At 6am on Tuesday morning we finally set off on our way. After first planning the trip a year ago it was surreal to be actually starting off on the trip. Dublin airport was its usual busiest at seven in the morning. Our first flight was from Dublin to London Heathrow with Aer Lingus. We had presumed that we would be able to check in right the way through, but Aer Lingus is now a completely automated airline with barely any staff. So we had to do the check in on the machines which only gave us boarding cards to London and not on to Singapore. Then we checked the bags in, this was also an automated process, the tags the machine printed out did say Singapore on them so we figured they would be okay. After we managed to find an Aer Lingus staff member, they assured us that they could not check us in for the Singapore leg and that we would get the boarding cards in London.

The London flight left pretty much on time and got into Heathrow without the usual circling. I spotted Johnny Murtagh on the plane and collared him for a chat. I didn’t mention too much about the Breeders’ Cup disaster Coolmore had, and decided to compliment him on the ride he gave Yeats in Longchamp on Sunday instead. What a life jockeys have, he left directly after the Breeders’ Cup Classic and flew to Paris. He arrived at the track an hour before the race, and still managed to win the race (in fairness, Ryan Moore did the same trip and finished second in the same race). He was on his way to Melbourne via Hong Kong, for the Melbourne Cup, he said he was riding in the Derby on Saturday too.

When we got off the plane we had about 1hr30 before our next flight, with a change of terminal, tight but easily do-able. The doors opened and we were ready to move at pace (well as soon as everyone in front of us got off). First things first I needed a quick pit stop. When I came out of the bathroom, Ash told me to look at baggage belt. There were our bags spinning around rather than heading for Terminal 3!! We picked them up and headed for the first person in a high vis jacket we could see. We found an Aer Lingus guy who told us that they had been put in the wrong cart, and that we had two choices; give them to him and he would bring them downstairs, or take them ourselves and check in as normal. He recommended the latter, because he was not sure whether they would make it through the other way. Now we were worried!!

We took off heading for T3 with a month’s worth of luggage in tow. When we arrived the Singapore airlines section looked empty. There was still a girl behind the business class desk so we tried her. She checked us in with no problem and we could relax again. We had boarding cards in hand and 45 mins to make to the gate. Don’t you just love traveling.