Country point England in transit

If you travel a lot, you sometimes cannot avoid transit airports. A change of trains is often necessary, especially for distant destinations. Although direct flights are always the most convenient option, they are not always possible. For geocachers, there are of course opportunities to stay at a stopover. Since there are geocaches almost everywhere, there could well be one or the other can near the transit airport.

It is not uncommon for this to bring you another country point - provided you can leave the airport. For example, this happened to me once in China, which is why I now have the country dot China. Conditions vary from country to country and from airport to airport. Whether and how it works in England, I want to show you today.

Leaving London Heathrow Airport: how it works!

During our cacher trip to the USA to the HQ, the A.P.E. Cache and the old caches from the year 2000 we flew over London. In Heathrow we had a planned stay of about 2.5 hours. Due to an announced delay of the connecting flight, it even turned into 3 hours. Reason enough for me to check whether there might be a geocache nearby.

Unfortunately, there is no geocache directly on the airport grounds. Unlike in Hanover, Düsseldorf or Prague, for example. The nearest treasure from the terminal is about 1.5 km away as the crow flies. I decided: this is doable.

Now the question arises: how do I get out of the airport? With transit flights, you are basically on neutral ground. In the transit area one has not yet entered the country. It is therefore not easy to walk out of the airport.

So I asked myself how it works and got the info to report to the information desk in Terminal 5. There I was told that there is an “escort” every hour on the hour, which accompanies people out of the airport. That was how long we had to wait. I had to put my name on a list and was informed that if I didn't return on time, I could not make any claims for compensation for a possibly missed flight.

At the next full hour it was time and I went with an airport employee and 2 other people in the direction of the exit. We went through backward and hidden passages and were escorted past several locks. After about 10 minutes we were outside.

Since some time had passed, I sprinted off to the geocache geocache. I reached this quite quickly, but now had to deal with the somewhat confused encryption and lost some time opening it.

Nevertheless, after about 10 minutes of puzzling, my name was in the logbook and the country dot England and the country souvenir were safe for me! Here is a video showing both the area and the cache. SPOILERS: the number code is 5216.

Entering London Heathrow Airport: this is (not) how it works!

Since the geocache was now done and the time had passed, it was time for a quick sprint back to the airport. For the distance I needed about 10 minutes with a brisk jog.

Now that I had entered England, I had to go through the entire check-in procedure again for the onward flight. Unfortunately, I was denied the first step, scanning the ticket. Since boarding was already underway, the system decided not to let anyone through check-in. Even when asked at the counter there was nothing more to do! Although the plane stood still for almost an hour, I was no longer able to board it. Gone stupid!

So I couldn't take my flight as planned and had to take a later one. ugly and expensive! So that this doesn't happen to you, there is a checklist in the conclusion with which you can check for yourself whether you can reach the cache or country point.

Checklist: this is how you decide whether you can make it Whether the country point England can be reached on a transit flight or not depends on various factors.

Based on my experience, I have put together a small checklist that can help you make your decision.

Answer all questions with "yes" to be on the safe side!

- Do you have a stay of at least 4 hours?
- Is the cache enabled?
- Do you have the possibility to leave your hand luggage at the airport (with a fellow traveler or the left luggage office)?
- Is it no more than 30 mins to the next hour?
- Do you have your passport and ticket with you?
- can you run pretty fast

If you can answer "yes" to these questions, your chances of getting the country point on a transit flight via London Heathrow are quite high. If your stay is shorter, I strongly advise against it! Then plan a weekend trip to the English metropolis, which has much more to offer than just the huge airport.