Manchester Has Increased Volcanicity!

VOLCANIC: Icelandic volcano spews ash all over Europe

BATHED in sun in one of Eastern Europe’s finest cities, in an upbeat beer garden in mid-Easter, the last thing you expect to hear is that a volcano has erupted and closed down airspace all over the continent and more importantly for me, Manchester. But the massive ash cloud that engulfed most of Europe’s airspace has had far reaching after affects on the home of Eccles cakes and Oasis. Jonathan Brown reports...

Possibly the most depressing site I have ever witnessed in my life was the departure boards at Prague Airport. Hundreds of flights all not so subtly marked with massive red capital letters as “CANCELLED”. Thousands of dreary prospective passengers litter the terminals sat on their bags, looking as if they’re contemplating whether they might be able to get a pilots licence and fly home before budget airlines can seat them in squalor class stools on the next tin bird back home. Scenes that echoed across Europe.

GUTTED: Holiday makers stranded

News of volcanic proportions meant that me and my worse for wear friends had two options to get home, either at least an extended stay in the city with zero money or a four country trek back home in complete discomfort. Choosing the latter on a somewhat ill-advised whim, the gruelling £350 journey home began with a monstrous ten hour minibus ride to Paris in a cramped people carrier with six unwashed men and a Czech native driver, Chavros, who spoke little to no English.

But I was one of millions of travellers stranded across the continent with limited means with which to get home and in Manchester around 300,000 people due to fly in or out of the airport were stuck. The unprecedented closures have meant that people have had to resort to everything but horseback to get to their destination and for us, Chavros was only the first leg of a torturous, hunger ridden marathon. Being part of that statistic isn’t all fun and games I hasten to add but some Mancunians had to travel from as far as India by land to get back to the northern Mecca that is Manchester.

In fact of the 120,000 Brits who have been stranded abroad since the closures, some are still struggling to get home weeks after the airports were re-opened as for many who holidayed outside of Europe flight cancellations have sent them right to the back of the cue.

Manchester was also a scene of panic as travellers scrambled together plans to get home, meaning we weren’t the only ones reverting to the roads. Taxi services across the region got calls for huge cross country fares such as the Lynx taxi firm in Stockport who bagged a £3,600 fare for taking 21 Americans to Madrid on a 1,200 mile journey south. Amber Cars and Radio Cars Manchester have also taken punters as far as Dover and Hull for ferry crossings costing hundreds of pounds a piece.

Despite this it hasn’t been all good news for Mancunian cab drivers. For many, the everyday fares that they might get to and from the airport have fallen foul of the volcano, leaving hundreds of drivers sat at home watching slow motion replays of eruptions and listening to newsreaders attempting to pronounce Eyjafjallajokull on the local news.

It has to be said though, Czech cab driver Chavros didn’t look like complaining as he gleefully counted the 1,000 Euros that we reluctantly paid him for our 650 mile journey to Paris. After a short four day break you cant help but curse your luck when on the second to last day all flights across Europe are grounded because of a volcano.

Despite our evident self pity and the fact that Chavros was starting to look like a somewhat broken man the more energy drinks he downed, the poor guy tried his very best to keep us in relatively high spirits at least. He attempted to cheer us up by talking to us about random Czech footballers and Manchester United in broken English but realistically the best near conversational offering I could return was a Haribo sweet which he duly gobbled up. Little did any of us know, however, that local sport back home was going to be affected in such a dramatic way.

Coincidentally during this first weekend of blanket closures the biggest game on the north-west’s footballing calendar was set to take place, the huge local derby between Manchester United and Manchester City. This clash of the titans was certainly a must see for any seven of your average Manchester based travelling students, stranded hundreds of miles away from home and we were no exception. But even something as localised as 22 mainly foreign, overpaid footballers playing for two local teams was interrupted somewhat by Thor’s volcano.

The scheduled referee for the game, Steve Bennett, happened to be another of the thousands stranded abroad, this time in Romania as he attended a refereeing course in the days prior to the momentous match. The game still went ahead after a last minute reshuffle but this was nothing compared to the lengths some of the area’s sports had to go to make sure their games went ahead.

Salford City Reds rugby team endured a torrid case of bad timing as they had a hugely important Challenge Cup fixture away in the south of France scheduled for that weekend against Catalan Dragons. With the sport’s governing body keen for the fixture to go ahead, Salford found themselves with little option but to make the arduous drive south to Perpignan or face some unhappy executives. Club spokesman, Paul McNally, helped to organise the trip and feels that some used the passion for their local team to make the trip against the odds, “It hit the fans quite hard because a few had booked flights, but some of the hardcore still managed to drive down which is beyond the call of duty really,” he said.

The teams journey was a mammoth one as they battled to keep the players from getting muscle cramps, “It took 37 hours of coach travel to get there and around five and a half days for the round trip instead of the normal hour flight each way,” Paul explained. “They stopped frequently every two hours or so to stretch and for breaks and they stopped in a couple of hotels along the way.”

