UK and Med Cruise - Day 26 - 30 September - travel to Nottingham

Three steps to this trip - South Eastern Trains service to London, then an East Midlands Trains service to Nottingham, followed by a Skybus Express trip to the hotel where we're staying near the airport.
I was a bit concerned about the first trip - last time we did a similar journey we had a bit of a drama, jam packed onto a train that was far too small for the number of people trying to use it. After that experience I decided it might be safer to go earlier this time, and to compete with the commuters instead of with the off-peak travellers, and it worked out far better, we even got a seat!
Unfortunately though, the trip to Nottingham was marred by having allocated seating opposite a young lady who kept on putting on more and more makeup; by the time we got to Nottingham both of us were ill from the smell.  And she walked past me three times!! while we were getting off the station, even though we tried to avoid her.
And, the bus trip out to the airport was just bizarre.  I have since worked out what the deal is, but at the time I could not tell which of the "Skylink" services that were leaving the depot at the same time was the one we wanted.  And, the driver was completely rude:

• he told us that the bus only stops at the hotels at the airport "on request" as though he had to go out of our way, which it turns out is completely not true
• he made us carry our suitcases onto the bus even though it was up three tall steps and was really difficult to manage because of the really narrow aisle (and even though we had seen that the previous driver had stored people's suitcases in the luggage bay)
• just up the road he stopped behind another bus, then tried to pull out and ran into it, so we then needed to wait for another bus
• because of the delay, he gave all the other customers on the bus a ticket for a free day's travel around Nottingham, but he only gave us one between the two of us
• when the other bus came, the driver of that bus - who was clearly his supervisor - said that our suitcases should have been in the luggage bay.  Our driver had the nerve to tell him while I was standing there that *we* had insisted on carrying our cases onto the bus - what a great big lie!  And I couldn't call him on it because he was still going to be our driver, and he already knew that we didn't really know where we were going - I could see him deliberately dropping us off miles from where we needed to be just for fun.....

Anyway, we finally made it to the hotel and settled in.  Although there aren't a lot of facilities nearby, there's enough and it's what I expected.  We ordered home delivery and settled down for another night still disturbed by coughing (from both of us)