Homeward bound

Lisbon, very late. In Lisbon airport at stupid o clock and everything, and I mean everything, is shut for the night. There are plenty of peeps wandering around, so you would have thought keeping one all night caff open would be doable, but no. My flight gets called at 0520. just hope my luggage goes to Manchester with me. .................................................................. It's now 2am ............Does anyone remember the film 'In Transit'? That's how I feel at the moment. No one around except a few stranded souls and the night shift cleaners. Only difference is that Tom Hanks got a place to sleep. I'm reduced to attempt it sitting up in chair, not even a comfy chair at that. I daresay I'll wander around some more and then contact any fellow insomniacs out there, always assuming I can get some more wifi time for nowt ............................ ................... It's now 3'30am and for a place that has only a few over-nighters and security staff, it isn't half noisy, what with all the chillers and freezers going full blast, and for some unfathomable reason, myriad tv monitors all on different channels, but with he sound turned down just far enough that you cannot hear what is being said, but it's still loud enough to annoy you. Can't get any zzz's, too noisy, but not helped by the itching mozzie bites I collected last night when the local population decided to invade the boat and proceeded to dine on me. Dennis escaped without a bite. Staff now starting to turn up, maybe I'll get breakfast before I leave ............ .............................. 4'50am and /shock/ I dozed for like an hour. A quick wash and brush and I feel more awake. The place is starting to come alive now, and praise be, I can smell coffee and toast! ................................................. 0612, and I've made it to the international gate, about a km and a bit of walking, fortified by the first cup of coffee of the day. No one else here at the moment. Dawn is breaking, late here, it would have been light for an hour or so already at home. With luck I should be home by early evening- the train from Manc to Bangor takes longer than the flight! ............................ Well I made to the plane, fully loaded up with a couple or 3 strong portuguese black coffees and had an uneventful flight back to Manc. The landing was somewhat 'hard', due mainly to the strong cross winds buffeting the plane. Caught my train to Crewe which was a sub zero windy hell hole.... I'd heard that the weather had'nt been that good but this was back to January! The weather was much improved by the time we got to Chester, but things were to turn very bad... a huge fire at Flint had closed the line to Bangor and around a thousand frustrated people were waiting in vain for the fleet of buses to carry them onwards. To be fair the railway had got a fleet of buses but there were just too many people to move. I spotted someone I knew and we decided that there was no point standing in the cold so we went had a coffee. By now I needed one as the earlier caffein had long worn off. We decided to stay put since, we argued, the queues were so long that by the time they were loaded the fire would be out and the trains running again. And we were right. Suddenly there was a mad rush of people back to the station and onto a Llandudno bound train. Hurrah. We had another coffee as we also argued that another would be along in an hour or so and less crowded. By now we had been joined by another, heading to a job in Abersoch. I needed to get from Bangor down to Pen Llyn and Gwenan came to our rescue. She would pick us up and bring us down to Pwllheli [so she could go shopping in asda on her way back to M. Nefyn] So after being on the road for over 24 hours and not having slept properly for more than 48 hours, I was finally home and a sound nights sleep awaited. And this morning [lateish] I awoke to clear skies and bright sunshine. Pen Llyn at it's best.