On the 18th of April we were due to fly to Malta to look around the island with a view of getting married there next summer. The flight was cancelled due to the first incidence of the ash cloud disrupting flights; therefore we rebooked for Sunday 9th May.
We were due to fly back from Malta on Sunday 16th May at around 11pm. However, due to what the media are now saying was a non-existent ash cloud, the flight was cancelled.
We were lucky that the hotel we were staying in was very helpful and set us up with three more rooms for the night. After some good use of the hotel internet cafe we had managed to rebook our flights but this time for Luton rather than Leeds Bradford. We arranged to keep our current hire cars for another day and booked hire cars for the UK for the journey from Luton to Leeds.
We took the hire cars to Luqa airports in Malta, got a flight from Malta to Luton, took a bus to pick up our UK hire cars, drove from Luton to Leeds (my parents house), picked up my car and Molly, drove from Leeds to Marske to drop Fiona’s parents off then back home in Thornaby.
Although we have been hit by the ‘ash chaos’ we had a very successful trip. Fiona is part Maltese from her Dads side of the family. When thinking about our wedding we both agreed we did not really want a wedding in the UK. Malta seemed a great option. We both set about Googleing to find some information and ended up contacting the same person without either of us knowing. We viewed four potential venues and have already settled on the venue. We viewed a number of churches and we just have to finalise which one we like out of the final two.
To follow our wedding story check out www.jimandfi.co.uk where a few select pics of our pre-wedding trip will be uploaded soon.