Plains, trains and automobiles

Wow, what a long weekend this has been.

First off was the whole "alleged" terrorist alert that has screwed up the entire airways network for the UK.

I bet that it wasn't the brainchild of many terminal bosses as it has totally sliced through their sales revenue of things to buy at the airports before you fly.

no one can buy so much as a mars bar before they go through security and that's not a good thing if you run the WHSmiths on the wrong side of the line.

When I arrived in Belfast I then got the update that the barracks was not actually in or near Belfast, but more closer to Londonderry - and for those whose Irish geography is not top notch I suggest you go and get a map to look at how far apart they are.

I wasn't impressed with the Irish hospitality of the north and especially not the rubbish manner of which the main Victoria bus station staff tried to convince me that I had missed the ghost bus.

Oh, they didn't call it a ghost bus, but as I was standing right in front of the bay where it was due from fifteen minutes before it arrive to ten minutes after it was due to leave I'm pretty damn sure that id didn't come in. But when I asked they said that I must have missed it.

So its my guess that it was a ghost bus as it came, dropped off imaginary passengers, collected more spooks and then left again without me or anyone else ( after all I wasn't the only one waiting for it !!! ) even catching a whiff of it.

Perhaps I should have started looking for black cats.

Oh, and on the way back I must mention that your not likely to find the end of a rainbow as from the air I could see it move across the land and thus never having a final resting place its almost impossible for anyone to catch it fast enough to get the pot of gold.

After a few more mishaps, and their taxi bases are also ghost bases as although you can find a stop off or pick up point, you certainly cant find anyone to ask for a quote from one town to another if you manage to miss a bus.

After half an hour more I managed to catch the bus and go over to Londonderry.

From there I got the next updated "location" from Mitchell and this was that he was near a blue shop outside of some other town nearby, and it was just a relief when I spotted him right by the shop as my bus drove past. What didn't impress me is just minutes before on the same bus I passed an airport.

So what stopped him from just going to that airport and flying home ... because his uncle - who lives at the barracks, didn't even know it existed. What a ******.

Anyway, we managed to meet up at about 4 pm which meant that it was close to eight pm when we got back to Belfast, and missed all the shops being open so I had no shaving stuff for the entire trip now - and had begun starting to look like the wolf man.

We grabbed a movie and then it was back to the hotel to drop him off before I went for a midnight stroll.

Despite having a map and having done a tiny bit of research before hand I found a dry old town with places chucking out at midnight regardless of the 24 hour drinking rules and it being Ireland.

I didn't see many nightclubs that were worth a quick fling and I was only glad that my hotel room was booked beforehand as it was full up by about nine pm.

The following morning we barely had time to watch another movie and go play bowling before we had to catch a bus to the airport. No ghost buses this time. And why had we watching another film??? Well neither of us are religious and there is not much else to do on a Sunday in Ireland

The airport was a bit of a nuisance, but not as busy as Stansted. Delayed due to a missing passenger and thus a security check on the entire cargo hold meant that we had missed our connecting trains. This could have been ignored if we could have had hand luggage, but oh no ... We have to put our tiny bags in the hold because of the silly new rules !!! Bah, humbug.

Stansted express, couple of tubes and then a long train journey was the best we could do that night. Bad as we were then going to have to get a taxi for at least an hour at two am to complete the journey and that was never going to be cheap.

Thank my lucky stars for the movie phone with websearch ability. It meant that I could scope out a few hotels and taxi firms (among other things) while we were training it so that the delay was minimal.

A few hours sleep in a hotel before we walked to check in Mitchell for his final flight home. Once he was all aboard, and I so wanted to strangle a rude and massively unhelpful Etihad employee then it was back to the hotel for more sleep, before back home again via a few more trains.