Apologies to everyone for that one.Now, in Ireland, GAA football is massive.
And Donegal had reached the final for the first time in 20 years.
It was lovely to see - every house in Donegal had a green and yellow flag outside, roundabouts where festooned with yellow and green bunting, I even spotted two sheep that had been died yellow and green. Every shop had "good luck" signs in the windows, and this was repeated in billboards everywhere.
Killybegs
The entire county is expected to attend the final today! (23 Sep)
It was about 90 minutes before my planned departure that the penny dropped that my planned coach might be busy - so I planned to get an earlier coach just to be on the safe side.
So a packed Bus Éireann coach left Donegal Town for Dublin, with me onboard, having managed to grab a window seat and enjoying the free Wifi.
The route criss-crosses the NI border at various points, we hit a traffic problem just inside Northern Ireland...
The journey passed without further incident, operating as an Express as the bus was full from Donegal, and I arrived at Dublin Airport Terminal 1, with hours to spare. And an airport lounge pass!
But first, Dublin Airport Security.
Ryanair has been vociferious in its criticism of the airport, and I think I saw why yesterday.
I checked in for my Aer Arann Regional flight to Southend.
I went to security at 4.00pm. At 4.15pm I reached the boarding card scan. Unlike at Gatwick, these were self service machines with a few staff on hand to deal with problems. Of which there were many as the bar codes seemed to bamboozle the er, bar code readers.
I eventually got through and joined a massive queue for security. Our of 14 lanes, 3 were open.
After a further 10 minutes 3 more lanes were opened. But there were hundreds of people waiting. It didn't help that the scanners seemed to beep for everyone. But not me.
I made a beeline to the Aer Lingus Lounge. This is actually located in Terminal 2 but is a quick walk from T1, and accessible after security. And it's a lovely lounge!
View from the walk to the lounge
And the lounge itself...
The lounge had a wide selection of sandwiches, rolls, (all prepacked); scones, wheaten bread, biscuits, pastries, wines and spirits and soft drinks. And free use of Samsung tablets, which I pottered on for a bit and put down, not really understanding them. I'm not a luddite, I just found using them a bit weird and went over to the desktop computers instead.
And the view from the lounge was lovely.
If you like planes.
Before long, I headed to gate 219, for a short wait before boarding the bus out to the Aer Lingus Regional 'plane. The bus passed 4 grounded WindJet aircraft. Not sure how they ended up in Dublin!
There were 12 people on the bus, so I assumed they would do another run, but no, 12 passengers was the load tonight.
Just one cabin crew, reminiscent of Loganair flights of years gone by, but still one more than I had on Manx2 from Angelsey last year!
The flight landed early, and Southend Airport, being brand new, was lovely.
There were no other aircraft about yet we landed at the far end of the airport, walking back to the terminal building. I suppose that was so the luggage didn't arrive first. Anyway, the staff at Southend were great, and in four minutes I was on the platform at Southend Airport station for my train to London.
Aer Lingus were great, Aer Lingus Regional fun, and Southend Airport was a breath of fresh air.
