Can you beieve it?
After the horrific delays last time I took the plane, I decided to get the train to London for my meeting today.... wrong decision!
Good old GNER did their best to keep us moving, but the crumbling infrastructure which passes for a railway system in this country got the better of them, yet again...
I was booked on the 0700 from Newcastle, scheduled to arrive into Kings Cross at 0950 or thereabouts, giving me plenty of time to get the tube to my meeting at 1100.
After sitting on the train (train number 1) in Newcastle station going nowhere fast, we were told that the train was cancelled because of overhead line failure in the Peterborough area. We were told to get off the train and catch the 0740. Which we did (train number 2).
This arrived at York, where we were told it was terminating. We got off. And onto another train (train number 3). We were told this was cleared to go to Doncaster. We arrived in Doncaster, and to great cheers were told that we had now been cleared to go on to Peterborough. By this time we were an hour and a half late. We arrived in Peterborough. We got off.
We then queued for half an hour to get on specially provided buses (train (OK, bus) number 4), which took us to Huntingdon by way of quaint Cambridgeshire lanes.
We arrived in Huntingdon, got off the bus and walked to the station, to be greeted by the back of the train (train number 5) we were supposed to be getting on, leaving the platform heading for London. It seems they got fed up waiting, and left without half the passengers....
So we were told to get on a chuggy local train (train number 6) bound for Kings Cross. Which we did. And it chugged. And chugged. And chugged some more, stopping at every station, and in between stations as well.
On arriving at Stevenage, we noticed a fast GNER train pull in on the platform opposite. Thinking that this would, without doubt, get us to London more quickly than the chuggy thing we were one, we all got off and piled onto the fast train (train number 7).
This left and then promptly stopped 2 minutes later. A fault with the door locks apparently. This seemed to get fixed after 10 minutes (or they decided that it wouldn't matter if a few people fell out along the way), and we eventually arrived into Kings Cross at 1245 - nearly 3 hours later than we should have.
Perhaps fly(may)be aren't that bad after all!
3 comments:
Oh no! We're booked on GNER to Peterborough for a wedding - eek!
I think maybe you should just stop travelling for a while (until your trip to Canada. Encourage video conferencing at work. Therefore saving money and your precious time and blood pressure.
The true moral of this story and your previous stories is to stop travelling within the UK. And fly on a decent airline! We on United Airlines are NEVER EVER late!
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