THE DEMOSCENER AND THE VOLCANIC ASH CLOUD

During the month of April, 2010, a strange phenomenon, the like of which has not been seen before (in recent times) a volcano with an unpronounceable name, in the south of Iceland, decided to start erupting, spreading a plume of ash across the sky that covered most of Northern Europe, including the Netherlands, Finland and the UK.

A lot of people were stranded as a result of this and that includes myself and my wife, who were in the lovely Spanish resort of Fuengirola in southern Spain, staying at the Apartmentos Nuriasol complex in the town.

We had flown out on the Sunday of the weekend before and until we heard the news on the Friday morning, things had gone rather swimmingly during our break. On the Tuesday, we had met up with my mother & her guy, Barry; also we met up at the same time with my aunt and uncle who have an apartment of their own in Nerja, also on the Costa Del Sol.

Paula and I had decided that we must make lunch for them as repayment (of a fashion) for a meal which they made for us back in 2009 when we also visited Spain around the same time of year. We had decided to make pasta with a cheese sauce, which also contained chorizo and mushrooms and is similar to the meals we have at least once a week at home in England.

Earlier that day we had been to the local market in Fuengirola for a wander around and this was enjoyable. The weather was warm but not too hot and there were a lot of people around as well, which helped a lot. Some of the stalls were selling some questionable items, such as the latest music and film warez quite openly. I personally suspected most of those were camera recordings in the cinema and didn't touch them. Spain does have quite a wide piracy problem with lots of usually African guys wandering around selling copies in and around the resort.

The week passed well and it was on the Friday morning that we became aware of a story on the news which had developed the previous day. It concerned us as all airports were shut down in the UK with flights being unable to take off or land due to the volcanic ash cloud which had spread quickly.

By the time it came to the Sunday, we found out in the early morning that our flight with Easyjet was cancelled. We had booked our holiday with Expedia and despite a number of tries by my wife and myself on our mobile phones and my mother on her guy's landline, we could not get through on either number which we had been given previously, which did not help.

As a result of this we decided to make the trip by train to the airport, after fortunately being able to speak to a member of the apartment complex, who was in a position to offer us our current room at a reduced rate. This rate turned out to be 50% off the usual room price which was seriously good stuff. In addition to this, the hotel also allowed us to do this on a per night basis, which we happily obliged with.

When we got to the airport, the queue for the Easyjet desk was already stretching a long way away from the desk itself. We joined at the back of the queue and shared stories with other people who were also waiting. Easyjet themselves were doing what they could but it did seem to me at the time that there was little or no coordination at all as to what was happening.

Eventually after some hours we got to the front of the queue and explained our situation to the people on the desk. They were fairly helpful but required us to rejoin the queue the following day, with our cases and other luggage, to find out which hotel we'd be allocated for the following two days. We were also given an alternative return flight, but this was scheduled for April 28th. This was going to give us some severe issues, firstly, both my wife and myself were losing money with being away from work for longer than we'd originally booked for.

We then spent some hours trying to organise alternative ways to get home. Hire cars unfortunately were unavailable once the companies themselves realised that there was a possibility of the car leaving Spain. We also looked at buses and trains too, but prices had gone stupidly high at this point. Although governments were believed to have asked transport companies not to up their prices during the events, this had been widely ignored by the companies themselves, who were enjoying making shitloads of money over and above, ripping people off in the process.

My mother's guy, Barry, fortunately is trained as a professional coach driver and was able to offer us the route we eventually took. He drove us in his own car all the way up to Paris by car, to the famous Gare du Nord railway station. This necessitated an overnight nonstop ride from Fuengirola up through Spain, over the French border and past cities and towns such as Madrid, Bordeaux, La Rochelle and other places. We left around 6am or so on the Tuesday morning and reached the Gare du Nord a little after 7am the next morning and were able to get a train from Paris to Calais via Lille.

Now Paula, my wife, is not that keen on ferries, but she managed to swallow her pride so we could book as foot passengers on the next available ferry. When we got the bus from Calais train station to the port, we had to queue for another hour and a half in order to get the tickets. Having got these we went through Customs and got onto the next ferry back to Dover. The famous white cliffs of Dover have never looked more welcoming & with a prearranged pickup organised by Paula's dad (my father in law) got us home, 3 days later than originally planned. Mike was rather concerned as he thought we had a car parked at Stansted airport, fortunately this was not the case as our neighbours had taken us there.

It was good to get home after the long journey back, we fortunately were able to recover within a few days, even though we were back to work the day after we finally got home.

Felice.

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