Intro to Salute

Last thursday, on April 12th, Operation Sealion 2018 started. We went to Cologne Bonn Konrad Adenauer Airport, for our four day trip to the UK for Salute and a brief day trip to the Leadbelt.

There are a couple of ways to get to London. Two years ago and before that, we did the Salute as a day trip, grabbing a flight from Cologne to Stansted or Frankfurt to Heathrow. Flying from Germany takes roughly 1 to 1,5 hrs and sets you back between 70 - 150 Euro, depending on who you fly with. Just for Salute a rental car would only make sense, if the group is bigger than two people, as the London Underground is superb and reasonably priced. Only the shuttles ex-airport are sometimes a bit expensive. As we headed north to Nottingham, that question was already solved. Rentals are quite cheap in the UK, you can get cars for around 30 Euro per day. We paid just over 90 Euro for the prolonged weekend incl. unlimited miles. For rental cars I usually go with Budget, a daughter company of Avis. They offer good and uncomplicated service at reasonable quotes. The Honda Jazz was brand new, but not that much fun to drive and had a unpleasant driver seat.

Ryanair changed a lot in the last few months, along with strict limitations on the cabin luggage and checkin in. If you book all the excluded things to get back to a regular ticket, you end up with a price around the area of a Lufthansa ticket from FRA to LHR. Our flight was delayed by almost two hours due to mist, and on arrival we met quite a different weather compared to Spain two weeks ago.