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8.00 P.M. Successful take-off from Heathrow eight and a half hours late.

12.00 A.M. Land at Bradley Field Airport, Connecticut, as there is congestion at JFK due to a snowstorm and Concorde, with its gargantuan fuel appetite and lack of big enough tanks, cannot afford to go in the stack.

1.30 A.M. We leave the aircraft in a swirling snowstorm and wait in a baggage collection area (we cannot go through into the restaurant or even to the toilets because we have no immigration or customs men to clear us).

12.00 – We wait as the decision is taken to put 82,000 gallons more fuel

1.30 A.M. into the aircraft.

1.30 – Wait in limbo at Bradley Field International, an airport that seems

2.45 A.M. to be run entirely by students between the ages of 18 and 21.

2.45 A.M. Board Concorde for the third time today. This time with a film crew to capture our every indignity.

4.00 A.M. Pilot decides not to take BA 171 into JFK tonight owing to bad weather.

5.00 A.M. We disembark for the third and final time.

5.45 A.M. As we wait in the no-man’s-land – now into our nineteenth hour in airports – news that the doors of the luggage bay are iced up.

6.00 A.M. Our baggage is retrieved.

6.10 A.M. Board our coach.

7.10 A.M. Our coach arrives at Hospitality Inn, Enfield.

8.30 A.M. Bed.

Still some doubt as to whether JFK or La Guardia are open. The remnants of flight BA 171 are now splitting into smaller groups to find their way to their final destination.

At ten, four of us – Pat, a stocky, young paper salesman, Nancy, a slim, wide-eyed New York model, and the white-haired, ruddy-faced, cherubic director of a Minneapolis-based agricultural foodstuffs corporation – set off, crammed tight into a yellow cab.

Even the cab drive is something of an ordeal. The driver is short, squat, offhand and incompetent. At one point, on the outskirts of Hartford, we find a road blocked by flooding and have to turn back.

An uncomfortable hour brings us to Hartford Station. An almost empty, long booking hall, of a vaguely classical design. It’s shabby and run down. The poor relation of US transport – the railroad. But, full of hope, we board the 11.30 for New York via New Haven.

On the outskirts of New Haven, the line is submerged for about half a mile and we move slowly through the water, to arrive at New Haven ten minutes late, at 12.35. Another transfer of heavy bags and baggages to the New Haven–Penn Station train.

The station at New Haven is still well below the standards of British counterparts, but the Amtrak ‘Parlor’ Car – a First Class service – is comfortable, with modern, expansive armchair seats and a bar which serves food and drinks. My spirits rise.

However, the train does not move and the Awful Rumour’s begin. There is a derailment on a flooded line, further up the track, a power sub-station in the Bronx is out of action due to flooding, so none of the electric locomotives can function.

At one point the Parlor Car empties as we are advised that another train will be leaving for NY before us. This proves to be a false alarm, and everyone re-boards. But fifteen minutes later, as I am about to settle down to a cool glass of Inglenook Californian Chablis, the word comes again that a train will definitely be leaving for Grand Central Station right away on Track 6. So everyone, apart from one man who remains because he can’t bear the thought of standing all the way to New York (Wise and Shrewd Traveller) makes their way once more up the long platform, down the subway and up to the Connecticut Railway platform.

There’s still a ten-minute wait, but the good news is that we do have the satisfaction of being the first train to leave New Haven since early morning. The bad news is we’re squashed into a crowded open coach without lights or heating. There are gloomy predictions that the ride could take up to two hours.

In the end it takes over five hours. During that time we spend nearly an hour in darkness, with no fresh air, at a standstill somewhere in the outer suburbs of New York. The compartments have become fuller and fuller, and we have