[Worldtrippers home] [2025 Crystal-Viking]
Today’s adventure was unexpected, and only funny in hindsight.
Our plan was to get an early start, check out of our London hotel, rent a car, and drive out of the London area. After considerable searching online, Gail had secured a car from Surprice, a fairly new car rental company. She had arranged to pick it up from Heathrow airport. This was because Viking provides a complimentary shuttle bus to Heathrow as part of its disembarkation process.
Because of our schedule change, we ended up going into London instead of to Heathrow. Gail changed the pickup day from yesterday to today, but she couldn’t change the pickup location. So this morning, we had to make it from our hotel to Heathrow and the car rental place by 11:00 am.
It didn’t end up happening that way. After a late night last evening, we got a late start this morning. We had to find our own way from London to Heathrow. And we had to pick up a UK road atlas on the way. (We will be driving all over the UK during the next two weeks, and we can’t always count on cellular service for Google Maps.)
We walked 15 minutes to the Underground station, then took the tube another 45 minutes to get to Heathrow. At Heathrow, we had to make another long walk to Terminal 3. At Terminal 3, we searched for a shuttle bus to Surprice. There wasn’t one.
We looked for a sign and saw nothing. Gail tried calling the phone number provided by Chase, and the number didn’t work. After wandering around aimlessly, we finally hailed a taxi.
Jim, our very nice taxi driver, drove us to the address provided by Chase: 450 Bath Street. There was no car rental agency there. We drove up and down Bath Street, stopping in at various hotels and locations where there might be a car rental agency. We finally found an office-space rental building, where there were some cars out back marked “AA rentals.” There was no attendant there. A nearby food truck operator told us that there’s a guy who rents cars, but he only shows up by appointment. We were now an hour and a half late from our 11:00 am scheduled time.
We finally gave up and had Jim drive us to the Sheraton Heathrow Hotel, where there was a Thrifty car rental. Gail went in and was told that because we are not UK citizens, we would have to book the car online. (!) So we went next door to the Sheraton to use their internet.
Gail discovered that a Thrifty car rental would cost £900, triple the £300 for the original Surprice rental. As a last ditch effort, she went to the Sheraton front desk and asked them to look up “Surprice.” They came back with a completely different phone number.
Gail was finally able to connect with Surprice. It turns out they moved a year ago, and were now on the other side of Heathrow. Chase had provided us with an obsoletely address and phone number. Gail asked Surprice to send a car for us, which they did.
We finally made it to Surprice, almost three hours after our scheduled pick-up time. The bad news was they only had a two-hour reserve window, and our scheduled car was now booked by someone else. The good news is they still had one car left, and it was an automatic transmission as requested. The bad news is it was twice as big as Gail wanted. The good news is it was a hybrid. The bad news is it had no onboard navigation system. Luckily, we had purchased a UK road atlas.
The arrangement that works for us is that Gail drives and Russell navigates. In addition, Russell constantly reminds Gail that she needs to drive on the left side of the road.
Tonight’s destination was the village of Fernhurst, about two hours southwest of London. Gail drove well, despite her recurring neck pain. Russell navigated her off the highways and onto country roads as soon as possible.
We arrived in Fernhurst just at our goal of 4:30 pm. Our hosts tonight are Tim and Sharon Braithewait, whom we had met on a previous Viking cruise. We have kept in touch, and they offered to host us for the night. It has been a couple of years since we’ve seen them, but we picked back up immediately. Tim is the third-generation resident of the family’s 500-acre farm, and they took us on a long scenic walk through their gorgeous property.
Our schedule remains loose, so we accepted Tim’s and Sharon’s offer to stay for a second night. We ended up chatting until almost midnight before we finally turned in.
