Cotswold Airport

This week, both my parents had their birthdays, and so to celebrate, we went on our first local outdoor outing in several months. We decided to visit Cotswold Airport, a private airport located near the village of Kemble, which is known for being a sort of aeroplane graveyard! Many old commercial planes from all over the world are taken there once they've been taken out of service; at the moment you can find planes from TAP Air Portugal, Air Mauritius, Air France and Jet2 there.

Maybe it sounds a bit strange, but the airport is actually something of a tourist destination. It is open to the public for visits, and it even has an aviation-themed restaurant called AV8. This was where we went yesterday morning for tea and cake. It had been several years since I'd last visited, so it was nice to go back again. I ordered a vegan chocolate cake and an earl grey tea, and both were very tasty. 😊

In addition to all its aviation-themed décor, AV8 also has one of the 80 Gromit statues from the 2013 charity campaign Gromit Unleashed! The statues were originally displayed in various places around Bristol before being auctioned off to raise money for Bristol Children's Hospital.

After our tea and cake, we went outside to take a look at the airport's planes. I suppose it's not often that you get to see planes so close-up, so it was quite a special and unique experience.

By far the biggest and most spectacular plane was a British Airways Boeing 747. It has actually been converted into a "party plane" and can be rented out for events at a cost of £1000 an hour! Obviously, that's more than a little over my budget, but I was very happy to see the plane from the outside and take photos!

To sum up, we all really enjoyed this little trip out to a destination which is a bit different and out of the ordinary. Being there was kind of a reminder of international travel, and it gave me a little bit of that feeling of when you're at the airport, ready to fly to somewhere exciting.

Unfortunately, my own plans to fly somewhere exciting have been delayed yet again. I was supposed to finally be moving back to Chile on Monday 7th February, and if the Cancillería de Chile had done their job and approved my visa within a reasonable amount of time, I would have been able to go on that date. As it is, I'm having to postpone my flight by two weeks, and I just have to pray that everything will be sorted by then.

It's incredibly frustrating, as there's nothing I can do about the situation. Every single phase of this visa application has taken far longer than it should have done, and it feels so unfair. It's been two and a half years that I've been living with my parents since graduation, and over one year since I last saw my boyfriend, and I'm just so tired of waiting and not being able to move on with my life.

But at least I know I'm now so close to the finish line of what has really been quite a battle. I just need one last bit of patience to be able to get through this final stage, and hopefully by the end of this month, I'll be writing here about my adventures in Chile...