Leaving Churchill was not as straightforward as any of us expected. We were packed and at the airport with an hour to spare but the flight was delayed. It didn't matter to me with 22 hours to waste in Winnipeg but most of the team were looking at connections with 1 to 3 hours waiting time.

Eventually it was decided to move some of us on to a charter plane that had free spaces but in the meantime the weather had got nasty and we got onto the plane in a blizzard. We taxied out onto the runway and then stopped because the plane needed de-icing. I'm not the best air traveller and I wasn't sitting comfortably when we did take off. I need not have worried and once we were above the clouds the rest of the trip was trouble free. We had left Gray, Barbara and Peter waiting for the scheduled flight. They were not so lucky, a mechanical problem delayed them around 3 more hours and all missed their connections.

I did have an eventful time in Winnipeg. I stopped off at the Ivey House and the guy on the desk said 'You've got the room off the kitchen, is that okay?' I'd had to carry my bags up three flights of stairs last time so I said 'Yeah, that's fine'. Wrong... the kitchen doubles as TV room and on a Saturday night nobody goes to bed... there was a group of blokes watching 'The Matrix' when I went to bed, when I last looked at my watch at 2.30 I think they were on 'Matrix 3'. On a good note for me, but not for her, Barbara, having missed her flight, came to find me and we shared breakfast and a taxi to the airport.

The flights from Winnipeg to Toronto and then on to London were fine, although I could have done without the guy sitting next to me pointing out where the Air France plane had crashed at Toronto in the summer.

And then, on the plane home the in flight movie was.... The bloody Matrix!