My daughter was meant to catch a Eurostar home from Paris tonight. She is now in a melee of people at Gare Du Nord trying to rebook her ticket for tomorrow. To call it a queue would not be right she tells me via Facebook.

She will miss her connecting train from Kings Cross to Lincoln and probably have to buy a new ticket.

This is all because some workers (workers?) have gone on strike in Calais. The ferries are blockaded, the tunnel is closed.

Lorries are backing up the M20 which is now closed. All flights out of Paris are fully booked and she may struggle to get on tomorrow as I doubt there is sufficient capacity in the system to take two days worth of passengers in one day.

Imagine if the Eurotunnel was a length of fibre connecting the UK with France and the rest of the continent and that broke. We would probably not notice because there’d be another fibre somewhere with tons of capacity that could take all the traffic. Not so with the human transport system.

Hannah is trying to rebook online whilst she stands in the crowd. Everyone is trying to do the same thing. In fact as I write they are saying that you can only rebook online. I’ve filled out a request for her using the booking details she provided. It is now a manual process. She can only wait.

Funny how there is a knock on effect when something like this happens. Not really.

Now I’ve been trying to sort out changing her virgintrainseastcoast ticket from kings x. She took a pic of the confirmation number and messaged it to me. Trouble is I can’t understand her handwriting and spent 5 mins getting nowhere with the train company. Now Hannah must be in the Metro – I can’t get hold of her for confirmation of the booking ref. I’ll have to wait until she gets back online!

If I get an update I’ll obviously let you all know. I’m getting this off my chest here to some extent 🙂

21.57 update: she’s now booked on a train tomorrow lunchtime and will be home by 17.13. Got lucky because the Eurostars are now fully booked until Friday.