Or how to keep yourself amused when you are forced to wait at Gatwick airport for several hours. I have not flown for ages, until this week. We booked a two day break to Amsterdam using an Easyjet flight from  Gatwick last Wednesday, maybe not such a good idea in early February – as I will explain.  First the weather: dire weather forecast all the previous week warned of Arctic conditoons in Britain and they were right! On Monday morning we awoke to find five inches of snow had fallen and the transport system had ground to a halt.  There were no trains from our part of West Sussex into London, there were no buses at all in London, and Gatwick airport was closed all day as the runway was covered in snow.

With 48 hours to go these potential travel delays were making me anxious. We were due to travel by train to the airport, so there were two stages of the journey that could go wrong.  On Tuesday the snow melted away, although air travel and train travel was not running normally.  Still no through trains to London, though: everyone had to take a shuttle service to Three Bridges and then wait for a connection.  By Wednesday morning the reports were better and the sun was shining so we set off in good time to the railway station.  Our train arrived on time and we settled down for the one hour ride on Southern Trains to Gatwick. The conductor came round the carriage twice, checked tickets and exchanged some witty banter with the kids but made no mention of any problems with the rest of our journey. So we were surprised when, as the train had just stopped at the last station before the airport, a startled announcer told us “this train is terminating here.  Please leave the train and go to Platform Four”. All the passengers had to disembark, walk downstairs and up again to a cold windy platform and wait ten minutes for an already full train.  In fact the wait was almost 20 minutes, as the estimated arrival time was changing constantly.  When the train finally arrived it was standing room only, of course. For me, the only consolation was the presence of three friendly dogs to cuddle during the short journey.  This is a great stress buster: even though we allowed extra time for the journey it is sorrying when the journey is disrupted in this way. In the end we arrived at Gatwick airport two hours before our scheduled departure time. Read my next post for the rest of the saga – Votive candle holders were required in the end…

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