Phantom99
Thank you for the insight. I guess the weight of traffic is so high now that one sector blocked by weather affects all the others. It was just highly unusual that all 3 airways east through to south were closed at the same time.
For my departure via BPK at 2245 there was no significant weather after passing BPK apart from one small build up over Ostend and it was a beautiful clear night over all of Holland and Germany. It was hard to see why there had been any restriction on that routing.