The Scotsman's Mark Smith is among Britons marooned by the ash plume

WAKING up on a sunlit Tuscan spring morning on Thursday, my partner, two kids and I were expecting to be home that night.

After two weeks of constant sunshine, lunches in little hill towns and as much cheap plonk as we could manage, the thought of returning to chilly Edinburgh was hardly enticing.

By the end of the day, we were still in Tuscany and pretty desperate to get back to the UK by any means possible.

The first we knew that our return home would turn into an epic of Icelandic volcanoes, Europe-wide transport meltdown and a dose of Dunkirk spirit, was a knock on the caravan door early on Thursday.

Our neighbour Terry had been on his laptop and seen the news that all flights to Britain were cancelled due to a volcanic cloud over the country.

We had spent a few nights on the vino with Terry, and thought it might be a wind-up.

It soon became clear, thanks to The Scotsman website, that this was no joke and nobody was going back to the UK that day. Among the Brits on the campsite, there were a few choice words about these pesky Icelanders screwing up our economy with their stupid banks and now they were ruining our holidays, too. It's strange how your priorities change when you're stuck in a foreign country with no means of getting home. The idea that I wouldn't be in my own bed back home that night suddenly seemed quite daunting.

Everybody expects travel to be a bit of a drag, but when the flights home just stop, it gets very complicated. Your first problem is: "How the hell do I get myself and my family back home?" Then you have the obvious second question: "If we can't get home, where will we sleep tonight?"

Then there are lots of little problems, like how much will it cost to extend our car hire? Will we have enough to live if we're forced to stay here for a few extra days? How will the kids react?

The last question was an easy one. As soon as Rosa, seven, and Robbie, two, found out a volcanic eruption meant we couldn't fly home, they were as excited as two kids who had just been told a volcanic eruption had extended their holiday.

We were due to fly home from Pisa with Ryanair that evening at 5:40 and with no response on their ironically titled "helpline" or internet sites, it was clear we were just going to have to go to the airport and hope for the best.

• Mark Smith was still stranded in Italy last night.