem at all, we were told. We were reassured. We should not have been!

1) Baggage Label Queue

We had all checked in online, so queued to print our our baggage labels. 

2) Oversized Baggage Queue

We made our way with huge difficulty to the oversized baggage drop queue for SAS who we were flying with. When we eventually reached the front of the queue, we were told that we had to have our newly printed baggage labels scanned and fixed to our baggage including the bike boxes by a member of staff from the check-in queue. Apparently, this couldn’t be done from the oversized baggage counter.

3) Check-in Queue

So we had to return to the standard check in queue, with our six enormous, heavy and oversized bike boxes and luggage. We had already checked in. This was irrelevant apparently, as was the fact that we couldn’t physically fit the bike boxes in the narrow snaking queue. We tried, we created havoc! Seeing the chaos that we were creating trying to manoeuvre our bike boxes along the queue, a helpful member of airport staff asked that we exit the queue and head straight for SAS priority check in make life easier for everyone. 

4) SAS Priority Check-In Queue

The woman on the priority SAS desk had clearly got out of the wrong side of bed this morning, she was angry. Her whole demeanour was angry and she was clearly looking for a fight. She’d had three screaming matches with colleagues and passengers before we even got close to her. She was rude, aggressive and obstructive. She refused to scan our bag labels, making us wait until she had prioritised everyone else in the queue.

Some considerable time later, still being ignored by the angry SAS lady, we were eventually served by one of her colleagues and the act of scanning the baggage tag and fixing it to the bike boxes was quick and simple. We could not however, leave our bike boxes here and so had to return to the oversized baggage queue. 

5) Oversized Baggage Queue Number 1

After queuing for some further considerable time, a member of the airport staff, asked us to exit the queue and follow them to another oversized baggage area at the other end of the airport.

6) Oversized Baggage Queue Number 2

We queued again. The bike boxes wouldn’t go through the X-ray scanner, so we were instructed to return to the original oversized baggage queue. It was futile trying to reason that we had just come from there.

7) Oversized Baggage Queue Number 1 (Again)

We queued in this oversized baggage queue for a second time and this time we have to unbox our bikes for the boxes to be searched by security staff and then repackage them all. Given that it had taken several hours to secure our bikes in their boxes, this was not a five minute job.

We made the flight (by some miracle) with minutes to spare and can only hope our bikes are intact, undamaged and waiting for us at Bodø.

On the plus side, we met up with rest of the UK group, whose respective bike check-in processes seemed relatively painless. We were encouraged that nine of the ten UK cyclists were at the right place at the right time and we’d heard from Robin at Manchester airport that he too was on his way. We may not have eyes on the bikes but all the UK cyclist were accounted for.

We’re in Bodø airport as I write this an hour and a half after arriving, still waiting for our bike bags to appear…………….

A little excitement as Chris Froome arrives at the airport with maybe dozens of other cyclists for the Arctic Race starting from Bodø the day after we set off – assuming of course that their bikes arrive with them. We were slightly amused to be asked more than once if we were taking part in the race!

Three hours later and still no bikes……..