It certainly broadens the mind, but it doesn’t get any easier with age.

We just made one of our now fairly frequent trips across the Atlantic Ocean, from Toronto to London. The prospect of four weeks in the land of my birth is an enticing one, obviously, but it starts with that overnight flight, and getting over that seems to take longer each time.

Of course, air travel has revolutionised the world. My ancestors who made the trip from England to North America rarely had the opportunity to make even one trip back to their homeland, so I do recognise my good fortune, but that’s hard to remember when you can’t make simple decisions after an almost sleepless overnight flight.

We always start our trips with a three to four hour drive up Canada’s busiest highway, the Ontario 401. Mostly it’s just a chore, but this time the weather was horrible, low cloud and rain, and that resulted in collision-related delays. We had allowed a big dollop of wiggle room on timing, so arrived at the airport more or less as planned, which was obviously a good thing. Another good thing in this multi-modal journey is the “Park N Fly” valet service where we simply dump the car at the PNF lot and have a bus whisk us off to the airport terminal. Sure, it’s not cheap, but well worth the relative ease of leaving your car somewhere.

Toronto Pearson airport went the way of London’s Heathrow and revamped their terminal waiting areas with bars and restaurants which will, with a phone-based app, deliver your food and drink requirements to the table you’ve chosen. There are two major issues with that, though. Firstly, most of the regular seating was removed to allow for the food outlet tables, and secondly the food and drink is scandalously expensive. It’s probably my advancing years that make me so curmudgeonly, but I won’t buy from these places on principle. On this trip we did locate some regular seating, and sat in comfort to enjoy the sandwiches we’d brought from home, which went some way to offset my grumbles about airport rip-off pricing.

** I tried to find a photo of the departures area, but couldn’t, at least not of the regular area around the gates. Anyone would think that the Airport wasn’t proud of it’s rip-off strategy.

Our flight was late leaving, but there’s not a whole lot you can do about that. The gate staff kept us informed, although I never enjoy being chivvied into boarding the aircraft quickly when I’ve been sat in the terminal for hours. Maybe airlines should allow a longer turnaround time?

We’d been messed about by the airline, British Airways, on our reserved seat allocation. We had paid a staggeringly high fee to book specific seats, but they’d changed the aircraft type and had to reallocate the seats, meaning that we’d lost our two window seats. I know, a seat is a seat, but I don’t like to get gouged on a fee to reserve a seat, then not get said seat. I have lodged a claim with BA to get that reservation fee back, so we’ll see what transpires there.

The aircraft for the flight was an Airbus A350. Big, for sure, and by modern standards quiet and smooth, but the seating on the ‘plane was horrible. The designers of these things must have to work quite hard to make seats so uncomfortable. Their primary aim is to save weight, but the thinly-padded shells you sit on are not good for a six-hour flight, so goodness knows what they’re like for a longer flight. We were in World Traveller Plus, one up from Economy, so the seats recline quite a bit. But that reclination causes havoc when you have to get out of your seat for a call of nature, but the person in front is in maximum recline. There was a woman in the row behind us had to get a flight attendant to wake up her next-seat neighbour so she could get out. There were lots of vacant Economy seats in the cabin behind the Plus area, and she settled herself there instead of coming back to the supposedly better seats, just so she wouldn’t be trapped again.

I must have slept a little, but I couldn’t get myself into any comfortable position at all, so whether I slept or not, I didn’t feel at all rested.

I should make a comment about the food service, because I fell foul of BA’s love of curry-based menus on our last trip. There were three options this time, in the shape of meat, fish, or pasta. I didn’t fancy the fish because it was trout, which is way too fussy for an aircraft meal. I didn’t think the lamb would be up to much, so I opted for the pasta, although not before being pleasantly surprised that all three options were still available by the time the cart reached our seats. The pasta wasn’t bad, but I passed on the curry-based starter, and only had half of the cheesecake thing they dished up for desert. Coffee was served, but it was such a miniscule amount that I barely tasted it. Airlines, not just BA, seem to strive for fancy meals when simpler, plainer fare would surely be easier, cheaper and more appreciated by mugs like me.

Arriving in London. Heathrow’s Terminal 5 is about as good as you’re going to get in that airport. It’s busy, for sure but everything runs quite smoothly. The UK Border was a breeze, with a very pleasant young border person welcoming us to the UK, and the baggage reclaim was similarly easy, which certainly takes the edge off the sleepless hours in the air.

Some hours later, at our destination and feeling helplessly tired, decisions were hard to make and tempers were beginning to fray, which is why bed was so welcome. The time difference is an issue, but not that first night when sleep is all you crave, regardless of what the clock says.

Our first full day here, though, was a struggle. The time difference and the sleep deficit all combined to make everything fraught. We did at least do something spontaneous, but not before some ritual shouting at each other; we have an excitable but tired four-year-old with us as well, which really doesn’t aid our attempts at achieving Zen.

Our second full day had me wide awake at 5am, which is the other issue with travelling, at least for me, and why I’m sat here at seven-thirty in the morning having finished this blog entry. As I said, travelling doesn’t get any easier. For our next, grown-ups only trip, I think we will seriously have to look at the BA version of Business Class, with its pods and bed-like seats. I guess we should start saving.