The UK has some of the most picturesque countryside in the world; lots of green rolling hills, sheep, hedgerows filled with all sorts of birdlife, sheep, the odd mountain range, sheep, villages filled with houses cut from gingerbread and sheep. Of course there are parts that you would rather wish you didn't have to travel through. I find it odd that so many regional train stations - and village for that matter - have a Stalinist feel to them; short on "Welcome" and long on "Fuck Off".
Anyway - my wife, sister and I decide to travel up to Oxford, one of the most famous college towns on the planet. It's a Sunday which is always a dangerous day to travel on the trains, given that "engineering" works tend to dominate the network at this time.
We arrive at the designated platform to find a train with two carriages ready to depart. Now, it's a Sunday, the sun is shining (oddly enough), we are heading to a popular tourist destination, but we are expected to cram into two carriages. Thankfully we got there a few minutes before scheduled departure and sneaked into first class for which we paid a fiver each (one positive I guess).
Others were not so lucky, and soon people were crammed into every nook-and-cranny tube style. Respecting personal space - forget it. More like embracing that big sweaty man with the moist armpits plus large camera bag with telephoto lens poking you in the ribs - for one hour and eight minutes! Awesome. The only other way to avoid the sardine pit was to take up a cross-legged position on the roof like they do in India; another nation with an issue with capacity - but then they are a third world country with 1.2bn people.
Of course the train was delayed (albeit marginally) and soon we were off. We chugged out of Paddington (trains in the UK only reach full speed when they are about half way into their journey - go figure) and trundled our way towards Oxford.
The journey was uneventful enough until we pulled into some souless station where the train suddenly stopped. Now it's natural for a train to stop at a station but when it just sits there for 10 minutes you do begin to wonder. And so we waited. No annoucements. Just silence. I checked my ticket - yes, it was direct i.e. with no changes because as soon as you factor in a change, you have to factor in missing the connection either because the train you are in is running late or the train you are supposed to meet never pitches up. And then you are stuck on the platform with only a sullen Stalinist with a smiley badge on his or her lapel that says "Here to help" for company.
Our fellow passengers were getting a mite pissed off and then suddenly the doors opened and we were directed to a another train standing in the distance by a sullen Stalinist with the smiley badge. There was no verbal indication that this train was actually going where we all hoped it was; just a Stalinist grimace and a large pudgy thumb pointing down the platform.
So we all raced toward the train fearful that it would just suddenly leave as trains are prone to do in the UK. Luckily first class had a few seats available. As we squeezed onto the train two sullen Stalinists with plastic gloves and armed with a "Vanish" foam equivalent emerged from the first class compartment. We passed them and took our seats.
We immediately noticed that the seats were damp and that an odour clung to the air; apparently this train had been in service late the night before and clearly somebody had missed their appointment with the porcelain telephone and had offloaded a few six packs of "WKD" (translation = Wicked) alcopop near our seats. Just another Saturday night in the UK.
I can't hold my breath for more than 30 seconds generally, but I reckon I could now swim five lengths underwater in an Olympic swimming pool after that journey. It was not particularly pleasant, but then nothing about this journey was exactly an advertisement for British train travel.
Finally we arrived in Oxford and after negotiating the ticket barriers with ten thousand Chinese tourists all looking at the one ticket barrier that was operational and then at each other with the "who farted" look, we ran screaming for the comfort of an air conditioned taxi that promptly drove into a queue of cars all waiting to pass through a traffic light system set up because of, yes, you guessed it, ROAD WORKS!!!
Secret to a stress free existence in the UK - don't go anywhere - just stay at home :)
Out.