This week hasn’t been a good one for travellers. School finished, presents and cases were packed and hundreds of thousands of people downed the alka selzer and aspirin to rid themselves of the effects of the office Christmas party, and crawled out of bed at 4am, heading for plane, train or ferry to head off to join relatives, on ski trips or in search of Christmas sun. But…

First came news of the British Airways strike action. Everyone raced to get new tickets on Eurostar or the low-cost airlines as news came of threatened strikes by aircraft baggage handlers and Eurostar train managers. Hurried talks all round and a High Court injunction later, we breathed a collective sigh of relief, but it came too soon.

Next bombshell was the news that Allbury Travel Group, which traded as Libra Holidays, Argo Holidays and JetLife, had gone into administration, stranding around 100 people abroad, but leaving some 4,000 people with holidays booked and no place to go.

I saw huddles of them gathered anxiously round the desk when I got to Gatwick through the snow at 5am yesterday morning, thanking my lucky stars that the train had been running. I waltzed past them to the back of the longest queue in the world, where I stood for over an hour getting tantalizingly to within two people of the counter, only for them to close the ticket desk and the runway.

As it turned out, I was one of the lucky ones. I still had my luggage, It only took two hours to get confirmation that my flight was indeed cancelled and because it was a business trip I could rearrange for the New Year. I managed to get a confirmation email that day rearranging the trip. According to the easyjet press office, they had to cancel 250 flights across their different airports. There are lots of extremely unhappy people out there, but I honestly think they tried to get the word out on what was going on – they were simply overwhelmed by the enormity of it all.

Today, it seems to be the turn of the trains. Not content with closing down air traffic, we awoke to the news that four trains broke down in the Channel tunnel, stranding thousands of passengers without food or water for many hours and even, according to Twitter, leaving babies without spare nappies. All Eurostar services have now been cancelled for the day with no forward availability for rebooking.

Meantime, there are ongoing dramas in Essex where highly organized thieves have stolen the overhead rail cables – for the fourth weekend in the row! I got stuck in that one last week. While on First Capital Connect’s Thameslink line, which links Luton, St Pancras and Gatwick, ongoing industrial action has drastically reduced services for several weeks now – lucky there are no planes if you can’t get to the airport…

Oh, just in case you thought you were safe, people have also been stuck in snow on the motorways and the ferries are suggesting you phone ahead to check!

And this is all in the week when the first phase of the new Airport Passenger Duty kicks in. This will make the tax on short flights (under 2,000 miles) £11 for economy and £22 in Business/First while long-haul (2,001– 4,000 mile) journeys will attract a tax of £45 in economy and £90 in Business/First. While the aim is make the ‘polluter pay’ it would be nice to know there was an alternative. At the moment, it seems we have an imperfect train system, a heavily taxed airport system that shuts down at the first sign of snow, and a somewhat bleak midwinter.

Given the fact that tourism is a major contributor to the British economy which also depends entirely on the transport network to do business efficiently, I’d like to ask the government to put the resources into making sure that the increased income from APD goes towards making sure the transport works – and stays working. Meantime, on behalf of all of us at the British Guild of Travel Writers, I would like to wish all those people having an enforced staycation the very best of rearranged holidays.