England and Iberia Day 18

Homeward bound

Posted by Brian Hart on August 15, 2026 · 9 mins read
  • Start of day: Southampton, England
  • End of day: Home in North Carolina

Disembarkation. Our flight from Heathrow to Atlanta departs at 1:25pm giving us plenty of time. Still: I wanted to leave plenty of margin for problems, so I booked a private car from Gunwharf Executive Travel to take us from Southampton, and we kept our luggage with us on the last night so we could do walk-off shortly after the ship was cleared by Customs + Immigration.

Did I mention I discovered I could control the stateroom from within the Celebrity app? What better time to figure this out than the final hour of a 14 day cruise. 😐

A phone screenshot of the cruise line's stateroom control app, headed Ship Time 5:53 AM with a speech-bubble icon at the top right. A teal header bar reads Living room, with tabs for Room and Television and Room selected. On the dark panel below, a °F toggle sits beside up and down arrow buttons for the thermostat, with the current temperature showing only two blank dashes. A section headed Living room lights offers three buttons — Off highlighted in teal, 50%, and On — and below that a Scenes row of four buttons labelled Morning, Evening, Sleep and Movie, each with a small pictogram.

A phone screenshot of the same stateroom app with the Television tab selected, again headed Ship Time 5:53 AM above the teal Living room bar. The dark screen shows a virtual television remote: a round Mute button at the upper left and a power symbol in a circle at the upper right, a large circular directional pad with up, down, left and right arrows around a central OK button, and along the bottom a vertical VOL rocker marked plus and minus, stacked Menu and Return buttons, and a vertical CH rocker with up and down arrows.

It’s over:

A wall-mounted flat-screen television in a wood-panelled stateroom, showing the ship's navigation channel. A Celebrity X Cruises logo sits at the top left above a world map centred on the Atlantic, with Europe, Africa and the eastern seaboard of North America labelled. A small ship symbol is circled at Southampton, and the ports of Porto (Leixões), Lisbon and Málaga are marked down the Iberian coast. A panel at the left lists Position 50°54.01′ N, 001°24.97′ W, Speed 0.0 kts and Course 297°. A blue bar across the bottom reads Saturday, August 15, 2026 06:56 (UTC+01:00) and Total cruise distance sailed: 3993 nm.

Walk-off was a breeze – basically no line – contrary to our experience in January. I WhatsApp’d the driver, he told me where to stand, and then pulled up within a few minutes and we were off to Terminal 3.

Funny thing about Terminal 3. As we were on the road toward the airport, we received an alert that T3 had a water break and some flooding, and that it wasn’t accepting car traffic at this time. Our driver’s plan was to take us to Terminal 5 instead, which I expect would’ve worked fine, but after some back-and-forth with Claude we opted for the Hatton Cross Underground Station instead. From there it’s one tube stop to the station for Terminals 2 and 3. Using Hatton Cross avoided Heathrow traffic altogether.

Waiting for the train. It was crowded and we had luggage, so it was divide and conquer.

Siena stands on the Underground platform at Hatton Cross, smiling toward the camera with her long blonde hair down, wearing a slate blue hoodie and a pale pink backpack. Behind her a white sign lettered HATTON CROSS in blue runs along the tunnel wall beneath a ribbed metal ceiling, and a burnt orange tiled pillar carries the station's blue zigzag motif. A roundel is mounted on the cream tiled wall of the opposite platform across the track. To the right, a woman with blonde hair and glasses in a black jacket stands with a rucksack and a water bottle, and wheeled suitcases are lined up along the platform edge in the foreground.

Made it to Heathrow, flying Delta today: Siena, seen from behind with her pink backpack over a navy hoodie, walks toward the entrance of Heathrow Terminal 3 under a glass canopy on a bright morning. The terminal's glazed facade carries the Virgin Atlantic name and logo in white across the glass, with a smaller Virgin Atlantic and DELTA sign above the automatic doors. A yellow panel to the left of the doors is marked with a large letter A. A woman in black activewear stands to the right beside a black cabin bag and a beige suitcase with a travel pillow looped over the handle, and other travellers with luggage are visible through the doors.

Clearing security was easy. I couldn’t recall if the UK does exit interviews like Schengen; they do not. We now had lots of time on our hands.

Sherri and I hit up the Centurion lounge for breakfast and coffee.

A yellow airport wayfinding sign mounted on a white tiled wall, lettered in black with a left-pointing arrow and two pictograms — a seated figure and an adult with a child on a slide. The text reads The Centurion® Lounge and, on a second line, Play area. Below and to the left, a Fire Action notice in red, blue and green panels gives numbered emergency instructions for the Terminal 3 Family Lounge, along with a spillage contact number and an emergency call point extension. A small QR code label to the right is captioned as a training team tag not to be scanned during patrol, and the corner of a green emergency exit sign shows at the top right.

It was a little early for an ice cream. A Ben & Jerry's ice cream vending machine in an airport concourse, its curved front wrapped in a blue sky and green field design with a black and white cow at the bottom and the words Mini Tubs, Ice Cream in yellow lettering. A grid of product buttons shows mini tubs of Cookie Dough, Chocolate Fudge Brownie, Caramel Chew Chew, Strawberry Cheesecake and Vanilla alongside Magnum White and Magnum Classic bars, with prices beside each. A black payment column at the right carries a contactless reader, a keypad, a note slot and a coin slot. A red Coca-Cola drinks machine stands to the left beside a chilled cabinet of bottled water, and a snack machine is partly visible at the right.

The rest is mundane travel. Our flight was a little delayed, they made up a little time in the air, it felt endless regardless, and then we landed in Atlanta. It’s an odd new process Delta has for international connecting flights. There’s a lot of staff along the walk from the plane to immigration, and you don’t have to claim and recheck your bag. Overall pretty nice.

With plenty of time before our ATL->RDU flight, my son and I did the walk from terminal E to our gate, which…. I kid you not… was A1, about as far away as you can get. We booked some good steps, though, and it helped keep us awake. The flight home was uneventful, as was the Uber.

THE END

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