We arrived at Heathrow in the evening with enough time to check-in to the airport hotel and have a late dinner before retiring to bed. Our first goal after breakfast the next morning was collecting our motorcycles!
The daytime flight into London, from Toronto, definitely eases the transition through five time zones. But it was the Air Canada Cargo staff who proved to be the revelation. They are the easygoing and friendly cousins to the surly flight attendants we've all come to know. In fact, had it not been for the genuinely helpful counter staff at Air Canada's Heathrow Cargo terminal, our bikes would still be in hock. (Terminal is a generous term in this instance... Air Canada occupies but a narrow berth in a crowded maze of warehouses and loading bays for international cargo at Heathrow. It doesn't feel like a place where a couple of tourists belong but there we were, jostling with the lorry drivers to retrieve our goods.)
Top tip if you're flying your motorcycle into London Heathrow: arrange for a customs agent in advance. All customs paperwork for cargo is filed electronically so the duplicate hard copies of the C110 forms that our booking agent recommended we complete, were useless. The AC Cargo counter staff have seen our like more than a few times this summer however, since Air Canada began their motorcycle shipping promotion, and so they keep contacts on hand and immediately got us set up with an agent who set aside his afternoon to process our paperwork. If you're in the market for these services, I would highly recommend contacting Roddy at Motofreight (roddy@motofreight.com).
After a few hours' wait, lingering over coffee and hot chocolate at the canteen, we were given the high sign that the digital approvals had been received and we were reunited with our bikes that had been sitting mere yards away the whole time. Then it was a matter of re-connecting the battery and loading the luggage before hitting the road. First stop, a petrol station which was conveniently located just along the ring road around the airport. Good job too because we had to put a lot of fuel in our tanks - with only a low fuel light rather than a gas gauge on the bikes, guessing the quarter tank mark for shipment was a challenge. As ever, A had this in hand and we were at our mark.
On English soil at last but it was growing late so after a couple of aborted attempts to find lodging at country pubs and literally driving into a garden with a wedding party milling about (who knew Thursday weddings were so popular?!), we found ourselves settling into a B&B with two twin beds in Basingstoke... not the most romantic setting but a comfortable one.