The alarm went off at 0230. On purpose. I hadn’t originally chosen such an early flight from Vegas, but a chance to the flight time from JFK resulted in the need to get there early morning flight from Las Vegas to New York. We were up, showered and in our way by 0345, and at the airport a little after 4am.

The roads were surprisingly busy – maybe these people were just on their way home after a night out?! For reference, we only put 1430 miles on the this year, quite low by our standards.

The airport was also busy. Arriving 2 hours before departure was enough, but only just, as there were long queues for both bag drop and security. We had time to buy some breakfast to take on board with us, before getting settled in for the 4.75 hour flight, which passed not to slowly, courtesy of a Harry Potter movie, although we did do loops around the coast before landing.

Once at JFK airport we worked out how to get to a different terminal and then found somewhere to eat properly. This turned out to be right next to our departure gate (B26), so we didn’t need to go very far.

We lost 3 hours getting to JFK and, when we board the Manchester-bound flight, we will lose another 5, making this a 16 hour day, of which only about 7 were daylight. Short day!

Editor’s note: we have only just been catching up with the wider world (lack of Wi-fi will do that to you). It appears Snake Pass was closed due to flooding… it has now reopened but this is our weather forecast… !