Volcanic cloud travel chaos? South Devon artist Ben Yates' story: from Budapest, home

By PRSD, on Friday, May 14, 2010

South Devon artist Ben Yates was caught up in the volcanic cloud transport chaos. He was stuck in Budapest, and set out to get home overland…

It was Wednesday, April 14 when news reached me of the disruptions due to the volcano. My girlfriend, Viktoria, and I were on a trip to Budapest at the time and were due to fly back on Sunday. Of course Sunday came around and not wishing to get stranded I demanded that we made alternative arrangements. The best option we found was a bus to Paris that left at 6pm and arrived 24 hours later.

Munich was rather quiet at about 3am. We saw Stuttgart as it was waking up – nicely landscaped, mostly classic architecture and peppered with street art. Strasburg seemed beautiful – straddling the Rhine, plenty of bright, modern architecture, and some very futuristic trams. After that we crossed into France where we found enormous crop fields and beautiful watercolour villages.

Up to this point, I’d been perfectly entranced by the all but sleepless journey and the slowly changing landscape, but the French countryside, beautiful though it was, was utterly monotonous.

Finally, after pulling up somewhere outside the Gallieni bus station in Paris half an hour late, we leapt into action but found we could get no further that evening. Dejected & aching in various places, we bought tickets on the first train the next day (Tuesday) to St Malo and traipsed into the capital to find meagre lodgings for the night.

Having never been to Paris before I was more than happy to use this opportunity to see as much of its magnificent sights as possible, and four hours later (1am) we succumbed to our awe and exhaustion, and slept.

The next day the TGV reached St Malo at 10:40am but again we found it impossible to get any further. We purchased a ticket for Portsmouth the following morning, and then we could afford a leisurely afternoon walking along the beach and window shopping in the old town until tiredness overcame again.

The ferry ride was pleasant enough and provided me with the only comfortable chair of the journey. My parents were kind enough to pick us up, so the trip finally ended at 9:30pm Wednesday (78 hours, door to door). These couple of days spent on this compulsory vacation have been fretful and frustrating, yet at times a blissfully free-spirited journey, blessed with far better weather than the previous dutiful week spent in Hungary.

Other travellers we encountered were of course having a hard time of it. At the ferry port we were queuing behind these girls from London who had been making their way from Malta for four days via Tunisia, Gibraltar, and then hiring a car to drive the length of France. It’s been a very expensive, extended disruption for an enormous number of people, but still, in the peaceable, comfortable West, it feels like it may have brought those whose lives have been thrown into disarray a little closer to each other.

• You can see more of Ben’s writing and artwork at his studio during the Six Days of Art, more details at the Teign Artists’ site

(images from the top: Crossing the Danube in Budapest; A tower in Vienna; Sunrise at a pitstop near Ulm; Notre Dame and The Seine; Finally Leaving the continent on a ferry; and, Arrival on UK shores by Ben Yates)