Doha Airport 4a.m.

It's been a holiday of firsts and last night we added another first to our list of experiences: sleeping on an airport lounge floor. The airlines were handing out blankets to passengers with long waits for connecting flights so our group of 10 mostly 60 somethings stretched ourselves out between two rows of seats for a few hours kip. By the time I woke up only one other of the group was still managing to sleep.

A couple of hours later we were relieved to be on the plane and heading home. In true British style, the polite ripple of applause that spread through the plane on our arrival at Heathrow hid the jubilation that most passengers were feeling.

Heathrow itself was eerily quiet: planes parked up everywhere, no hustle and bustle of all those vehicles that normally buzz about servicing the planes, no wait at passport control, only the one belt with our plane's luggage rattling in an otherwise empty baggage claim hall.

We collected our cases and said our goodbyes to the people we've spent an adventurous three and a half weeks with. We've swapped email addresses and I've been charged with writing up our shared account of the difficulties of the last few days to send to the travel company.

The tube to the coach station was equally empty and the motorways very quiet on the journey back to Bridgwater where Chris picked us up and we sneaked a few minutes with Kate & Sophie in case the situation gets worse in the next few days and we don't get to see them for a while.

It feels a different country to the one we left.

Chris & Kate had kindly got us a few essentials in and Kate had cooked us a chilli which we ate once we got home. It's good to be back home with the family. Hope it can stay that way: Boris's latest pronouncements about to be broadcast, the first of these we've seen. I'll be interested, but not surprised, I suspect, in how he comes across.