In Focus

A very early start this morning from our car launch hotel in Reykjavik. We were bussed at 6 am to Iceland's main Keflavik airport, to catch our flight back to UK. It was delayed for half an hour while gritting trucks treated the runway, to make it safe enough for take-off in windy and icy conditions and swirling light snow.

Felt a bit guilty that we seemed to bring the bad weather home with us in the form of the 'weather bomb' winter storm that blasted Scotland today. Huge seas have been battering the coast and causing problems in the Western Isles. Here in the south, though, it has been a pleasantly clear if rather cold day.

On the way back from Heathrow I called in to an event Ford was staging near Brands Hatch. It was the UK launch of the new-generation Focus. Most of the journalists attending the event drove to Margate for lunch, but as a late arrival I just took a car out for a couple of hours on favourite local roads.