12/09/2025
What a day!!! Warning a long read! Our Thursday in words and/or pictures!!
3am start (I was awake at 2am)
4am bus to airport
430am getting fast tracked through security (and didnt pay extra) as in a wheelchair as would have to stand for too long. We'll tale that win....NB didnt want wheelchair but they insisted best thing to through quickly..very different perspective of life I can tell you.
445am searching for coffee shop that could walk in with chair...failed. Beloved husband stood in queue at Cafe Nero for coffee and came back with a pistachio croissant.
545am headed for gate and was checked in and taken down by tiny little lady and ushered up the plane steps. She stopped people so I could jump the queue
650am all on board and take off
All going swimmingly we thought
Little did we know .....
Cabin supervisor noticed a loose screw by the front door - we were front right. He is then on the phone, fiddling with whatever it was and on mobile took a picture uh oh!!! He pulls a screw out and tells the lady sat there not to lean on that particular bit!
We approach and start landing....down we go....supervisor gripping the door panel and has white knuckles doing it.
We look at each other and silently pray 🙏
20 metres, 15 metres down we go 12 metres and then....whoop up we go like a rocket 🚀
Supervisor on tannoy tells us that captain decided couldn't land at that minute and will come around
Er no....we climb higher and higher. We hear the supervisor saying to the people by the door (that we're now concerned is an issue) that its the weather....no public announcement yet
Then eventually the captain comes on and says we are diverting to another airport. Mumblings in the plane, bells ding as more and more people call for assistance.
The cabin supervisor in the meantime screws the screw back into the door with his hand as far as he can and looks jubilant.
We arrive at Poznan.A quick Google search tells us thats around 300km from Gdansk! We are told to disembark the plane and will get info eventually....
Gone is the assistance now for my decrepit bones as we are exited from the plane to board waiting buses to take us to the terminal. We get onto the back bus and manage to get a seat, the other 2 who joined me in access support were not so lucky they were effectively shoved onto the bus at the front as we were all jammed in.
We arrived at the terminal and there queued for 15 minutes or so to get through passport control. Mutterings around but noone really knows what's going on.
Through passport and heading for bathroom facilities where we queued again although the toilet queue moved briskly, there was a longer queue for the one sink!!
We had spotted another member of our tennis group and eventually managed to catch up with her as we left the bathrooms. We had heard from listening to other passengers that buses were already outside and people literally disappeared fast.
As we left luggage area (thank God we only had hand luggage) there was noone around to direct us, found tourist information and got told to head for one solitary coach outside with around 60 people queued.
We are rather good at queuing....back is killing by this point though.
Others opted to head for train stations or car rentals but given we had no other info, we wanted to at least speak to the airline rep who was checking people off her list. We are told its 5 hours on the coach (according to google it was 3 and a bit!)back to our original airport and as we are somewhere we don't know we get on.
We had no time to get food, but at least we had water.. perhaps we are stopping en route lol er no
The bus journey took 4 hours, lovely countryside but without food for many many hours now but we sipped water. There was a toilet on board the coach which was locked and the driver didnt speak English...a Polish traveller went to the driver who eventually unlocked the sole toilet on board. Surprisingly there was a queue of men to use it immediately, I didnt glad of only sipping water tbh it was the size of a postage stamp...no thanks!
We arrived at Gdansk airport around 4pm.....the eeather was gorgeous nothing like what we had been told was the issue that detoured us earlier.
Our phones barely breathing, we got off and headed to for toilet then a snack bar for food and drink and charging our phones up for a bit. No food but a bit of beer tbh wasnt really hungry i'd gone past it, that pistachio croissant at 5am had maintained me for over 12 hours.
We chatted to a fellow traveller and realised that we could have flown back to the UK and back again in the time it took to drive back 🤯
Our original plan was to get a train to Gdynia but we got an Uber instead. Arriving at our apartment, 3rd floor no lift we dropped our bags and then headed walking (we had been cooped up all day) to where we we had arranged to meet our tennis group.
That took longer than expected but it was a nice evening and all downhill (I realised walking back might be a challenge 😳). Although I broke my glasses and we had to walk back to find the arm!
Finally seated in a sports bar, pizza ordered and a cold drink, we caught up with some other who got stuck in the same challenges on different planes.
But the universe hadnt finished with us oh no new challenge, we were meeting up to collect our tickets....that hadn't been dispatched so we had none at all....there is a plan for this but we discovered that the first match today is now 5pm Polish time (will be a very late finish) .
Long walk back to apartment...uphill.....and collapsed onto the bed.
We are off to hopefully collect our tickets at 330pm...we've all said well camp outside the arena earlier to make sure we get them. LTA are supporting and are not the issue...we'll be messaging the team if we can't get in lol.
What a frigging day...it could only happen to us!!!!
