A BARNSLEY man stranded in Italy by the chaos caused by volcanic ash spent £1,000 and drove 1,000 miles to get home.

Ian Marsh, 34, of Western Street, was in the queue to board his Ryanair flight home from Pisa last Thursday when it was cancelled due to ‘bad weather’ – it was one of the first to be cancelled.

He said: “When I heard it was volcanic ash I knew it wasn’t going to just disappear any time soon, so I said we should try and hire a car and drive across to France and get a ferry.”

Girlfriend Jamie and the friends they were travelling with agreed just in time for them to get the last car at the hire desk. They could only drive it as far as Milan where they had to pick up a second car to go to France.

But after a day’s driving, on Friday, having got almost to Calais, they realised the only available ferry was from Zeebrugge in Belgium to Hull. So they drove back the other way across France towards Belgium.

They got picked up at Hull and driven to Leeds Bradford airport where they left their car, and got home on Sunday afternoon – just three-and-a-half days after they set off.