connections

I'm sure I've commented before that we've learnt we need to leave an entire day to travel anywhere in non-English speaking countries. Let's extend this. It takes an entire day to travel anywhere.

We checked out of our B&B this morning, leaving our bags while we did a few final things in Coniston. After some further... spousal negotiation... we decided we would try to catch the 10:05 bus towards Windermere, rather than waiting for the 11:05. As we finally ran for the bus (why is there always running?) I joked that I hoped the bus broke down, as it would, um, prove my point. So no doubt it was glee that I was experiencing over the next hour (rather than say, boredom or frustration) as said bus failed to materialise.

Thanks to Australian travellers at the bus stop (that we'd in fact met on our bus to Coniston on Monday) we knew there had been no bus in the previous 20 minutes. So by the time 11 o'clock rolled around we were wondering just what had happened. 11:03 and a bus rolled up—the 11:05am bus. Ah yes, the 10:05. He got lost, apparently. Didn't come to Coniston. Now, what you have to realise is, Coniston isn't a small stop along the way that this bus could have accidentally bypassed. Coniston is the final destination. How could you lose your final destination??

This bus ran smoothly to time, depositing us at the Pier as expected. We caught a pleasant if somewhat rain-ridden steamer ride down the lake to Bowness, and trudged with our packs the 1.5 miles up to the railway station. It was 1:10pm. We were 1.5 hours early for our train.

I minded the packs, read a local paper that was lying around and my book. Bronwyn went shopping. While gone, the 1:35pm train to our destination came, and went. On time. It occurred to me, our tickets probably would cover this train. We could have left early. But she wasn't there. No matter. We'll catch ours as scheduled. Ah, the folly of youth. Bronwyn arrives, as does the time our train is due. Announcement: the train is nine minutes late, but if you're catching the 15:08 connection at Oxenholme (we were) don't worry! That train is also running six minutes late, so you should still be able to catch it. (I can see it now, the reassuring corporate advertisement: “All our trains run equally late in precise synchronisation.")

Nine minutes becomes fifteen. Of course, we miss the connection. We wait thirty minutes, the climb onto an alternate train to a stop we'd never intended to visit. On this wrong train we therefore randomly run into a couple of guys who were at our B&B for one night on Tuesday while walking the Cumbria Way. They've finished now. We share stories of trying to get 8am breakfasts, where it transpires we had significantly more luck than they. (They settled on 8:25.) We disembark at Preston, and wait a further half an hour, on a packed platform.

And so we sit, at 7:08pm, due to now arrive at London Euston in 16 minutes time, only an hour behind schedule. But fret not, there is much that can go wrong yet! We've a bus ride, and a Thameslink train to catch yet, or three tube journeys, or two tubes and an overland train. Life is pregnant with transport-extending possibilities. The getting there is half the fun?

Epilogue: After typing the words above, I packed up my laptop and put it back in my pack in the luggage compartment at the end of the carriage. But within minutes, my words had come true. I had wondered if we would have trouble with our transport once we arrived in Euston; little did I know it would take us a further 1 hour and 45 minutes to get there! Due apparently to power failures at Wembley our train came to a halt somewhere outside of Watford Junction, where we sat in the darkness for over an hour, occasionally moving along for a few minutes, before stopping again. In the end we were apparently fortunate: while Virgin had been terminating other trains at Watford Junction, ours was the first that was able to continue through in the end all the way to Euston. But our train, supposed to arrive at 7:28pm, finally pulled into Euston just before 9 o'clock. While our bus-Thameslink-walk connections were smooth, it was only at 10:30pm, after over 12 hours of travel, that we finally arrived home.