10:30.

What a difference a decent night’s sleep and a shower makes! After two nights sleeping on the floor of a train having a bed was luxury. Mind you, when I first arrived at my hotel in Preston I thought I might end up sleeping rough. The place I was staying was a family business and unstaffed. There was a keysafe outside the front doo – but no key in it! A phone call to the number I’d been given by my hosts soon put that right. It turned out that another apologetic guest travelling as part of a group thought they’d been left two keys.

Now I’m on the move again. I didn’t hang around in Preston, instead I caught Avanti’s 10:01Pendolino to Euston. Despite it being a Sunday morning it’s a busy train. Thankfully, as it starts from Preston I’ve managed to blag a table seat and set up the mobile office. Not that I’m planning to do much work. I’m still suffering from a sleep deficit so relaxing and catching up with the world is more the order of the day and I suspect this train’s going to get busy. We’ve just pulled out of Wigan where confusion reins as people can’t find their reserved seats. This may not be the relaxing journey I’d hoped for…

Still, I’m on my way to a holiday, joining Dawn and her parents down in Wareham, Dorset – so my batteries will get recharged eventually!

14:45.

As expected, the Pendolino was packed by the time we left the North-West. There was no point in me trying to do any work so I dozed most of the way instead. It being a Sunday the timings weren’texactly sparkling either. We arrived at Euston just a few minutes before 13:00, having sat for ages at Rugby and Milton Keynes.

I’ve now travelled across busy London to Waterloo. The capital’s weather certainly better than ‘oop North’ as there’s sunshine and a hike of several degrees in temperature. I’m in no rush to get to Wareham, so I might stop off en-route. Right now I’m on the 14:35 to Weymouth, waiting departure form Waterloo…

18:25.

It’s turned into one of those days! The train from London was packed all the way to Southampton central, which is where things went belly up. My train onwards to Wareham was cancelled due to a previous service hitting a bike which had been thrown onto the line at Christchurch near Bournemouth. Chaos ensued as services through Southampton rapidly fell apart with knock-on cancellations following. Nothing was running between Southampton and Bournemouth, with staff being unable to say when services would resume. Some passengers were getting stroppy and one young woman member of staff fled to her office in tears.

22:30.

Well, I *did* make it to Wareham in the end, but it was by taxi, not train.

I ended up being stuck at Southampton for a few hours as SouthWestern Railway effectively gave up on trying to run trains West of the city. Every time one arrived from London with the idea of it heading West it was cancelled by SWR control. Even the station staff were getting fed up of it. Thankfully, Cross-Country were made of sterner stuff and kept their Bournemouth bound trains running. I managed to get aboard a packed 18:50 which was standing room only. On arrival at Bournemouth I found SWR were running trains back to London but nothing was going West. After quizzing a couple of different members of staff myself and three other passengers were loaded into a taxi which took me to Wareham and them to Weymouth. Not the railway’s finest hour at all.

Still, I’m here now and the holiday can begin…

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