Bagel Belly Blog

And I thought yesterday was bad ...

(Caution: petulant ranting follows)

Yesterday I spent nine and a half hours on trains for a one hour meeting. It's just the way it goes sometimes, and I got a fair amount of work done on the trains. On the return journey, I was delighted to get on the fast train from London to Norwich, which usually does the journey in 1 hour and 35 minutes: "Welcome on board the 18:43 service to Norwich, due to arrive in Norwich at 20:15". Excellent! any time saved on such a marathon journey is an advantage.

A word about the rail system in the UK. The quality of the trains and the tracks varies wildly depending on the popularity of your route, the investment by the train companies, the distance of the journey, and a whole range of other factors. So the quality of a journey will range from terrible to ... an absolute bloody nightmare. To be fair, some trains are reasonably new, clean or relatively comfortable. But they don't compare favourably to, say, the trains in Holland or Belgium. Oh, by the way: "We apologise for the late running of this train, now due to arrive in Norwich at 20:20".

The Norwich to London line is a great example of how we do things wrong. The rolling stock is on average about forty years old. This isn't such a bad thing: in the olden days, they were built to last, and relatively spaciously and with comfort in mind. Of course, the comfort has worn away over the decades, but there's still a hint of it. There are also a few newer trains running along this line - bought in the last four or five years - and these are not too bad although they take the airline-style approach to "cramming people in" over the space and comfort of former years. Less tables, for example. And, of course, being shining examples of modern engineering, they break down more often. "... now due to arrive in Norwich at 20:30".

The track between Norwich and London is in a similar state of disrepair. For years, it was traditional for any journey on a Sunday to involve a bus replacement service whilst they repaired stretches here and there, but despite that, at high speeds you often wonder whether the train will actually stay on the track, as you are thrown from side to side as speeds approach, say, 10 miles an hour. Other tracks aren't so bad - particularly the long-distance routes - but in general, prepare well if you get travel sick. Seriously - the journeys can be rougher than travelling in a car at comparable speeds. There's gotta be something wrong with that. After traveling through Belgium and Holland, where you could barely tell the train is moving, the UK rail system seems most unsatisfactory. "... now due to arrive in Norwich at 20:35".

And then, finally, there is the planning of engineering works in this country, which is what I'm really pissed off about today. A word on how to get to London from here: there's the direct route to London, through Ipswich and Colchester, or you can head over to Cambridge and pick up the main-line routes from there. In terms of travel time, they are approximately equal, assuming a perfect connection at Cambridge. The average journey is about 1hr 50 minutes.

Tomorrow, I have to travel to Belgium. Both the Norwich to London and the Norwich to Cambridge lines are closed due to engineering works. Journey times are either 2hr34 or 3hr35, depending on when you want to arrive. Yes, my arrival time dictates the 3hr35 journey. So:

Norwich - London: 3 hours 35 minutes.
London - Brussels: 2 hours 20 minutes.

Sigh. Oh, and last night I eventually reached Norwich at 20:40. Certainly not the worst journey I've ever had - and better than tomorrow, for sure.