It’s a rough night with the Birmingham’s Broad Street Novotel having a few guests over numerous floors being rather rowdy

Dave heads out to Dishoom to meet his uni pals before they head off to an escape room and he goes to find Daisy

Daisy is just about packed up and the bags can be left at the hotel while we faff with some final shopping

The uni pals successfully defeat the escape room and then meet to bid farewells as each makes their own way home

One lovely friend has kindly offered us a lift to our destination for today!

The drive is about 2 hours to Heathrow T2 where we finally say goodbye to G before heading to the check-in desk

Today, we’re both flying for the first time with Air China: it seems this airline provides a rarity most others charge rather dearly for – each of us have two 23kg bags included with our flights!

We only check in two bags each and then make our way to security and into the duty free departure section

It’s definitely more expensive than we’d like but we settle for sharing some bangers & mash as well as fish & chips with a tiny cola, at Big Smoke Taphouse & Kitchen

After this, we head over to our now announced gate to admire the plane being organised ready for our boarding

About an hour later, we’re able to board; we’re in traditional economy and it looks like the plane’s a little aged with only one of Dave’s headphone aux inputs working and the flight attendants having to triple check the overhead luggage compartments are properly closed

It’s a tad late but we do set off and the 10 hour flight time can begin it’s countdown

We get dinner shortly after taking off: Dave has chicken rice and Daisy has beef rice

The flight has some films that have newly been released in the cinema so we watch Fall Guy, as well as the first Planet of the Apes reboot films before attempting some sleep