Monday, September 13, 2010

Norman Arrives Home

Norman has safely arrived back home to Larne, Northern Ireland and has spent a couple of quiet days at home with his family.

He has sent a message where he recalls the journey back and subsequent return to the ‘Emerald Isle’.

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The 3 flights home were considerably faster and less “busy” for me than the numerous ones I made on the way out to the Philippines! We had a tremendous lightning storm overhead arriving into Hong Kong and this delayed the onward departure by about 2 hours - we made up sometime en route to London and my connection to Belfast was still easily made (though with bleary eyes in the early (UK Time) morning. The flight conditions on the final leg, heading once again back over the Irish Sea, were excellent - very clear visibility and the rolling green patchwork quilt of fields below, that give the “Emerald Isle” its name, were spectacular, as always. Temperatures on arrival home were much more familiar for me (being measured in the low teens rather than in the low 30’s Celsius), though having spent close on the last 6 months in the Tropics, I had to acclimatise back to “normal” very rapidly! The conditions were actually very similar to the day I departed from Larne, way back in March, with a fair North Westerly breeze blowing (nice tailwind I thought for flying off South Eastwards around the world, though not needed today...).

I am now able to sit and look out over the local sports field where the journey commenced half a year ago and reflect on all that has happened in the intervening months. No doubt as the North Atlantic Autumn Gales set in properly over the next few weeks, I will be battening down the hatches against the wind and driving rain rattling the on windows outside, to begin the enjoyable, comfortable, task of reviewing notes and records to script a full account (in much greater detail) of how the first half of this fantastic Global Challenge has really played out...

Regards

Norman.

March 22nd 2010 and Norman prepares to set off from the playing fields in Larne that he mentions in his message.

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For the aviation buffs out there, you may like to know that Norman flew Philippine Airlines from Manila to Hong Kong where he connected to the Cathay Pacific Boeing 747 flight to Heathrow, London, where he then caught an Aer Lingus Airbus A320 that flew him to Belfast International Airport in Northern Ireland. The whole journey time was around 23 hours.

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The Gyrox Team

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