Planes, trains and automobiles - Geordie version
Well after leaving Tyneside at 4am this morning, I've just arrived at my hotel ahead of tomorrow night's friendly with Deportivo La Coruna.
Newcastle don't pick easy friendlies for the fans to get to sometimes and getting to La Coruna has been far from straight forward.
Some United fans who set off in the small hours of Monday, ended up visiting more than one airport this morning, for us we've visited FOUR!
The 7am Easyjet from Newcastle to Stanstead left us with an almighty scramble to get across London in order to catch the 12.25pm Gatwick flight to Porto.
Two hours to get across London seemed reasonable enough but with Gatwick packed with holidaymakers, to say the south terminal was chaos is an understatement, nevertheless after getting to Gatwick just after 10.30am, we managed to fight our way through and board the flight.
WIth a tail wind of 120mph from Gatwick to Porto, we arrived in Portugal 20 minutes early.
It looked like it was going well but after an hour queue for a hire car (which had just three miles on the clock) it was on to the main coastline route north to try to get to La Coruna and across the border.
All of that is well and good but as Europcar had run out of Sat Nav equipment, it was back to old fashioned map reading for us.
Nevertheless the four hour drive through the Portuguese border and the picturesque backdrop more than soothed our airport hell and stopped us feeling like Tom Hanks in the hit film The Terminal.
After finally finding a parking space in the bustling port of La Coruna, it's all thoughts on the game tomorrow night.
The United squad of 20 arrived here in La Coruna at teatime today.
Their journey slightly more straight forward and their private plane took off from Newcastle at 2pm.
United players will perform in temperatures of around 18 degrees tomorrow night at the Riazor.
Two players that will enjoy a great reception are Fabricio Coloccini and Xisco, who starred here earlier in their careers.
Stay tuned for the next gripping chapter of the Depor files.
And don't forget we'll be bringing you live coverage of the match on www.blogonthetyne.co.uk
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Lee Ryder - Proudly born and bred on Tyneside, the Chronicle's chief sports writer has followed the fortunes of the club over the last three decades as a Toon fan and football writer.
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