“We eventually got to Heathrow three hours later than scheduled, where we were to take another coach to Gatwick airport, our point of departure for Sicily…” and so everything goes south from there, writes CLIVE WILLIAMS.

MY wife and I had always wanted to go to sunny Sicily, the traditional home of the Cosa Nostra and Italian TV detective Montalbano. We had the opportunity in late May to go there for eight days.

The early morning journey from Devon started badly, with all UK travel being affected by a rail strike, but fortuitously we had booked on a National Express coach, so all should have been well. 

Unfortunately, it had a flat tyre near Reading, and – because of the rail strike – there was no replacement coach available, or space on other coaches heading to Heathrow.

We eventually got to Heathrow three hours later than scheduled, where we were to take another National Express coach to Gatwick airport, our point of departure for Sicily. 

It took the coach more than two hours to drive the 70 kilometres from Heathrow to Gatwick North Terminal. The rail strike had resulted in the roads being gridlocked with cars.

We got to Gatwick at 9.30pm where, fortunately, we had booked an airport hotel room because our EasyJet flight was due to depart at 6.30am. 

The departure part went well – apart from missing the hotel breakfast which started at 6am and not being able to buy a newspaper (only available at the terminal after 7am).

We boarded the flight on time at 6am. The flight time to Sicily was three hours – a doddle by Australian standards.

We arrived into Catania airport, Sicily, late morning, in heavy rain and stormy weather – this was to continue for most of the next eight days, resulting in widespread flooding and transport disruption.

Towards the end of our visit, one of the highlights was going to be travelling up Mount Etna – which is still an active volcano. When we got there, we found that travel beyond the parking lot was not being permitted because of “unusual seismic activity”. Instead, we walked around some of the lower-level craters.

We then went on to Catania, our place of departure, where we had booked rooms at the airport for two nights so we could do the one-day “Montalbano” tour. The tour takes in the areas where the TV series is filmed. 

However, Sicily Grand Tours cancelled the tour at the last minute on advice from the government about even-worse weather to come.

Not to be deterred from enjoying our last full day in “sunny” Sicily, we spent the day in downtown Catania dodging heavy rain showers. 

While we were at a Lidl store, it suddenly went dark at midday. It turned out to be a volcanic dust storm from an eruption on Etna. 

The fine volcanic ash grit gets everywhere, including into cameras and eyes.

Late afternoon, we made our way back to our accommodation at the airport. When we got there, we found the airport had been closed because of the fine dust in the air and on the runways. Incoming flights were being diverted to Palermo and elsewhere.

The next day we optimistically went at 9.30am to Terminal A for our scheduled 11.35am flight back to Gatwick. We saw a long queue stretching down the road outside the terminal. It turned out to be the queue for the security check. We spent more than two hours shuffling along in line. It took longer than it should have done because of people pushing in. Italians are passive about queue jumping; Australians would have been much less tolerant.

After three hours, we finally got through security and immigration to arrive at the very crowded international holding lounge for our flight. Very little flight information was available there. 

Our EasyJet flight (we later learned from the pilot) had been diverted to Palermo where the original crew ran out of flying hours and had to be replaced by another crew from Luton. 

Even so, our aircraft arrived into Catania only three hours late and we departed four and a half hours late.

Inevitably, our arrival into Gatwick was similarly late, so we missed our train connections, and our train tickets would not let us through the barrier. 

A sympathetic rail worker opened the barrier gates for us and let us through. We managed to get on a train to Clapham Junction, where we took the next train at 8.27 pm to Devon.

The ticket inspector on the train could have made us pay for new tickets but accepted our expired tickets. The train stopped at all stations, and it became clear by 11pm that it would arrive at Exeter city after the last bus had left at 11.29 pm.

We therefore got off the train earlier, at Honiton, a small town closer to our destination. However, we found that at 11.30 pm in a country town on a Monday night there were no taxis or Ubers to be had. That meant staying the night if we could find somewhere open – or waiting for the first bus at 6am.

Luckily, we met a Good Samaritan in the high street who had just had a successful sea fishing trip for mackerel. He kindly offered to drive us the 20 kilometres to our destination. We finally got there around 12.30am and, despite his protestations, insisted on reimbursing him for his trouble.

There’s certainly nothing like an arduous holiday to make one appreciate being at home – and of course, the random kindness of strangers.

Clive Williams is a Canberra columnist