Travel: Seatless down in Alicante: Last week Simon Calder got lucky. This week the bucket-shop bogey took revenge

IT WAS too good to last - and, sure enough, the bogey of bucket-shop travel took a swift and harsh revenge. Frank Barrett's column last week reported my surprise and immense good fortune at having a wad of crisp pounds 20 notes pressed into my palm by British Rail. I had missed my flight from Stansted to Paris because of a substantial train delay - and the money was BR's immediate response.

My comeuppance was not long in coming. It arrived early, very early, last Monday morning . . .

It is 1am and the handling agent at Alicante airport is dealing with a dozen people in various stages of disarray and drunkenness. I am in a different pickle: I have no ticket home, and she has no record of a booking in my name.

When I booked a cheap ticket to Spain and back, I became an unwilling character in the Charter Flight to Hell. The Flight Company calls itself a seat-only operator, but I would have been delighted to receive as much as a seat for my pounds 79 fare.

The original ticket was to be picked up at Gatwick airport two hours before departure. The bad news was that the rep was not there; the worse news was that the flight was three hours late. The good news was that Sleepless in Seattle was showing at the Crawley MGM, just 10 minutes away. When I returned from the cinema, the rep had been and gone.

In the film, an eight-year-old manages to book himself on a transcontinental flight. Even with an age advantage of nearly 30 years, I proved unable to convince Monarch Airlines that I had a seat on a two-hour hop to the Mediterranean. Eventually another rep condescended to sell me a one-way flight to Alicante for pounds 75, occupying the seat I had already bought - and I had to bear the stigma of a bright red 'late passenger' boarding pass all the way to the gate.

Alicante airport at dawn is particularly unappealing when you know you have to start phoning Britain to try to secure a flight home. The Flight Company's reservations staff would not accept a reverse-charge call nor, initially, that I was booked to fly back on Monday morning; I was offered a flight leaving less than 24 hours after I had arrived. Several thousand pesetas-worth of phone calls later, I was booked on the 3.40am flight to Gatwick - except that someone forgot to pass on the message.

The weekend had some compensations. It was warm, at least in the phone box. Alicante, with its gracefully decaying old quarter, is much lovelier than might be expected. And the Costa Blanca Express is one of the world's more entertaining railways - though in no sense is it an express, nor does it adhere to the coast.

But to return to Alicante airport. It is now 2.30am. With remarkable good humour, the handling agent has taken my story on trust and issued a ticket - free. So the Charter Flight to Hell, like Sleepless in Seattle, has a happy ending. Tom Hanks, however, ends up with Meg Ryan and my prize is two hours with knees scrunched against chin in an overcrowded 737.