Tired, fed up, and longing for their own beds — those have been the sentiments of Pembrokeshire residents left stranded hundreds of miles from home following the volcanic eruption in Iceland.

Stories of marathon efforts to return by any means have flooded in as massive air disruption continued across Europe.

Tenby residents Sally and Peter Turton, who were in Berlin with their 17-year-old son Sam, paid 1,100 euros for three single train tickets to the UK. They were due to start their journey on Tuesday morning.

Rhianon Ebsworth made it back to Pembrokeshire from Copenhagen for a family wedding, but only after a 24-hour journey which took her via Cologne, Brussels, London and Cardiff.

One Pembrokeshire headteacher made more than 200 phone calls in an attempt to bring home two parties of schoolchildren who were among the casualties of the flight cancellations.

Jan Kingston, head of Tenby’s Greenhill School, worked in tandem with coach companies, tour operators and her staff to secure safe homecomings for the groups who had been in Italy and Gibraltar.

The Italian party — who ironically had visited the volcano Vesuvius — eventually arrived home on Monday morning after a fraught journey during which they missed their ferry connection to the UK by just ten minutes.

Meanwhile, the Gibraltar group — 24 girls aged between 12 and 15 and two staff members — were originally due to arrive back at Cardiff airport on Thursday morning. After their flight was cancelled, they booked another flight for Saturday, to return to East Midlands airport.

“I had a phone call on Saturday morning saying this was also cancelled, and the next available one would be on April 26th,” said Mrs Kingston.

“I was determined to get them back before then, and had superb help from Richards Bros coaches who drove to Malaga to fetch the party. We made sure we had the ferry places, and then worked back from there.

“It hasn’t been the best way of doing things, but we felt we had to work fast and literally run for home.”

The Gibraltar party, which had been taking part in hockey and netball tournaments, caught a cross-Channel ferry on Monday morning, arriving home that evening.

Virtually all flights in and out of the UK have been grounded since 11am last Thursday, after the Eyjafjal-lajokull volcano erupted and sent plumes of ash into the world’s airspace.

Meanwhile, ferry terminals in Fishguard and Pembroke Dock have been working frantically to cope with extra foot passengers — mainly Irish nationals — who have found themselves stranded and unable to get home.

“Some trips we’ve been taking nearly 600 foot passengers when we would normally have about 50,” said Captain Ian Davies, route manager at the Fishguard terminal.

“We have had a five-fold increase. We have been working with Arriva Trains Wales on a daily basis and they have had to add five or six carriages so that everyone can get to Fishguard.”

On Monday, a party of more than 40 pupils and teachers from Christian Brothers School in Cork finally left for home having been stuck in the UK for three days.

“We’ve been staying in Bath and were scheduled to fly from Bristol on Friday,” said one teacher.

“It has been a frantic two days trying to sort things out and we’ve missed the start of the school term.”

On the same ferry was Laura Bottimuir, aged 19, who was supposed to fly home from Birmingham to Dublin last weekend.

“I’ve been visiting friends but I needed to get back to Dublin yesterday for work,” she said.

“One of my friends had to drive me here today. It took three and a half hours.”

Nereta Jasute, aged 24, had been in London with her child and described the situation as awful.

“All our plans have been disrupted. I work in Cork and was supposed to fly there from Stansted. In the end we have had no option but to travel here, we are desperate to get home.”

There have been similar scenes at Pembroke Dock ferry terminal and Paddy Walsh, UK ports manager for Irish Ferries, said staff were doing all they could.

“There has been a big increase in passengers and we have stepped up a gear,” he said. “We are doing our very best.”