As the weather showed no signs of settling down we decided to leave Cornwall a day early and spend a day at my parents, popping in to visit my Uncle in Devon on the way past. Cornwall to Hertfordshire isn’t a drive I’d normally like to make in a day but the Vectra’s cruise control meant the M5, M4, M25 and M1 all slide past without too much pain. It proved to be the right decision as we had a wonderfully sunny day at my parents. We were able to sit outside on the lawn and, after patting it experimentally for about twenty minutes, Emma eventually decided that grass was safe to crawl on! Emma also made the most of being back in a house and proceeded to ascend the stairs two or three times.
We were flying back from Heathrow as the mid-week flight times from Bristol aren’t all that baby friendly. Once we’d made it past a slow M25 everything went very smoothly. This time we almost got to take the pushchair in to the cabin as the flight was so empty but in the end they decided they couldn’t get it in the overhead locker! Emma was pretty good on the flight again although was grumbling a bit towards the end, her afternoon nap being postponed until the drive from the airport.
Another new hire car – this time a Nissan Note – which seems nice enough. Having discovered that the boot has a false floor we managed to fit all of our luggage in without too much trouble. I did, however, notice that the car doesn’t have an AutoPASS in the windscreen which is used for the road tolls around Oslo. I had been told that, having taken away the manual pay stations, they now use number plate recognition to bill you later and that this is no more costly. The big downside is that, Hertz have changed their policy in the past weeks so that the tolls are no longer included in the rental cost. If nothing else this will make me think twice about going in to the office unnecessarily as that will cost me NOK20 each way.