Saturday 22 June 2013

Preparing to land

After a couple of hours flight from Glasgow to Iceland, more than a 3 hour stop over, the next Icelandair flight heads west over the ocean, passing just a couple of hundred miles south of the tip of Greenland.  Then our 4.5 hour flight gets near our destination with the first glimpses of land against the low sun that bounces off the water. 



 It's a broken coastline, little rocky outcrops of islands, difficult in the blinding light to pick out the location, but the screen in front of me shows the flight path until I'm passing over places I'll be visiting on my road trip. That jagged coastline bottom right is where I'll be heading first
 



We came across the edge of Prince Edward Island , pass over New Glasgow and are now coming into land at Halifax, Nova Scotia, it's over remote areas of woodland and very scattered homes. 

Immigration was quick and then a short wait for the bag to arrive, always a happy sight at the end of a long trip ! Just one brief customs check and out into the arrivals area.  I was met by Helen whose family left Applecross in 1830's who had been in touch with me through my Lochcarron village website www.lochcarron.tv back in 2001 when researching the area.

A brief visit to Hertz car rental that was pre-booked, the quickest transaction on picking up a car I have ever done, just a brief glance at my driving licence, then handed the keys and documents.  I asked if I could leave the car there as I was staying in the airport ALT hotel which only opened this month, I had got an opening offer on the room.  Although I didn't realise it, I walked past the vehicle on the short walk to the hotel, where I checked in and dropped my bags on the 13th floor room.

Then Helen gave me a quick drive around the airport area so I would know where I could go to practice driving an unfamiliar vehicle on the 'wrong' side of a nice quiet road in the morning !  It's such an easy International airport to drive out and just go into a  wooded area of rural roads and scattered industrial units, when feeling confident venture onto the main road. Dropped back at the hotel, it's now well after midnight UK time, end of a long and tiring day, but finally in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

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