The 793 Hour Journey Home…
Having lived my life just 15 minutes from a main UK airport, I knew that moving to a small island in the Canaries would be a little more tricky when it came to travel- but the peace and beauty of La Gomera is so worth it, right?
My autumn touring was over and I was exhausted; a massive adrenaline comedown mixed with a month of sleep deprivation doesn’t make for the most functional of humans.
Who would’ve thought Covid would make travel more difficult? I’d woken up almost every morning at 4am in a cold sweat, dreaming that I’d filled in a passenger locator form wrong. I saw every person who breathed near me as a potential threat to the tour, and let’s not even mention the guy taking his mask off on a plane to cough and splutter without restraint.
Happily, we’d got through the shows with a minimum of cancellations, but I was SO TIRED - I’d fallen asleep standing up one night, which was a first for me. I had one last job to do for the tour - to pay in some cash - and then I had to go and collect the car documents I’d left sitting in Tenerife for a year...
So, I stayed in Tenerife for one night, planning to get everything done the next morning then fly HOME!
40-minute flight Tenerife-Gomera. Super easy, right?
I get to the bank at 11.00 to pay in the cash. Wait outside for my turn with my suitcase, feeling as much of a bedraggled train wreck as I look. Half an hour later I get inside the bank.
“Oh sorry, we don’t take cash payments after 10:30. But you can use the ATM outside to pay the money in.”
I drag the suitcase back out, and start paying in the money.
I put in €2,000 and the machine breaks. Nothing’s showing in my account, but the money’s gone.
I drag my case back inside. “Hey so the machine took my money. Please can you help?”
“Hmm no, not until we shut.”
“So…do I get a receipt? Or something that says the machine’s broken? Or any kind of confirmation that I’ve just paid in €2,000?”
“No, sorry. We’ll phone you later if we find it.”
Now I’m not going to just walk out , so a stand-off ensues. I pride myself on not losing my temper, but I was exhausted, hot and sweaty, sick of being at the bank and I just wanted to go home, so I threw my toys out of the pram and point-blank refused to leave until I had something in writing. The guy ignored me and brought in the next customer who complained that the machine had taken his money too, saying, “It does this all the time!” Right! Now I had backup! In the end the teller backed down, and agreed to stamp a piece of paper for me saying they were investigating – what a result.
I start dragging my 27kg suitcase to the car-docs place and almost halfway there I get a phone call.
“Hey, we looked inside the machine. We have your money. The machine broke because you put a coin in, tucked inside all the notes.”
Needing to eat humble pie doesn’t even come CLOSE. Shamefacedly, I dragged my suitcase back to the bank and collected the cash, apologising profusely while attempting not to look at the guy I’d lost my temper with. Obviously at the ATM you can only pay 40 notes in at once, so the whole process took an obscene amount of time. And as I started to leave, the teller came out with a barely-discernible smirk on his face, insisting I sign a piece of paper saying he’d returned my money to me. Karma certainly is a bitch…
So me and my case start the journey back to the car docs place, navigating potholes and uneven pavements and wiping buckets of sweat off my face. A mile later, and I’ve made it. I pick up the papers, check the bus route and…the bus stop is next to the bank. 1 mile away.
I drag my suitcase back, cursing my terrible planning. Miss the bus, because the bus stop is down a dirt track onto a dual carriageway and there’s no sign to it. Finally stumble down the hill, case still intact, waiting for the next bus. Aaaand it’s late. Twenty-five minutes late. Somehow I’m going to be pushing it to make my flight.
I drag the case up to the counter, check in just in time, and breathe a sigh of relief as I get through security and onto the plane. Only one hour and I’ll be home. I fall asleep almost immediately.
I wake up as we start to descend to Gomera. But people are being sick, and shrieking. It’s incredibly bumpy.... I see my house from the window of the plane and I almost cry with happiness.
The plane comes in to land…bumps all over the place, people start crossing themselves ...... and then we dive back up into the air......
An announcement comes over the tannoy: “We will be giving out chocolate bars when you get off the plane.”
Aaaand we fly all the way back to Tenerife.
They apologise – the wind was too bad for them to land in Gomera. They put us on a bus. I make the 35-mile journey back from north to south. And get a ferry I could have got 5 hours earlier.
Wind’s bad at sea too - more throwing up.
And then it’s a 45-minute drive from the ferry and not the peaceful 6 minutes from the airport. I beg somebody for a lift home.
Climb up The Steps with my trusty, oh-so-heavy suitcase.
Get to my house 12 hours after I went to a bank to pay in some money and collect some papers.
Getting home after a tour – super easy. Who wouldn’t want to live here?!