We were due to holiday in Madeira at this time of year in 2025 but our trip had to be cancelled four days before we were due to travel due to Mr C having a health scare which meant he wasn’t insured to travel.
This year with mum becoming increasingly ill in the weeks that led up to our planned trip to Madeira we weren’t sure whether we would be able to travel or not. Mum sadly passed away in the week before we were due to travel. This gave us just enough time to set the most immediate things in place and still travel to Madeira as planned.
In the morning Mr C had an unexpected issue which needed to be resolved. This led to us setting off for our overnight stay close to Manchester airport later than we had planned.
We had lunch relatively local to us in Fletcher’s Garden Centre before eventually driving to Manchester and checking into the Premier Inn in Cheadle Royal. This was a first for us, previously we have stayed in the nearby Premier Inn in Heald Green.
There had been a recent announcement that Jet2 Holidays had a new service that allowed you to check your luggage in the night before. We thought that was a good idea, so after checking into the hotel we drove to the airport to take advantage of the new arrangement. After driving around the airport (several times) looking for a place to park we realised that the simple idea was not quite as simple as it seemed. Parking near to the terminal is very expensive; £5 for five minutes, £10 for ten minutes or £25 for thirty minutes. We had no idea how long it would take to check in our bags and parking further away posed different problems so we abandoned the idea opting to check in as normal the following day.
We returned to the Premier Inn to chill out with a cup of tea before dining in the Griffin Inn with a glass of wine or two before returning to our billet for an early night before our early start.
