Long haul flights suck. My Actifit Report Card: May 12 2026

Today was pretty much entirely a travel day. The flight was over 8 hours to get from Canada to London. My seat was the middle seat which sucked. However I met a nice British teenager (Ben) who offered to sit in the middle seat by his friend.

That was a lifesaver. Thanks Ben.

Having said that it still wasn't comfortable. Not enough room to stretch my legs. Not enough room to turn right or left. Not enough padding to keep my butt from getting sore after every hour of sitting.

Which of course meant I didn't sleep much from 830pm to 430am. Maybe 1 hours sleep and fitful at best.

The food wasnt bad. Curry Chicken for dinner and something resembling an omelette hot pocket for breakfast. Add in water to drink along with orange juice and coca cola and I wasn't bereft of nourishment.

The movie selection for entertainment was ok. The anaconda movie I choose wasn't and the headphones were pretty awful. Making out the voices was challenging over the droning of the engines.

The overall affect was that I was super happy to get off the plane and into the airport.

We arrived at heathrow airport but then it was time to figure out how to get to gatwick.

Chatgpt failed me.

It said leave terminal 4 and get ticket for the bus. Except the ticket counter had no one there and it appears the national bus line doesn't go to terminal 4.

We got tickets for the bus inside the terminal and had to take transit to terminal 2/3. That was not difficult but when you don't know where you are going plus not operating at 100% from lack of sleep it was more challenging than it should have been.

Eventually we got to the bus and had an easy trip to gatwick airport.

From there we walked to our hotel.

As there was a nice walking path which was well marked it was an easy 10 minute walk. There was a shuttle bus but (a) I didn't know how to hail in it and (b) it was over $10cad per person.

Why would I spend money to avoid getting my daily steps? Maybe if I was overloaded with luggage but when traveling light walking was perfectly fine.

Got into the hotel room and crashed. Was obviously supposed to be 30min nap then explore but... Sleep until almost 7pm. Oops

Went for a little walk to get food and see what I can see. Found an old house. Saw a bunch of schoolkids on bikes (one said hi and gave a high 5 to my wife).

The food was expensive but the walk was nice and got me over my 5k step goal.

Overall a tiring day but I made it to London. Next stop Alicante in Spain
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Walking