EGi has been enjoying stories from across the industry about heroic battles to make it back to the office from far-flung corners of the globe after Iceland’s volcanic ash eruption shut down air travel.
Firstly it has been useful to know that Savills’ Sadie Jane, a surveyor in the agent’s Birmingham office, is an Icelandic volcano expert who completed her dissertation at Cambridge on the unpronounceable volcano that has been erupting. She refers to it as “her volcano”.
It has been a mixed blessing for EG this week, with some press officers stranded abroad but others unable to take their planned holidays – Cushman & Wakefield stalwart Helen Basil is stranded in Thailand, but BDO’s Charlotte Freeman was unable to attend her sister’s wedding in Mexico and the Olympic Park Legacy Company’s chief press officer Andreas Christophorou has had to cancel a proposed holiday in Thailand.
Anyone going to INREV’s conference in Venice would have been disappointed – it was cancelled – and we hear that CB Richard Ellis capital markets chairman Greg Nicholson has been stuck in Bali – it’s been tough for some.
Five well-known property figures – John Woodman, senior partner of Malcolm Hollis; Digby Flower of CB Richard Ellis; Paul Jones of Tushingham Moore; James Rigg of Threadneedle Property Investments and JP Ledwidge of Bee Bee Developments – undertook a particularly arduous journey after all were to fly back from a holiday in Argentina last Friday.
Malcolm Hollis’s press office picks up the story: “With their flights back to London indefinitely postponed, the intrepid fivesome managed to get to Santiago in Chile and from there secured the last five seats on a flight back to Madrid in Spain.
“With Spanish airspace seemingly the only area in Europe unaffected by the ash cloud, Madrid had become an ersatz UK for the weekend, with British travellers everywhere trying to figure out the best way back to Blighty.
“After visiting what seemed like every car hire depot in the Spanish capital, the five property guys eventually tracked down two hire cars – one of which was a less-than-roomy Renault Clio – and started the long drive to Cherbourg. They even found time for a stopover in Biarritz (John Woodman: “Lovely at this time of year”) on the way.
“But arrival in Cherbourg brought its own problems. With every ferry fully laden, there was no option but to find an alternative means of getting across the Channel.
“With his own 8-metre rigid inflatable boat (RIB) moored on the south coast, John Woodman from Malcolm Hollis put a call in to a friend who promptly came over to Cherbourg to collect the five of them.
“There remained only two obstacles – the 100 km across the Channel back to the UK, and French customs. It was French customs, who took issue with five men leaving France on an eight-metre inflatable boat, that proved to be the hardest barrier to cross.
“Diplomatic negotiations took place and the group were eventually given the all-clear, arriving back on UK soil at midnight on Tuesday 21st – a full three days after they had left Cordoba.
John Woodman, senior partner of Malcolm Hollis, said: “They say it’s not the destination but the journey that’s important and I suppose, in its own little way, our trip back to the UK has proved this.
“Although it was incredibly frustrating, it was also at times good fun and I don’t think any of us had ever felt such a sense of achievement as when we got back to England.
“At Malcolm Hollis we always go the extra mile for our clients, but this journey, especially the RIB trip over the Channel, was in a different league.”
Charles Pease, a commercial director at SEGRO, Continental Europe, was working in Istanbul, Turkey last week and due to fly back on Friday morning. Fortunately, a difficult journey home at least led to Peese making some new friends.
He takes up the story: “All flights back to Paris were cancelled until Tuesday evening at the earliest. Luckily I met three other stranded travellers at my hotel, one of whom had flown in from Moscow and was trying to return to Manchester.
“We bought some of the last tickets to Barcelona with Turkish airlines. From Barcelona we hired a car and drove to Lyon where we spent the night in a hotel.
“We then took the train to Paris. Two of my companions had to get back to the UK, Cardiff and Manchester respectively.
“There were no available trains to Calais (and a rail strike) so they took the train to Lille. A work colleague based in Belgium picked them up from Lille and drove them to Calais.
“The ferries were not allowing foot passengers and so the husband of one drove from Cardiff to Calais to pick them both up and bring them across the channel.
“The other colleague arranged for one of his sales reps to drive him from Dover back to Manchester.
“He had started in Moscow on Thursday and got back to Manchester on Monday night via Istanbul, Barcelona, Lyon, Paris, Lille, Calais and Dover!
“We were all exhausted but my faith in human kindness, teamwork and spirit in the face of this unprecedented crisis has been fully restored and I made three new friends from this experience.”
Peter Gamble, director of international architectural practice Holder Mathias, completed a 48-hour journey travelling back from Kiev to London using every form of transport possible – apart from a plane.
Gamble flew out to Kiev on business from Heathrow Terminal 5 on Thursday 15 April and was due to fly home on the afternoon of Friday 16 April. However, a journey which should have taken them three hours, costing £250, ended up taking two days costing £750.
Gamble described the trip: “As news of the UK airports closing and the cancellation of my return flight, I assumed that I would be able to fly home on either Saturday or Sunday, unaware at this point of the scale of the challenge before me.
“My initial attempts to secure an air ticket from Kiev to Nice and to travel from there were thwarted as Kiev airport simply shut shop.
“A friendly taxi driver managed to get me a train ticket to Berlin through his contact who worked at the central station. This was a stroke of luck as I was competing with 5,000 delegates from a commercial flower show who were trying to get out of Kiev at the same time.
“On the Polish-German border, the train I was on was condemned as unfit to enter Germany, so I jumped onto a smart German commuter train heading for Berlin Ostbahnhaf.
“Here, I changed trains again for one heading for Brussels, picking up my onward Berlin – Brussels tickets from a travel consultant who met me at Berlin Hauptbahnhaf for a quick hand-over as the train waited at the station.
“It soon became apparent that the amount of train tickets sold via the internet for the Berlin – Brussels route far exceeded the capacity of the train as everyone struggling to get back to the UK had the same idea, so I was bumped off at Koln to finish the journey via coach.
“In Brussels, it was immediately clear that getting home via the Eurostar was a lost cause, so I hired a car to take me to Calais. Just 50km from Calais, the car broke down so I was forced to complete the final leg of my road trip via taxi.
“The last part of my journey was surprisingly the easiest, and despite the media hype I managed to get onto a P&O ferry bound for Dover with not as much difficulty as expected. I was then picked up by taxi the other end and managed to make it back to London – 48 hours after I started my journey.
“Despite the inconvenience, the challenge of getting home was certainly exciting, and I succeeded in getting through it with the help of my colleagues across Europe and new friends I met along the way.
“Most people I met in the same situation were dealing with it through a mixture of stoicism and good humour.”
paul.norman@estatesgazette.com
