Given all the weather problems in the UK over the last few years at this time of year I have been pretty lucky to have got through my plans each time. This past festive season has seen some of the mildest weather I’ve ever known at this time of year but that all changed three days ago.

When I got back from the Leicester game at Crystal Palace thought immediately turned to the following days trip up to Glasgow by plane in the wee early hours. This was to be my first ever trip to Scotland having never bothered as I always thought (when I lived in England) that I could go there anytime really. My flight was from London Gatwick on January 3rd at 7.15am which caused more heartache than I had realised prior to booking it. My mate Marchy lives in London and I just assumed there would be a tube station near his but due to the differet type of rock beneath the surface in that area of south-east London there aren’t too many underground stations. Thankfully he offered to give me a lift to a station in Greenwich from where I took a couple of lines to the Airport.

All was going well apart from a bit of a wait for the gate number of my flight to be announced. When I got on the plane the captain announced that it was very, very windy up in Scotland and that there was a chance that we may not be able to land but he was gonna give it a go anyway. I don’t think myself or anybody else really thought too much about those words until he repeated them once we were up in the sky………….and then just as we were (probably) on the border of Scotland he announced that it was bad news up north and that we had no choice but to fly back to Gatwick. I was pretty stunned but what can you do eh?! The rest of the passengers seemed to be in reasonable spirits under the circumstances though that was pushed to the limit with the worst ever descend back into the Airport. There was so much turbulence during the latter stages of the flight that I was on the brink of being sick. 

Finally back on the ground I was wondering what would happen and as it was I could have got on a flight to get back up to Glasgow for about 3pm but given that I was to be going on to Edinburgh early evening there didn’t see much point. I pointed out to the staff that I had a flight from Edinburgh to Paris the following day but it wasn’t possible to exchange the tickets for one just going to the French capital. I guess I was lucky enough to be able to change my original destination to Edinburgh but the afternoon flight was busy so I ended up having to wait till 5.30pm for that which was nearly seven hours away!