Family - Days 17 & 18

After a little over five hours sleep we were woken by the alarm , had time for a quick shower each then the final pack before heading downstairs for the shuttle bus to the airport. Most of the other tour members were still in bed - half the tour was returning to Australia and flying out in the afternoon, while the rest of us were going our separate ways to European destinations . Carmel, Tara and I were flying to Manchester, and we were at the airport by 7.30 am ready to navigate the check-in, immigration and security queues. The flight was just over an hour, and gave us a chance to doze before passing through all the checks at the other end - where for once a non-EU passport was the shorter queue.
The main reason we were in England was to catch up with family - not only youngest daughter Emily who has been living in London since September 2015, but also to see my cousin Thelma whom I hadn't seen since we emigrated in 1967. Thel was there to meet us at Manchester airport , and it was very special to see each other after all those years. She drove us back to her place in Runcorn (near Cheshire) while her partner Sue picked up Emily and Patrick who had caught the train up from London. We spent the next two days reminiscing;  looking at family trees and photographs; talking, laughing and eating ; watching Euro semi finals ; and sitting in occasional sunshine, occasional cloud. On the Friday cousin Harry, Thel's brother, and his partner Jen drove down to meet us, and we had a really nice lunch at Thel & Sue's favourite pub that left us so full we didn't need dinner.
Thel has done a lot of research into the family tree that I will have to copy once I am home and registered on Ancestry.com . She generously gave me some family keepsakes that can be passed down the generations with our girls : it was good to feel a family connection that distance had diluted over the past 50 years.