Those doomed by volcanic ash to an extended stretch on the Continent are no longer laughing at the Twitter generation who snaffled all the bus and ferry tickets with their blackpods, iBerries and palm muffins, writes MIRIAM LORDin Alicante
THE DASH through the ash continues and while it may be true that we're all in the same boat, in our case it's a ferry called the Oscar Wilde– and we're sunk if we don't catch it.
Oh, but the spirit of Dunkirk has been pulsating around our renovated bijou tenement in Alicante in these most trying of days. (But not for the easyJet passengers in from Benidorm, smugly enduring it all because the airline is paying for their hotel andfeeding them three square meals a day until the dust settles. The rest of the us are green with envy and growing poorer by the day.)
When the aircraft of northern Europe were forced to do an ash landing last Thursday, some of us thought the cloud would blow over quickly and we could fly back home with the minimum of disruption. The smart ones knew otherwise.
Who knew that so many people went off on their holidays with a laptop? We’re not laughing now at the Twitter generation, with their blackpods and iBerries and palm muffins. They booked all the seats on the buses and trains and hoovered up all the rental cars before we could find a bus station on the map and distract a sulky clerk from his Sudoku.
As the weekend continued, a sense of panic took hold. (Except among the easyJet crowd. Three courses, for lunch AND dinner.) Word spread of escalating prices for the few remaining seats to get within striking distance of the few remaining ferry places in France and northern Spain. People paying strangers to take them in the spare seat of their car, and cross-channel lorry drivers making a fortune carrying passengers in their cabs.
Good to see the newspapers surviving a volcanic eruption.
Bedlam in Malaga, apparently. As for the ferries in Calais, they have stopped taking foot passengers, but someone discovered that if you bought a bicycle you qualified for a ticket, apparently.
Back in Alicante, the Birmingham girls on a hen week managed to book the ferry to Santander for Thursday, with one overnight stop “somewhere Spanishy” and over 20 hours on various coaches.
Traipsing the streets of Alicante city for the last few days, we’ve come across very few Irish people. Perhaps they’re holed up in their holiday compounds, or in the homes they bought before the crash; or maybe they’re hanging on a telephone line waiting to talk to Joe.
As the lady in the knitted zip-up Union Jack cardigan said the other morning in our tastefully converted tenement as she looked at a picture of the spewing volcano and wondered when she might ever get home: “You wouldn’t think this could happen in a supposedly civilised country.” We were sorted, though.
We booked the Oscar Wilde from France to Ireland for tomorrow night. Then went to eat some jamon and quaff a bit of Sangria.
Unfortunately, we had a beginning and an end, but forgot about the middle. And so to the bus station and the train station yesterday morning, followed by hours and hours on the internet trying to book seats long snaffled by the gits with the laptops and blueberrypods.
The booking clerk in Alicante said he was very stressed and wanted to go home. He had no seats from Spain to France, but had a few left to Barcelona. A start.
A friend called from Brussels, already 24 hours on the road from Stockholm and tipsy in a train somewhere on the way to Hamburg (via Copenhagen) and thence to Cologne and Brussels for the Eurostar to London and then Holyhead and home.
The hotel room was like a Chinese laundry all weekend. Us Dunkirk types had taken to washing our clothes in the bath. Yesterday morning, when the sky darkened, Alicante city residents thought the ash cloud had finally arrived. It hadn't. Instead, a sudden gust had swept the knickers of the Birmingham girls and The Irish Timesfrom their various balconies, where they temporarily blocked out the sun.
Just another setback.
But Irish Ferries await – if we can just make it through France. It’s complicated, and involves lots of train changes and not much sleep, but it can be done.
So we rang the man from Irish Ferries to find out about the Oscar Wilde – it has 1,500 capacity. He sounded almost as stressed as the train station man.
Our boat is now full, with only a few places left on Thursday’s sailing to Rosslare, and availability on Saturday.
But we’re alright – we finally sorted the route to Le Havre.
“Eh, it’s leaving from Cherbourg.”
We should’ve rung Garret FitzGerald. There’s nothing he doesn’t know about timetables . . .