"Here we still are," said Gill Hornby in The Guardian. "On Tenerife. Under the boringly blue sky. Looking out at the ferryless sea. Trapped." Of course, we are
among the lucky ones: when my family learnt that all flights back to Britain had been cancelled last Thursday, we weren't forced to sleep in the airport or on the streets; our holiday was simply extended. "Except, it transpires, a holiday is an elective thing. You have to want to be on it, or it ceases to be. We are bored of chips, and Sky News, and sun." The resort has entirely changed its identity. "No longer guests, we are captives."
Over the past week, the Icelandic volcano eruption "has wrecked holidays and thrown wedding and honeymoon plans into chaos".
said Heidi Blake in The Daily Telegraph. More than 300,000 Britons were stranded abroad. Some travellers, however, found "bizarre and ingenious methods" of getting back. They switched to trains, cars and ferries for the long trek home. John Cleesc shelled out £3,300 for a cab from Oslo to Brussels, where he jumped on an overloaded Eurostar. Gary Linekcr took a plane from the Canary Islands to Madrid airport, which was still open, and then drove 2,000 miles overland to Paris, making it to
London in rime for Match of the Day. Others flew from Dubai or Argentina to Spain, where they boarded coaches for Calais laid on by the embassy. The Channel ports were besieged, said Jamie Doward and Cal Flyn in The Observer. At Dunkirk, there were 40-minute
queues of cars, just to get to the ticket booths. Desperate travellers begged for rides, offering cash or cigarettes to bribe their way into strangers' vehicles. Others bought bicycles to qualify for cyclists' tickets on ferries that were booked up for foot passengers. One London businessman said thai si,ill insisted Ik- ride up the ramp on the "rustic" contraption he'd bought for €49. Another was seen wobbling along on a child's bicycle.
Canny speedboat operators from Kent and Sussex spotted an opportunity, and converged on Calais, charging £65 per head for the journey home. The historian Dan Snow hired a clutch of powerboats to carry people across the Channel in true Dunkirk style, said Maurice Chittenden in The Sunday Times. But after he'd collected just 25 people, the operation was halted by the
French authorities. Even Gordon Brown got in on the act, said Ann Treneman in The Times - emerging, like Churchill from his bunker, to declare that he had ordered HMS Albion to Spain, and HMS Ark Royal into the Channel. (His armada's performance wasn't impressive: only a handful of civilians were rescued from Santander, and the Channel operation was cancelled when it became clear that the ferry companies were better equipped to deal with the problem.)
The effects were felt far and wide, said Fiona I lamilton in The Times. Schools were closed as teachers failed to return. Patients were left waiting for transplants as couriers were held up. Supermarkets' supplies of exotic fruits - pineapple from Ghana, sweetcorn from
Thailand - ran low. In Kenya, "farmers have been losing millions of dollars a day", said Waithaka Waihcnya on Guardian.co.uk. A thousand tonnes of fruit and flowers are usually air-freighted out of the country every night, making horticulture the country's leading hard-currency earner. "Flower farms that employ thousands started laying off workers as roses, lilies and carnations wilted. Courgettes, broccoli and green beans were left to rot. Most flowers were thrown into the compost pit." How "fragile"
modern society has become, said
Hamish McRac in The Independent.
One natural event - though "a most
unusual one" - has thrown out supply
chains all over the world. Nissan had to
suspend production in two car plants in
Japan because parts usually flown in
from Ireland were nor available.
"Of course there have been downsides," said Stuart Jeffries in The Guardian. But back in London it was "bliss". The sunny sky above the world's most overflown capital was, for once, silent. Kew Gardens, disturbed most days by howling jet engines between 6am and 11pm, became "the idyll it always should have been". It was possible to savour the birdsong usually "obliterated" by Virgin Atlantic planes full of people returning from Disneyworld and "Lufthansas packed with businessmen who could just as well conduct their fatuous meetings via Skype from Munich". What fun it was to think that the rest of the world was genuinely remote, as it was in the past. "Air travel has banalised the globe." The flying ban - albeit briefly - "re-enchanted it".
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