TravelCD

My most recent travel story, please sit back and relax.

Anxiety, excitement, nerves, anticipation, worry, happiness, disorientated and apprehensiveness all wrestled with each other inside me as I started on my journey. Waving goodbye to my home town and into unfamiliar territory. 

My heart pounded as I thought about the journey ahead, but I was much more worried about travelling to my destination than being there. I had only ever by myself, only twice and with family and friends, taken a direct route to the country of destination. That’s not what would happen today. 

I would travel to a premier inn at Gatwick Airport then fly from Gatwick Airport, to Malaga Airport. After that, I would take the train to Granada. It may seem simple, but for me, who had never travelled that far in another country by myself before, I was dreading it. 

In fact, a monster had wrapped around my body, causing me to panic and squirm and find it hard to breathe, blinding me and wrapping itself tightly around my mind.  I could only breathe once more  once I reached my destination and sat on my bed in my accommodation which was within the building of the Escuela Delengua, the Spanish School, I had signed up for, for two weeks. 

Only then did I realise how much my monster had truly blinded me and seized my mind during my journey to Granada. Everything had in fact gone…smoothly? And it would have been quite relaxing without the monster.

The Premier Inn had gone perfectly, a Hotel chain in the UK that you usually only used during short stays in different locations across the UK, including using it to make sure you were at the Airport at the correct time. Within the airport, the check in luggage, security and passport control had been quick and efficient. The plane had been late with boarding, but that was the only issue. Every bump during the flight, the monster would murmur “This could be your last flight, you’ll be one of those faces on the news when the plane has a tragic accident” 

Sometimes I was able to distract it with the view out of the window, it was rather beautiful. 

However, when that didn’t work, I would also wrestle with it, in my seat, trying to hide it from other passengers, whacking it down with facts “You’re more likely to die in a car crash, planes are safer than cars, all your friends and the people you love to watch online travel loads and nothing’s happened to them!” 

When we were late boarding the monster had screamed at me that we’d miss the train from Malaga airport, but it, of course, was wrong, considering we had a two-hour window to catch the train.

If anything, the two hours was too long of a wait, in a strange large train station, that felt like a shopping centre rather than a train station. The monster sat with me, telling me constantly that if I didn’t pay attention to my surroundings, someone could steal my suitcase, that I would get on the wrong train, that I would get lost, I would miss my train and I had no family or friends to help me. 

And the monster continued to hold on to me and squeeze. 

Find out how I deal with the monster in Chapter Four. 

Chapter 1, Chapter 2 Chapter 4, Chapter 5

Click above to move from chapter to chapter easily!