Loooong weekend

There was much triumphant reportage in the paper the other day about how the highways agency is stopping any roadworks over the bank holiday because it has noticed that there tends to be heavier than normal traffic at those times, and coning off half the road network is not helpful. Sadly the news does not seem to have trickled down to Network Rail. We have – at least I hope we still have – friends planning to visit for the bank holiday weekend. Being organised, they booked their tickets well in advance. At the time, the sole interruption to their journey was the need to change at Watford Junction, adding no more than half an hour to their journey home. Not bad, in these rail replacement times.

Fast forward to now, and the situation has changed. Minor works around Watford Junction have turned into a mighty engineering extravaganza. Their four hour journey home has become eight hours, via Newcastle and across the Pennines. Can they at least book seats on the train from Newcastle? They cannot, because the East Coast train is chocka with the entire luvvie population of London returning from the Edinburgh festival. Can they book seats on the train going up? They cannot, at least not on the internet and not by phone and when my friend makes the trek to Charing Cross station to do it in person the only response is ‘computer says no’. What are her options? Well, she can drive on the newly re-opened Highways Agency roads. Or she can fly. Or she can resign herself to eight plus hours of travelling, crammed in next to the toilet on a National Express train on a clockwise tour of Britain. ‘Or,’ says the helpful man on the phone, ‘you could wait until the engineering works are over and travel then!’ When might that be? ‘September the 6th.’

They said back in July that we’ve got 100 months to save the planet. If August is anything to go by, we haven’t exactly got off to a great start.