We had booked to fly from Birmingham but Iceland Air cancelled the flight and re-booked us from Heathrow with a complimentary taxi collection in the centre of Shrewsbury to compensate for the 5 am start.
The taxi arrived 10 minutes early and shot off down the motorways of middle England at the speed of a comet in deepest space. Apparently without prosecution, we arrived, courtesy of Comet Cars, at Heathrow's Terminal 2 in record time and 5 hours before the flight. Plenty of time to get a rucksack full of assorted electronics through security.
Any normal driver would have had enough points on their license at the end of that journey to keep them off the road for a year. But the nice guys at Comet are invisible to the cameras and let us snooze our way south soothed by the melodies of Smooth FM. Thanks Comet for a painless and prompt start to a hazardous and arduous trip. Speed cameras will not be amongst our hazards for the rest of the trip!