Heading out for my summer holidays with a group of friends to Corfu, it was a holiday that we'd been looking forward too for many months. Living in Nottingham we'd decided to fly from Gatwick due to the holiday package being much cheaper from there. So off we set one Friday morning, myself driving, and as soon as we got on the M1 we hit traffic. 'This is going to be a longgggg journey' piped up one of my friends. How very true this proved too be.
Battling through the M1 traffic, we then found the M25 to be even worse. Finally arriving at Gatwick around 6 hours later, we parked up, jumped on the shuttle bus and away we went. Arriving in the departure lounge a peek up to the departure board 'Corfu - delayed'. Nooooooo!!!
There was no other option shopping it was.
Finally boarding the plane several hours later, we were on our way to Greece in the middle of the night instead of the day. Let the holiday and relaxing begin.How very wrong we were! After a straightforward flight we landed on the island of Corfu, we made it through baggage control and into arrivals. The arrivals lounge was packed with fellow tourists. An announcement came over the tannoy system 'Due to a bus drivers strike there are no coach transfers, please wait outside where groups will be taxied to the port and you will catch a boat to your destination. This is not what you want to hear at 5.30am after a long day travelling.
After joining quite possibly the longest queue I've ever seen eventually the 5 of us piled into a taxi and off to the port we went. Getting onto a rather rickety boat I honestly thought the crew were going to ask us to help row the boat!!! We were told the journey to our resort would take around an hour by boat. The only bonus was we got to see a spectacular sunrise. Having a little snooze on the boat we all woke to find that our next mode of transport was a minibus sent by our hotel. ' I just need my bed' one of my blurry eyed, weary travelling companions said. Didn't we all!
After starting out on our journey over 12 hours previously I have never been happier to arrive at a hotel in my life....to get to Greece it had required a car, bus, plane, taxi, boat and minibus! I've never quite had a journey like it.
L Stafford
