Travelling and arriving
We set off from home before 7.00 am, drove to Dunoon, took the ferry to Gourock, caught the train to Glasgow, met up with friends Susan and Jeane and got on the train to London.
Except as it left the guard announced that the train won't be going that far - in fact it would be terminating at Preston where there would be "advice" about how to complete the journey.
In the end we had to change at Lancaster, on to an already crowded service coming from Edinburgh and which was due to take a long way round to Euston. Then we were suddenly told to change again at Warrington on to what appeared to be an equally busy train though it was non stop.
The end result was that we got in to London over an hour late and very frazzled. No chance of getting anything to eat or drink on thed diverted trains of course, though we had brought some snacks of our own, thank goodness.
We had intended to buy last minute tickets for a show of some sort but instead we decided to find somewhere nice to eat, and find it we did - the wonderful Le Palombe which was not very far from where we are staying.
So there was please in arriving, though not much in travelling, contrary to Robert Louis Stevenson's view.
(We learnt later that the cause of the chaos was severe damage to signalling cables near Wigan - forty cuts in them, as people tried to steal them and with a huge amount of repair work needed as a result. But there didnt seem to be much controlling intelligence in working out work rounds for all the trains involved, to be honest).
Comments
Sign in or get an account to comment.