Well, after yesterday’s excitement, we are back to earth with a bang.

A cold bang.

Relatively.

Our ‘preponed’ flight out of Mauritius was a bit bumpy, but once out of the way of the bad weather, it was OK.   The flight home was an hour longer than the one that took us there. I assumed that was because we were going uphill, but I think it’s because the pilot had to take a slight detour to avoid the worst of the cyclone.

From what we can gather, there was just one more flight to the UK – an hour after we took off – and then they closed the airport. It’s expected to be shut for a few days, so we were lucky to get out when we did.

At Gatwick, we were through Passport Control in under a minute, thanks to those e-gates that they have for British nationals, and our suitcases came off the conveyor pretty quick, so we were out in record time.

Then we came unstuck at the train station: our tickets (pre-booked and paid for, because it’s so much cheaper that way) wouldn’t allow us through the barriers. This is because they – like us –  were a day early. I explained this to the guy manning the barriers.  He nodded, in an obviously uncomprehending way. “Show me your tickets, please”, he said in broken English. He looked at them for a moment and then: “Ahh, these are for tomorrow. You cannot use them until tomorrow.”

Again, I explained why we had had to come home today, rather than tomorrow.  He shook his head. “You must use these tomorrow.”

“Look…”, I was getting exasperated now and explained it all to him again.

He opened the barrier and let us through. I think he had just lost interest.

Luckily, we didn’t have to wait long for the train, but, having been up for nearly 24 hours now,  it was an effort for both of us to stay awake for the 90 minute journey home.

Falling asleep and missing our stop would have been the last straw.