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Published: December 9th 2011
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Bags
All of my bags, which take up their own seat. Well apparently you did not wish me enough luck for my train trip today. Got up early this morning, well just before 8. No one else in the dorm was up though, everyone in my room preferred to go to bed late and get up late. I packed, quietly, and headed out to the city centre. I got a nice wee breakfast while I waited for the Canterbury Cathedral Shop to open. Once it did I bought a tapestry pillow cushion cover, adding it to my massive array of bags that I am carrying. I made it to the train station with time to spare and I was fortunate that there were enough seats that I could take up two spaces, one for me and one for my bags! My rush through London was not too bad. (I guess your luck wishing was very specific). I had looked on the London transportation site to see what underground lines and directions that I need to take. As I got down to the platform the tube was pulling into the station and it was not busy (which is what I was worried about, traveling at 11:30am) so I hopped on. It was not
Stuck
This is where we stopped. The blue dot is us, Swindon is labeled and Didcot is straight down from Oxford where the red lines join. the train that I was supposed to get on! It did however go in the right direction so that was ok. I had to get off though and get on another train. There were two Paddington stops and my googled instructions wanted me to go to the other Paddington stop, which would involve
another switch between trains. I didn’t do that though and it was fine, I just ended up at the back of the train station instead of the front. It was actually a bit helpful since that is where my train was departing from. I had a seat reserved on this train and luckily there was no reservation in the seat next to me so I took up another two seats. Unfortunately after that it all started to go wrong. We had gotten perhaps halfway to Cardiff and the train broke down!! We were somewhere between Swindon and Didcot Parkway. Something happened to the brakes and we were stuck for a little over two hours. Apparently the brakes had engaged and they couldn’t get them off. Eventually they got another engineer out to have a look at the brakes. In the end they announced that there is a
Field
This is what I could see out of my window...nothing but grass. problem with the front engine and so we can no longer move forward so we have to go back to Didcot Parkway. We got back to Didcot Parkway around 3:10. (keeping in mind that we were supposed to be in Cardiff at 2:22pm). Luckily we didn’t have to wait too long for another train to pick us up. The downside was, that train was practically full, so we have to cram our way on and I ended up standing in the doorway for the rest of the trip to Cardiff. I did however have a nice chat with a girl standing next to me. She was also going to Cardiff, although she was getting off at Bristol Parkway to meet her boyfriend and then they were going to drive up from there. The worst part for her was that she actually boarded the train at Didcot Parkway and she could have gotten any of the trains that pass through there because she had an open ticket and it was just bad luck that she happened to pick the one that broke down. I did finally arrive in Cardiff - only 3 hours late. I found my hostel without a problem
Stuck 2
Usually you read these announcements and think ‘I’m glad that’s not me’ well this time it was me! and still managed to get a bottom bunk so that was nice.
I know that I have said it before and I will say it again, I really hate mac’s sometimes!! For some reason the internet is not working in my room. I can connect to the internet and it shows that I have great signal strength but the web page won’t open and I have no idea why!! A great end to a great day.
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