Travel chaos

I have neglected the blog. I have been busy working, mothering and preparing for Christmas.

We debated long and hard about whether to go to the UK for Christmas; December is such a glorious time of the year in Bahrain. But the girls were adamant. They wanted snow.

And snow we had. In abundance. Too much of the damn stuff. So much so that although Heathrow was open when we left Bahrain on Saturday, by the time we reached UK airspace six hours later, the wretched snow had closed it.

We diverted to Frankfurt, along with 70 other planes. We waited on the plane for four hours before being told Heathrow would not be re-opening that day. We waited another hour for a bus to come and take us to the terminal.

"Look, snow!" I told the girls as we disembarked. They didn't look enthused.

Once inside the terminal building, no-one seemed to know what to do with us. The Gulf air ground staff seemed to have vapourised. A nice lady from the airport was getting harassed. People were getting angry. The airport lady rang control and told them she was abandoning her post unless help arrived. The lucky passengers were finally steered through passport control and onto a bus to a hotel in Wiesbaden. Those without EU passports or visas were shown the transit lounge. I silently thanked the Lord for Ian's Belgian passport.

Now if you are going to have an enforced two-night stopover, Wiesbaden's not a bad place to have it. It has an attractive town square, a river and we were in a comfortable hotel. The only problem was no-one had any luggage. And it was Sunday and thanks to a strong "Keep Sunday Special" movement, nothing opens in Germany on a Sunday. So no toothbrushes, no clean undies and for many, no outdoor clothes. We were lucky. At least we each had a coat and closed shoes.

By day two, there was a real Dunkirk spirit in the hotel. GF003 passengers were the only guests and it was easy to identify people as they were all still wearing the same clothes. Friendships were forged in the hotel bar and rumours abounded of when Heathrow would reopen, whether Frankfurt would close, whether we would be home for Christmas.

Hotel staff tried to keep us amused by sending us en masse to the town's Christmas market. Off we trooped through the snow. The local gluhwein drinkers were seen giving their empty glasses a bemused glance as a group of veiled Bahraini women walked past, followed by a British girl with flip-flops and shower caps on her feet wrapped in a Crown Plaza duvet. You had to hand it to her for improvisation.

Monday morning brought good news. Heathrow was open. We landed. We cheered. We stopped. We couldn't get to the terminal because of the snow. The entertainment system was switched back on (never a good sign). We waited. An hour later, the plane shuffled forward and the terminal was in sight. We stopped. The Sri Lankan Airways plane that was due to move off our stick had developed a serious technical problem. We would have to wait some more. At least I could finish the movie.

Heathrow was chaos. London was worse. We passed the poor, shivering passengers waiting in the five-hour-long queue for the Eurostar and boarded a train to Peterborough. I have never been so glad to get there.

We went shopping today. The queues were horrendous. I've forgotten how crowded the UK is.

"It will be a long wait," I told Isabelle.

"That's OK, mummy," she said. "In the past few days I've got used to waiting."