Air traffic control strike different country

Turbo63a

Hi there I am considering making a claim under EU261/2004 against Ryan air for a flight which was canceled 1 hour before our departure at 10pm on 21/03/2016. The legislation states that you can't claim if there was a strike and this was the reason given by Ryan air however from our perspective we were flying out of Belgium to manchechester and so were not in or going to the country where the strike was in place (France). Also Ryan air only informed us 1 hour before departure of the cancellation when they should have foreseen that there would be issues days earlier. Any advice on how to proceed and whether or not it is worth proceeding would be great, thanks .
note. We are currently trying to obtain expenses for our hotel ect also

System

Ryanair do not list that flight (FR 3223) as one cancelled due to the ATC strike. Checking on Flightradar, the Brussels-Man flights go nowhere near French airspace.

http://www.cloud.scorebuddy.co.uk/ryanair-services/cancellations.php?date=2016-03-21

If you look at the records for the aircraft due to do the Brussels run on Flightradar24 (https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/ei-ekj) then the morning flight was cancelled as well. Information seems to suggest that the aircraft went unserviceable after flying in from Milan the previous day.

Note: the Brussels flights the previous day (day one of strike) went ahead as normal using a different aircraft