Cake

Then a tube dash from White City, via a busy Oxford Circus, to Euston for the 6:40 p.m. service that would get us to Shrewsbury. By combining various apps, I was able to determine which platform we would be departing from before it was displayed on Euston’s information screens. That’s handy when there’s a bit of a scrum to board. This one was a very swift turnaround for the incoming train, which had arrived on the platform only a few minutes before our scheduled departure time. In the end, we were sixty minutes late and, despite the guard’s wishful thinking that we’d make up time on the journey north, we lost more and more time, ending up twenty minutes late by the time we got to Birmingham International.

The booking had us changing at Wolverhampton, but that gets us on a train that commences its journey at Birmingham International, so we often ignore the route the app gives us and switch so we can join at the start of the service. We stood to get off the train, watching the interchange time dwindle to a minute. I decided to abandon the plan, but as we stayed on our train, I saw the one we could have boarded remained on its platform, and we would have had time.

The decision cost us. We decided to change at Birmingham New Street because we would have a choice of connections. We had about sixty seconds to board the train that was now behind us, but that wasn’t enough time to cross the station. So we boarded a later train. As I watched the timings, I could see that if we’d followed the plan to Wolverhampton, we’d have connected with the original service to Shrewsbury and arrived only a few minutes late. As it turned out, our decisions put us on a later train, which arrived thirty minutes later than planned.

Often, second-guessing the rail network works in our favour. This time, it didn’t. But it was lovely to arrive in Shrewsbury and be greeted with tea and cake. A frustrating journey will not spoil the Easter weekend.