Lviv to Waingroves (1)

The planned return journey was to depart Lviv on Saturday at 13:15 and arrive at LHR at 16:25 flying with Lufthansa via Munich. We arrived at the airport just as Ukrainian airspace was being closed and within half an hour Lufthansa had booked us into a very comfortable hotel for one night.
By 19:00 we were offered the following options for the next day:

• bus travel to Munich or Vienna at a cost in the region of 100 Euros and then make our own way home
• stay in Lviv at our own expense and then fly to London once flights resumed
• bus travel to a French channel port at a cost of 215 Euros each where ferry transport would be arranged and then make our own way home

All 17 members of the group agreed to the third option.

The journey home started at 9:00 on Sunday morning and lasted until 15:00 on Tuesday afternoon. A total of 56 hours allowing for the 2 hour time difference.
We were taken by two Polish cars and a Polish minibus from the hotel to the Polish border which was about 2 hours drive.
We crossed the border from Ukraine into Poland as foot passengers. This was very straightforward and took less than an hour for the whole group. So far so good.
We had assumed that the 'bus' would be at least a thirty seater so that we could spread out and relax. It was a 16 seater Mercedes van conversion with 3 seats in the front so all 19 seats were occupied with two drivers and 17 passengers.

We set off at 11:05 CET. The Polish roads were quite good and there was little traffic on the Sunday of a state funeral. We passed through Rzeszow at 12:25 and stopped for an hour at 13:45. We joined the Polish motorway network at Krakow at 15:30  and passed Wroclaw at 18:20 before stopping for an evening meal just before the German border, arriving at the border at 21:35.