I've read your thoughts with interest Bob, and I really admire your tenacity in the amount of travelling you do just to get to the airport.
On a personal front I would love to do one of the longer haul holidays, which makes it worth while going down to Gatwick for me. Sadly I could not obtain that amount of time off work in one go.
I shall be travelling down to Gatwick again at the beginning of October to go on the trip to Tuscany. It's a long way for me to travel time wise just for a couple of hours flight. My postion is as follows which might explain why I am in favour of more Northern departures or at least the choice of them.
I don't drive, and don't have recourse to lifts from any kind souls so I have no choice other than to use public transport. I'm used to this and don't have any apprehension about it, apart from using the Underground :s. Like others here I look upon it as part of the holiday. However:
I live 7 miles north of Nottingham, so not in the middle of nowhere I guess. However any travelling to airports I do has to start at Nottingham, which with luggage always means a taxi. My nearest airport, East Midlands is a 40 minute taxi drive away. Birmingham over 2 hours on the train. Manchester perhaps more. Luton is about 2 hours too.
I mainly use National Express, which even on a direct no change from Nottingham takes well over 4 hours to Gatwick. Increasingly now National Express is not doing a direct service but means changing in London which increases the journey time to perhaps 6 hours plus. Last year I went to Istria. I had to travel back via London, and finally got home at nearly midnight after leaving the hotel at 7am!
Each holiday I have been on with JY has meant me using a hotel overnight. Again I put up with this and absorb the cost because I really want to do these holidays, and enjoy them, but it would be nice to have a choice of a nearer airport.
This last holiday I decided to fly from Stansted, although I nearly baulked at the supplement (which turned out to be double that stated in the brochure). Again the National Express coach coming back on a Sunday would have been very infrequent, and the train was not an option because of engineering works. So I ended up getting a taxi back.
I am hoping that the trip to Tuscany in October will be easier as the departure day is a Thursday, but I will have to have nearly 2 weeks off work to accommodate this. Also I will again have to overnight at a hotel (the Premier Inn), and I am hoping to use the train to get back from Gatwick but with changes that is still a 3 hour plus journey, and considerably more expensive.
I hope this explains a bit why I am in favour of a more Northern airport choice, but I totally respect your views and the ones of others on here. JY provide great holidays, and they are brilliant in what they do but for the shorter trips trailing down to Gatwick is a personal pain.