Aussie trio's $4500 ash dash cash splash

Volcanic ash halts air travel

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MORE DELAYS: A traveller rests with her luggage as flights are delayed and cancelled at Heathrow Airport in London.

LONG ROAD HOME: Paul Toohey and his friends Roger Ellul and Shane Cumming were so desperate to get back to Australia that they made the 12.5-hour, 800-kilometre journey from Avignon to Madrid at a cost of 2400 euros ($NZ4526), plus road tolls.

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Three Melbourne men forked out more than $4500 for a taxi ride from France to Spain after their flight home was cancelled due to the volcanic eruption in Iceland.

Paul Toohey and his friends Roger Ellul and Shane Cumming were so desperate to get back to Australia that they made the 12.5-hour, 800-kilometre journey from Avignon to Madrid at a cost of 2400 euros ($NZ4526), plus road tolls.

The trio had been visiting a friend in France and was due to fly out of Paris on the day the Eyjafjallajokull volcano erupted, sending a plume of ash across Europe and grounding flights across the continent.

Worried that they could be stuck in Europe for weeks, Mr Toohey contacted his travel agent in Albert Park who was able to snag seats on a Madrid flight, which was unaffected by the airport closures.

But in a further blow, the travellers soon discovered there were no hire cars available and all train tickets from Paris to the Spanish capital were booked out.

As a last resort, they contacted the owner of a guesthouse in Avignon where they had stayed and she was able to organise a taxi to drive them over the border.

The three exhausted men arrived back in Melbourne at midnight last night - about 12 hours before Qantas announced it would resume flights from Europe.

"The taxi ride ended up being pretty good, it was a long one and we watched that meter tick over," Mr Toohey, 63, said.

"The taxi driver thought it was a pretty good gig, but at the same time we thought we were the luckiest guys alive. We were just desperate to get home."

Mr Toohey said while the grounding of flights had been front-page news, many people were unaware of the desperation of stranded travellers.

He said he had called the Australian embassy in Paris, only to hear a recorded message asking him to call back during office hours.

"People were saying 'You're so lucky. If you're going to be trapped anywhere Paris is not a bad spot', but you spend the entire time in train stations trying to get information," Mr Toohey said.

"You have families running out of money, running out of clothes, they've got little kids and are stuck in airports. It's unbelievable.

"We tried every hire car company. They said there was no cars available in all of Europe because everyone's trying to get somewhere.

"Every train was packed out, even to the stage that if you could buy a ticket when the train pulled up, there would be 20,000 people on the platform and they'd just charge the train."

Mr Toohey said he was anxious to get back to Melbourne as his mother-in-law was undergoing an operation and his business, which deals in office products, was moving location.

The men paid for the cab on credit card and plan to split the cost evenly.

- © Fairfax NZ News