There's No Place Like Home

I took the photograph above because I wanted to show the brilliant blue sky - even now just an hour or so before sunset - and say something along the lines of “see, you can’t see any volcanic ash here”. But then I really looked into the distance and saw it on the horizon. Just under the blue, between the roof of the house behind us and the trees, you can see a haze that isn’t normally there. It’s the fallout from the ash cloud that is causing all the chaos here.

Most of Northern Europe is pretty much a no fly zone and has been since Thursday morning. The timing isn’t good. Europe is just at the end of the Easter Holidays, prime travelling time for families, and this is the weekend most people return home in time for the schools re-opening on Monday. But most people are going nowhere fast. One of them is our son, stuck in Greece with a group from his college. He is one of thousands of people unable to travel home - some of whom are sleeping in airports with absolutely nowhere else to go. Thank God my son’s group have found accommodation in Athens, but the latest word is that they can’t expect to be home anytime before next Wednesday.

It’s a very weird feeling because there is absolutely nothing I can do to get him home any faster. We are the sort of folks who, when faced with a crisis, rush into action and get round the problem. For example, we were once stuck in Nice due to industrial action by our airline. We hired a car, drove all across France, got the ferry to England and a lift to our car which was waiting at the airport. But not only is it much more sensible for him to stay with his group, most trains and ferries are fully booked - so much so they are telling people without pre-booked tickets to stay away. To read the latest report from the BBC (at time of writing) click here. It gives you a better idea of what the effect of this seemingly innocuous event is really like.

So our son is having an extended holiday in Athens - not a completely bad thing, except in terms of having enough clean clothes and cash - but very worrying when you are a mum at home waiting for his return. And from our son’s point of view, even when it comes to holidays you can have too much of a good thing!

But while this cloud might not have a silver lining, it sure is giving us some amazing sunsets. We have not had anything quite this spectacular where I live, but check out the gorgeous photographs of the volcanic sunsets Europe is seeing on Flickr by clicking here.