Restarting a career at 26? Piece of cake. Finding work? Easy. Finding good work, as in "well paid"? Probably not straight away, maybe never. Without connections, you'll have to build your rep from scratch and show that you're worth it.

I've had similar experiences with the academic world and the occasional webdev gig. By pure chance, through various connections, I ended up as sysadmin/integrator in a specific niche which happens to pay quite well; every time I check the going rate for entry-level developers, though, I'm reminded of why I can't go back to that career, not without a good degree and hardcore mad skillz in real computation (algorithms etc), unless I want to cut my salary by 70%+. At the bottom end, there is a basically-unlimited supply of html/css/js monkeys and .Net drones, and you're competing with them and with cheap offshore companies in Bangalore; unless you can stand out and/or develop quickly, you will be underpaid forever, at least in UK.