London Southend?
DonQui was not entirely sure that he had heard correctly. Southend was certainly not London and he was pretty sure you couldn’t fly there unless you were a bird.
But it was true. He was flying back to England and not only did Southend have an airport but apparently Which magazine has named it as the ‘best small airport in Britain.’ It might be a bit of a cheek to call it ‘London Southend’ but the train into London Liverpool St is only 55 minutes — not much more than the train from Stansted.
DonQui was flying from Alicante airport and he was afraid that it would be overrun by the Benidorm crowd. Actually it was fairly quite and spacious. Whether it would be the same in high season he cannot say.

The flight was quite pleasant, even thought it was EasyJet and there was a good clear view over the Thames estuary as the plane made its descent.

Southend was a revelation. Clean, modern, uncrowded and with everything close together it was quite different from the human zoos of Heathrow, Stansted or Gatwick. DonQui was most impressed.
It took no time at all to get to the airport train station which had no barriers or queues. A train pulled in a minute or two after DonQui got on the platform and he was on his way home.