Amsterdam or bust!

We had a relatively uneventful journey back to the UK, and had Christmas dinner with our two children, as well as attending to various other admin tasks. One of which was having our hair cut - neither of us were man enough to submit to this in a foreign country, with the risks of miscommunication rather high!

Britain at it's best- a fine but clear day walking to Wisley

Our flight back to Bangkok was from Amsterdam, via Doha in Qatar. You might ask why we were flying from Amsterdam - the answer being quite simply that it is cheaper. The UK authorities charge quite punitive departure tax, which other countries don't- and it's sufficiently cheaper to cover the cost of getting to your EU departure airport (err- usually)

There is of course, a downside to this. If you don't make your flight, then you are generally well and truly scuppered, as these cheaper tickets are pretty inflexible and cannot be changed or cancelled without losing most , if not the  whole value of the ticket. Our original plan ( I shall call plan A) was to return on Monday night, stay overnight in Amsterdam and catch the Qatar Airways flight from there at 3 in the afternoon.

As Sunday progressed, the chaos at Heathrow became increasingly apparent, and I suspected that our flight would be cancelled, with no obvious alternatives. So I formulated plan B, which was to use avios ( essentially airmiles) to buy a couple of one way tickets from Gatwick to Amsterdam on Tuesday morning - which would get us there with a reasonable degree of comfort IF there were no delays. Gatwick as an airport doesn't run as close to the wind capacity wise as Heathrow and is usually less prone to delays and disruption.

Well, as you do, you think even more about back up plans and the news suggested that even Tuesday could be a real problem weather wise. It was therefore time to formulate plan C, which was the somewhat nuclear option of getting a bus to Amsterdam.

So, at about 10 in the morning on Monday, our daughter Ellie dropped us off at Dover ferry terminal in a howling gale ( to the point that I thought it was going to take the door off her car!). Booked in, we were then told to go outside to the bus shelter to wait the bus. When I say shelter, what I really mean was an ill fitting three sided box with plenty of spaces to allow the wind and sleet to get in. There we stood for about 20 minutes shivering with cold and really feeling somewhat depressed about the whole affair, along with our new travel mates. These included one already slightly sozzled Scotsman and other gentleman, whom I can only describe as being an ex bareknuckle boxer complete with a tattooed face.

And Britain not at it's best. Dover sea front. Iron grey clouds a cold and "lazy" wind. Lazy because it goes through you rather than round you.....

Despite picking up at Dover, the bus did a U turn and headed up to Folkestone to the Channel Tunnel, which given the size of the waves in Dover was rather a relief. After an inordinate amount of faffing around at the terminal, the bus drove onto the train, where we subject to the first of our delays - about an hour because Calais ferry port had been closed and all and sundry were now using the Chunnel.

Heading back to the bus after passport control.  We were wearing old but warm clothes that  were ditched  in  Amsterdam.

I knew the weather on the continent was even worse, and we were a little concerned as to how bad it would be when we reemerged from the tunnel. In actual fact, it was fine with some snow in the fields but sleet rather than rain. "Hoorah!", I thought as it turned out somewhat prematurely, "This will be a doddle". And indeed it was a doddle, until we got about 10km west of Ghent. Ghent, a Belgian town remembered by many for it's fine mediaeval architecture, will only be remembered by us as the site of the longest traffic jam ever encountered so far. Snow had caused accidents, and what had made things worse was that lorry drivers had given up and started to use the hard shoulder to rest up for the night. For three and a half hours we inched our way forward, lurching from  plummeting morale as no traffic moved at all, to raised spirits as we even got out of first gear, only to slow up 2 minutes later.

Our view for the evening. At least it had stopped snowing.

As time wore on, the gossip on the bus was that the driver would be out of hours and Brussels would  be as far as we got. Our tattooed pugilist was doing a sterling job keeping the french driver's spirits up by regaling tales of when he drove lorries for a living, whilst the Scotsman to the irritation of all kept suggesting different routes for the driver to follow. Eventually, we got to Brussels, by about 11 in the evening. My forward planning at that point was such that I knew the time of the first train out of Brussels to Amsterdam in the morning, and the address of a hotel that seemed to draw some of the worst reviews I have seen yet from Booking.com.

A comfort break. Why is there always someone who ignores the  "be back in 20 minutes" and trails in last?

But there was good news in Brussels - there was another bus that would take us on to Amsterdam. All of us that were continuing to Amsterdam got off, the drunken Scotsman got his wine back that the driver had confiscated and we piled onto the next bus. Bearing in mind that the google traffic map of the whole of Holland up to this point was a mass of orange and red roads, the next part of the journey went fine, as by this time most of the traffic had cleared and the gritters and snow ploughs had been able to do the job. At precisely 3.05am we were dropped off at a deserted urban train station on the outskirts of Amsterdam where the taxi rank was completely empty and no trains were running. Thank goodness for uber - a very friendly chap picked us up and took us out to the hotel we had booked, where an equally friendly night receptionist handed us our keys to our room.

Got there! Outside the hotel waiting for the bus to the airport.

When we got the shuttle bus the following morning to Schipol Airport, I briefly mused with the idea of kissing the floor of the airport........

As predicted the original flight (Plan A ) was cancelled, but of course ironically the Plan B flight did operate with only an hour of delay.