Weather Again

[roofless]

So I left La Rochelle at about 5 o clock English time yesterday... After an hour or so on the plane, having begun to wonder why the same piece of ground went round and round we had to land in Bournemouth because of these apparently massive storms (apparently because I missed them not because I don't believe it!) around London. We weren't allowed off the plane because it's apparently illegal for us to get off, and it was about an hour before they would allow people to have water... not got a problem with the plane people by the way they did the best they could, although maybe being allowed to stretch our legs and eat while sitting on the ground for 3 1/2 hours might have made the experience a bit more pleasurable. And when we finally landed in Stansted 5 hours after taking off, and 4 hours later than we should have landed, we couldn't get off the plane for about 10 minutes cus we had to wait for a bus, although by this point I would gladly have walked.
So the thing that's annoyed me about the weather is after this apparent storm you would think the weather would settle down and it would be comfortable to sleep at night again, but it is still to frickin hot poo sticks!!!

[bonehead]

We had a rain shower here yesterday ... so I deliberately went for a walk in it. I'm a cheapskate - cheaper than popping into the bathroom shower :-)

The bus thing is a safety issue, roof. Airline companies don't want young, energetic, can't wait to stretch my legs customers (or even old buggers like me) wandering around the tarmac. They'd rather send out a bus in controlled conditions to get you or anyone else from A to B. Some flights into Manchester are notorious for this. You sit around on a plane for what seems like ages, deplane, get pointed towards a bus ... which drives you 30 yards to a door that you could have walked to all by yourself 20 mins ago! Annoying but an understandable precaution.

[roofless]

Well now the bus thing wasn't my major beef wit the whole incident!

[medibot]

Poor roofless

I had a similar incident in greece a few years ago caused by fog and utter incompetence that added a day to the holiday and involved a lot of sitting in a very hot plane waiting to be flown to another Greek island to do the same again and get some crap free dinner.

[Giggy of Telford]

When I went to America in 2004 we had an interesting flight on the way back.

Just as we got over the Atlantic ocean someone was ill on the flight, we had to turn around and stop off at the nearest airport, a small one in Canada, can't have seen more than a few planes a week there so they weren't too sure what to do with a transatlantic jumbo jet stopped by with an ill passenger.

They were taken off the plane and to the nearest hospital but because of clearance we spent an hour or two stuck on the tarmac, the tvs had switched off, we weren't allowed out of our standard economy class seats for any reason and it was the middle of the night, and unlike me everyone else was asleep, I was too until my mum kindly chose to wake me to tell me what was going on.

The flight took 2 hours in the end compared to the standard 9 or 10 it should take, on the plus side I've now been in Canada (though not officially as we had to stay on the plane.)

[Col ISIHAC.]

Don't do planes!

The weather did have an effect on a trip to Satanage last Thursday though - by car!

What should have been a reasonably straightforward amble up the A3 from Portsmouth, round a bit of the M25 & an even smaller bit of the A1(M) was fecked by a series of Bad Things

Firstly, J10 of the M25 was shut when we got to it - that's the bit where the A3 meets the worlds largest car park, folks. Someone had had a shunt and the stretch clockwise between junctions 10 & 11 was closed. Now, In and around our Capital, all you get in the se circumstances is an instruction to go away! In this case, all we got was an instruction to "Use the A3" which goes into the City NOT around it. Nothing more; nothing helpful like "Diverted traffic this way, thank you very much" or "Here folks, the M25 is this way!" All I had available was one of those large Halfords style road maps - which 'aint exactly designed to enable on the spot changes of route in and around major cities

Now the weather decided to join in. Torrential rain, visibility nil, and as we crawl around Kingston and other places that should only actually BE reserved for a rainy day, my poor driver-in-chief has to negotiate a number of lakes that have appeared in the road - and I mean lakes; not puddles. One poor little Kia was seen a-floating off into the distance at one point. Looked like it was turning right, actually, but I'm assured that it was floating ;D Fortunately, Dory has a vehicle suited to her avatar - and we made it through water that came up to the top of the wheel arches at times - but the queuing went on and on and on... And we were getting later and later.

More rain, more diversions, more stress & hassle - and a journey that started at 5:15 took until 9:45 to complete! We wanted to be at our destination by half seven or just after

I should add that the reason for making the journey was a sound one - the remainder of the evening served to make it worth all the sh*t in order to hear two top quality musicians play live; and just to prove a point, the journey home took about 90 minutes, on clear dry roads in a car that HATES crawling, but loves cruising Just like its driver

[roofless]

Yea I did hear that there had been knee high flooding around here... I admittedly knew there had been storms and got back to my flat just to assume someone had watered the plants... I can be a really dense idiot sometimes!

[peekay]

It's chucking it down here right now.