Tunnel vision of pure misery

I HAVE just spent the first 12 hours of my summer break sweltering in 30C heat amid crowds of holidaymakers.

We were not on a beach in Italy, Spain or Greece but the car park of the Eurotunnel terminal desperately trying to catch a train to France.

The journey – once you have loaded your car on to one of the trains – should take just 35 minutes.

I am still trying to come to terms with why I ended up losing half a day of my life trying to do it.

As my family and I approached the Folkestone check-in there was no clue of the hell that lay ahead.

There was no queue. We were five minutes late for our 5.20pm train due to heavy traffic, but one of the joys of Le Shuttle is, as long as you arrive within two hours of your scheduled time, they pop you straight on the next train.

This time the woman who checked us in warned: “I’m afraid we’ve had a few problems. There are a few delays. The first train we can fit you on is 1.20am.”

As our faces fell she told us not to worry as the backlog was being cleared, and customer services should be able to get us under way much sooner.

We decided to wait in the car where I fell asleep, roused only when a sign told me to head to the

12.15am train – seven hours after our scheduled trip.

We cleared passport and security checks and moved into a queue for our train. It didn’t move for over three hours. At 3.30am we boarded. We arrived in Calais at 5am and reached the apartment at 7.30am. I snatched two hours’ sleep before my 10hour journey across France. It was the worst travel experience I have had in three decades on the road. And I didn’t have babies, toddlers or dogs in tow like many others trapped. It appears throughout the crisis all the train company’s managers were sleeping or hiding.

Unless they change their approach soon all their passengers will be flying away – literally.