I’d love to be showing you photos of blue skies, impressive swells, and big bass - but my flight never went so I’m at home

I bloody knew there was every chance my flight wasn’t going to take off around the middle of last week when my iPhone app XCWeather started to show rumblings of that storm Isha we got over the weekend. I was obviously hoping that either the app was completely wrong or that the forecasted winds would come in later, but then when the BBC and so on started to talk about serious winds coming in for Sunday down here I started to get a bad feeling about getting to Portugal…………….

As I said the other day, a couple of mates are already out there, then a couple of others flew out of Gatwick first thing Sunday morning (and somewhat smugly sent me photos of a Ryanair plane sitting on the tarmac at Faro in perfectly blue skies!). Muggins here was booked out of Newquay at about 4pm on Sunday, and although I was worried that the flight wouldn’t go I obviously had to be packed and at the airport just in case the winds weren’t as bad as the forecast suggested. When I pulled into the car parking at Newquay airport - no refund available, cheers for nothing Newquay! - the wind was frigging howling, but I knew that “our” Ryanair plane had left Faro in Portugal so it was on its way.

We checked in without any hassle, for all the up to date information we are meant to be able to access these days, there was nothing relayed to us at all at the airport. Another Ryanair flight did land in the increasingly strong winds which I think was from Dublin, but still no news from anybody about anything Portugal related. I didn’t think we were going anywhere and the mother and son I got talking to found out on their plane tracking app that “our” plane suddenly diverted away from Newquay and in fact ended up landing at Stansted. As I said at the top, I bloody knew we weren’t flying - which I know is easy to say with the benefit of hindsight.

Eventually Newquay airport kicked into gear and to be fair to them there was very little they could do to get us sorted. We were given various pretty useless options, so after a bit of thinking and searching around I took the decision to head for home and try to change flights to depart from somewhere else the next day. This didn’t work out and I wasn’t prepared to shell out a load more money on extra tickets, baggage charges, car parking and fuel when there were no guarantees of getting out there or getting any refunds for not flying on Sunday evening…………….

Which means that I am here at home and I am missing out on a week in SW Portugal. I used to spend three to four months a year flying around the world for work so I am used to delays and cancellations and so on. Of course I am gutted not to be bass fishing out in Portugal with a bunch of thoroughly good people, but my heart attack last year helps to put a lot of things into a slightly different perspective than before. I am alive, life carries on, there is always later in the year or next year, I get to be with my family here at home, I got to do another heart rehab gym session last night, I might get to have a go for a bass around here if the bloody weather ever behaves, and I vented any frustrations I felt about not getting out there by going out for a run before lunch on Monday and taking thirty seconds off my fastest 5k time. Damn it felt good, and never for one second did I ever imagine myself saying that about running!