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Well, well! Normal pre-holiday disasters have struck again! But they aren’t usually reported on national news and in the Times newspaper! But this is the exception! We took a taxi to Bristol airport (to avoid having three weeks parking fees and a hotel overnight on our return). As we approached the check-in desk, we received a text message to say “Don’t bother showing up today because the flight is delayed. Delayed by 24 hours! Skiathos is flooded! Storm Roger, or Daniel, or something.
Under the circumstances, Jet2 were brilliant. They got all their passengers mustered and walked us over to the Hampdon Hotel. Very professional. Well organised. Full information – well as much info as they had. To be fair it was all a bit sketchy on that front. But it looked like residents and tourists alike were suffering big time. Poor them. Mud slides everywhere, hotels with no power. Some with floods running through their rooms! No food, roads washed away, airport closed… disaster darling!!
Photos courtesy of the Times newspaper! I told you they had covered “our” disaster, although they didn’t mention us by name! Bit of an editorial blunder, there!
Some of Tui’s customers had been waiting for an earlier flight to Skiathos – they had been at the airport for five hours BEFORE we got there. And they were still there when we were ensconced in our hotel (which Jet2’s 139 customers had just filled!). The next nearest hotel is the Holiday Inn, a couple of miles down the road. However, for everyone’s convenience, that establishment is now closed to the public… and full of immigrants! So Tui folk may have ended up being bussed to central Bristol, or possibly Manchester!
We met some interesting people at the airport. Fellow stranded souls. A couple of 57 year olds on their honeymoon, a couple of ladies escaping renovations on their respective houses and an internationally recognised botanical artist, Mary Dillon.
This is one of hers. “Rhapsody in blue 2”. (I’m sure she owns the copyright for this image. Thank you Mary!) Fabulous detail. She has put lots of equally detailed images on the Internet, if you are interested (MaryDillonBotanicalArt.com.) Actually, she’s put them online even if you aren’t interested!
Jet2 had given us a lunch, dinner and B&B and the hotel gave us a couple of beers, althogh they did decline to credit our frequent guest account with the cost of our stay! Olympic Holidays immediately promised us a full refund after Jet2 cancelled all flights for a week. We called the taxi company who said they couldn’t get to us until after lunch because the M5 was closed following a very nasty accident near Wellington.
We eventually got home at 4 pm, and by 6 pm we were packing the caravan (until nearly midnight)
Different! There had of course, been other, more run of the mill, mini-disasters in the run up to our holiday at Bristol airport…
Glenda had been considering a quick cruise on the Rhone in November. So to make sure we didn’t exceed our “90 days in Europe” allowance, I invested a massive £1.79 in a new app for my phone. Keeping track of time in the Schengen area is complicated for multiple trips. I entered the dates for our Norway, France and Greece, plus a potential week in France. This new app is really good and immediately told me that we DIDN’T have enough days to go to Greece (in eleven days time)!
No sleep that night! Olympic holidays suggested I contact the Greek embassy after the weekend. Glenda suggested I check the dates I’d entered in the app. Very sensible. When I changed our start date of the French caravan trip – correctly! – from April to May, we immediately found we had plenty of time for Greece. A whole FIVE days extra. Which is exactly what we had calculated ages ago when we first booked the Greek islands! Enough said!
Then the UK national air traffic control failed on the last day of September six days before we were due to fly. “Chaos will last for a week” was the headline!
Late one night, the bathroom sink tap fell to pieces. The fixing nut appears to have been made of steel. Now it’s just a pile of iron oxides sitting in the cupboard under the sink. A dash to Torquay to collect a new tap and an emergency visit from Jamie-the-plumber and all was good.
So that is how we managed to spend a two day mini break at Bristol Airport, then 10 hours towing the caravan to the Lake District. And another couple on to Northumberland.
Still, we made it in hot and sunny weather…
Well, maybe we can get on with our holiday now!
More to follow! Hopefully!
Wow. That is a tale of woe. You couldn’t make that stuff up.