It really isn’t hard to imagine how much discomfort the players must have been in, as they average 6 foot-plus in height and each weigh about the same as a pet elephant, but they had to make do. Paul added: “They even did rotas as to who could sleep in the isles to get a kip.”

Overall however there are some positives to be taken from the whole experience as the players became more of a unit through the almost week long trek to Perpignan and back. “Talking to the lads it wasn’t all bad, it was a good laugh in periods and there was a lot of team bonding going on,” he continues. “I mean they work together every day but they don’t live with each other and that’s what they had to do.”

So in some ways I can sympathise with the Salford players in that it is terribly uncomfortable in a cramped bus for such a long time despite the fact that their coach was full of luxuries but then again I’m sure they didn’t receive as cold reception as we did in Paris. Ice cold in fact. As when I arrived in Paris, the world’s most romantic city, it wasn’t as breath taking as I’d imagined partly due to me being freezing cold and accompanied by a plethora of similarly sweat ridden, grumpy lads with nowhere to go at 4am. However after giving up on sleep that night our journey took us, like many other Britons, to Galliene train and coach station where we were met with yet more knackered tourists. Dragging our carcasses off the train we spotted the line of travellers queued in hope, as one after the other they got to the front and shouted forcefully at the miniscule lady behind the coach station’s customer service desk. It wasn’t looking good. However through a well over due stroke of luck all seven of us managed to secure golden tickets to London via a ferry and a tiny in comparison six hour coach journey.

Thousands of Brits abroad also tried their hand at catching coaches home to Manchester, as we did. In fact 23 children and parents from St Catherine’s RC Primary School negotiated a 1,500 mile road trip through France back to Didsbury after having been stranded by that pesky volcano. The group of youngsters hopped on the ferry and thankfully got home in one piece as locals rallied to get back to the wind swept climbs of not so sunny Manchester from all over Europe.

SAVIOUR: Chorlton youngsters rescued by navy

Other school children also took to the seas somewhat more spectacularly in search of home. A group of pupils and parents from St John’s Primary School in Chorlton, who were on an exchange trip, became stranded in Porto as a result of the thickening ash crisis. Eight children and their parents had to get a 300 mile taxi ride to Santander on the coast of Spain where they were met by a British Navy warship, the HMS Albion. The immense ship was also carrying 500 British troops returning from Afghanistan, which to be fair sounds a lot more fun than my sweaty crawl back to Manchester.

So thankfully with supportive schools the spirit of Manchester helped to bring home the areas youngsters but others weren’t so lucky, causing absences that threatened school closures as teachers and pupils struggled to return home. Councillor John Warmisham, Salford’s lead member for children’s services has worked immensely hard to keep local schools running smoothly as hundreds of Greater Manchester’s teachers became marooned abroad. He explained: “I think one of our secondary schools actually had 10 teachers missing which is obviously a large number but all credit to them, they actually managed to find cover and keep the school open.

“We’ve been lucky that the old British bulldog spirit has meant that a lot of the curriculum areas have been covered as all the members of staff missed free periods and helped out classes in rotation to prepare pupils for the busy exam period.”

So clearly the spirit and togetherness of school workers to cover classes is a great example of how Greater Manchester has shown its community traits. Cllr Warmisham is also confident that because of the way local teachers have acted, the crisis won’t get the better of exam results, “The staff are really geared up to help our young people achieve the best and I think we’ll make sure that for any work that has been missed, they’ll be able to catch up,” he said.

Having finally touched down in blighty the TV news channels erupted with more and more stories of anguish, as families across Greater Manchester and beyond missed weddings and funerals. In fact some local schools were also caught up in the crisis by being run via telephone or email as head teachers were stuck abroad but the area was in anything but meltdown.

And after a short train journey from London, me and my travelling friends became some of the many holiday makers filtering back into Manchester’s Oxford Street Station that Sunday afternoon. The sun wasn’t shining, the clouds were heavy and the rain was threatening a typical northern welcome home party, all that was needed now was some chips and gravy. Manchester has never looked so good.

The eventual six day closure of Manchester airport culminated in it losing £4.2 million in revenue as hundreds of thousands of people scheduled to go through the airport were well and truly stuck with nowhere to go. Salford City Red’s players endured a five and a half day round trip to Perpignan at a heavy financial cost. Greater Manchester’s schools were short on staff and pupils and local industry such as taxi firms and travel companies lost money but essentially nothing stopped. Schools stayed open, sportsmen made their games and people got home. Manchester has suffered both economically and educationally to some degree yet it has come through a difficult time with flying colours.

The communal spirit of Greater Manchester has brought the area through this rough patch as people from all walks of life have battled the odds to beat the Icelandic volcano that has brought most of Europe to a stand still. We have a lot to be proud of and thankful for in Manchester and after all it could have been worse, it’s not like a volcano went off... oh wait.