Jill's Blog

Jill, old enough not to want to give away her age, is mother to four demanding daughters that keep her on her toes when it comes to anything retail and beauty related.

Jill much prefers shopping online to fighting the masses instore and her favourite websites include EveLom.co.uk, OkaDirect.com, TimeToSpa.co.uk, Inverawe.co.uk and FormanAndField.com (the latter two keep the men in the family smiling!).

Hand Baggage...

Published on Friday 4th July 2008

Summer is here and off we all fly, adding to the carbon footprint...

Thanks to the credit crunch I know I’m not alone in looking at the low cost airlines - there are some amazing offers out there, my husband recently found a flight to Shannon with Ryanair for 1 Euro – plus taxes of course.

The trouble is they try and sting you on the luggage allowance and I, have just been caught out... Even more irritating considering I spent about three hours reducing my piles of packing!

My method is to put everything I would like to take, leave it for half an hour, return and then discard all those things that I probably won’t wear, and repeat this until I have three small piles, undies, clothes and potions and lotions etc (all in special little jars sold for the purpose by that extremely on the ball supermarket Sainsburys) - I even have an extra small travel hairdryer courtesy of Mr V Sassoon.

I was THRILLED to find that I was one and a half kilos under the maximum weight allowance for hand baggage.

I stuffed, I mean carefully packed it all into my little holdall (a freebie from the Ultimate Travel Company - they really are the experts though ‘freebie’ could be a bit of a misnomer when I count up how much we have spent with them!) and on arrival at the airport, breezed up to check in and placed my bag on the scales to confirm that it was within the weight limit...

Weight limit check but to my horror it wouldn’t fit into the piece of equipment which decides whether one is allowed to take it on as hand baggage.

I then had to pay a hefty surcharge for it to go in the hold which involved queuing up for ages with all those others who had been caught.

The secret is to find a good rigid bag that’ll fit into the rectangular basket; my bag resembled a large rugby ball with no chance. Mulberry has a smart small wheelie bag or, if the budget is a bit tight, John Lewis sells a couple of Antler bags which would do the job.

All airlines differ in their weight and size allowance so take it from me and do read the small print; it’s such a bore to have to queue twice!

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