Journey Home

I woke up on Wednesday morning with terrible stomach pains - they eventually went away with the help of painkillers and Gaviscon, but I didn't get any more sleep.

We got up at 6am, and left at 7am for Carcassonne to get our lane home. The kids had been given the choice of coming in the car or staying in bed...guess which option they chose!!

We both snoozed a bit in the car - great travelling companions for my mum! We got to Carcassonne with time to spare, we had checked in online but still had to join a massive queue to get our hand baggage weighed! Some woman tried to barge in front of us, and Frazer said no to her, but she barged in anyway! The Ryanair woman told her not to barge in, she told her she'd asked us, and Frazer agreed that she had, but he'd said no - she was then told to join the back of the queue like everyone else! The Ryanair woman was quite impressed with Frazer and told him that what he'd said was "almost french" - high praise indeed!

Anyway, we got through to the waiting room bit, sat there for about half an hour and no one seemed to know what was going on. Eventually someone said that the flight had been diverted - one of the passengers that is, not one of the Ryanair staff - so Frazer went to see if he could find out what was happening. Apparently the tannoy was only working at one end of the airport - it turned out that our plane had been diverted to Perpignan due to bad weather, and so had the next one. The weather was cloudy and a bit rainy, but not worth divting a plane for, and we'd just watched another plane take off for East Midlands, so it can't have been that bad. We were all herded outside, but still no one told us what was happening, so I went to find a Ryanair official who confirmed that our plane had been diverted so we were all being bussed down to Perpignan - a 2hr journey - to catch our plane. We were starving so I got some cash out of the machine as I'd given the rest of my euros to my mum, and we went and got a ham baguette which was deadly boring but marginally edible! We were eventually told over the tannoy that our bus would arrive at 11am, but at no point at all did any Ryanair official tell us anything directly apart from when I actually asked them. The bus eventually arrived at 11.30, it was almost 12 by the time we left after all the farting about getting on the buses. We were packed in like sardines, and managed to snooze listening to Pink Floyd on the iPad. Perpignan was hot and windy, the airport was a bit crap, there were no lights in the toilet, and again, no Ryanair officials to tell us what was happening. Eventually they told us on the tannoy when our plane was leaving, so we sat down at the cafe to have a drink. There were tons of flies, so we ended up outside having a cigarette. By the time we boarded the plane we were frazzled to say the least! Thank goodness they didn't play the lirrle fanfare at the end of the flight otherwise there might have been a mutiny aboard!

Although we eventually got home safe and sound, the service we received from Ryanair was nothing short of shocking. The flights weren't particularly cheap, but even if they had been I would still have expected some sort of customer service but there was none. To put it in a nutshell, Ryanair will certainly not have our custom again.

Once we landed at Prestwick we got a taxi back to Lyndsey's to pick up the car, then went to pick up the cat. Bloody mad cat woman had a moan because we were about ten minutes late, tried to charge me again until she realised I actually had paid when I dropeed him off, and eventually gave me the cat! He was very cross with us, and miaowed and yowled ALL the way home - all 2 hours of the journey! We got home, had a struggle lighting the aga, had a pizza for dinner from Francos in Peebles, and went to bed!

We had a fantastic holiday, despite the shitty journey home, but it is always nice to come home. We had a couple of days at work before the weekend, so we're having a good chillout today, groceries and a car boot tomorrow, and then back into the regular, normal routine on Monday. Next up is the gallbladder operation - just waiting to find out when. Watch this space!


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