Inside Rear Cover

Our driver said that he could not take us to Glasgow as the UK law states that there should be 2 drivers and a flushing toilet and he was on his own with no toilet. Having arrived at Dover just after midday the bus took off to Gatwick and 2 and a half hours later we were dumped at the front door of Gatwick Airport by this time the stress and strain was beginning to show on 3 of us, 1 didn’t really have a care in the world and in hindsight he was right and we were wrong. However at the time when we realised that Thomson had obviously not organised the Calais and UK side of the travelling as best as they should all 4 of us decided to quickly hire a car from Hertz which we duly did and by 1 o’clock in the afternoon we were on our way to East Kilbride where we arrived exhausted, having been in the same clothes for 3 days, unshaven and hadn’t even brushed our teeth. You can imagine the sight of us when we went into a UK service station to change drivers just outside Manchester. However it was all worthwhile in the long run and we arrived home on Wednesday evening at 7.30pm and I am sure that all of us must have slept for a full 24 hours. We were warned by one of my colleagues that we would all suffer the next day with motion sickness and he was absolutely correct, it took yet another 12 hours of that to subside and by Friday 23rd April 2010 we were fit to attend Rotary at the Stewartfield Farm.

As an aside I would like to thank Liam Donnelly and Ian Macpherson for allowing me to text them on a constant basis to keep us sane and the jokes back from both of them kept our brains active and as a sample of this I did ask Ian Macpherson when we were arriving at Lyon how far were we from Calais his reply being “miles and miles”. When I told Liam Donnelly that all 1,200 of us were going to be bused to Calais: his reply being “must be some size of a bus!”

Thankfully we are all home, back into the land of the living only to realise that the ash cloud is still there and could be with us for some 2 years before it dissipates completely but if given the option if it happened again to stay for another week and fly home or travel the way we did, I think I would stay in Magaluf and be bored.

Editor :-Thanks Ian for a light hearted report on your adventure in Majorca

'In aw yer time oan the caurs, have ye ever had an accident, Aggie?' asked a regular on the number 14 to Kelvingrove. 'Nut one,' replied Aggie emphatically. 'Ah wid 0' thought it could be a right dangerous joab, especially oan a Saturday night.'

'Well,' admitted Aggie. 'Ah've been hit o'er the heid wi' a handbag, had a bag 0' chips tossed at me, an' ma ankle nipped by a wee dug.' 'An' ye don't call these accidents?' 'Nut on yer life. The Awe did it on purpose!'