Bodø; Friday, 01 May, 2026

I headed over to Heathrow after finishing work, with a smooth journey all the way and through the airport. On getting to the gate it looked like it was going to be a lightly loaded flight and that turned out to be the case as we started boarding and within 5 minutes boarding had been completed.

With the plane all closed up and ready to go 20 minutes ahead of schedule it looked like we might get away really early, but in the end we didn’t push back until we were just 5 minutes early, but promptly taxied all the way onto the runway and took off almost without stopping, and certainly queue-jumping several other flights.

A very smooth flight up over the North sea and then up the southern part of Norway before a sweeping turn to land from the North into Oslo airport, arriving on the gate 20 minutes early.

When I’d booked the flights I’d assumed that if I was lucky I’d make the midnight shuttle bus to the hotel, but with a very quick stop at immigration and only hand luggage I was at the shuttle bus stop in time to make the 23:00 bus, a full hour earlier than I’d planned for.

With nobody else on the bus, and the only intermediate stop closed because the hotel it served was being refurbished, it was less than 5 minutes before I was at checkin for the hotel and shortly afterwards in my room with time before I turned in to have a look online to see that the BA flight I would previously have caught, before they decided they didn’t want my business, was running late enough that the passengers from that flight might well only be making the 01:00 bus.