Porthmadog; Monday, 02 May, 2011

My original plan had been to spend part of the day on the Ffestiniog railway before catching the train out to Blaenau to start my journey home, but the problems of all the previous days made me concerned that I could end up getting stranded, so instead I decided to have a long lie in and a lazy morning wandering around Porthmadog before catching the 13:30 bus to Blaenau rather than risking the train.

The bus turned out to be a miraculously good choice. Firstly as the journey was so spectacular through the countryside and secondly as it got me to Blaenau 55 minutes before my train was due to leave.

12 minutes before my train was due to leave the train from Porthmadog was due in, but it didn’t appear, and by the time we pulled out of the station heading for Llandudno it had still not put an appearance in, meaning that if I had caught it I would have been stranded. Any later train from Blaenau meant I wouldn’t have been able to make it back to London that evening, and going back to Porthmadog would have led to the same result.

The ride down from Blaenau to Llandudno along the Conwy Valley is another spectacular journey, starting with the bizarre and scarred landscape of Blaenau then entering a long tunnel which pops out into the lush green of the upper Conwy Valley it’s hard to imagine you are only the other side of the same hills that are so scarred in Blaenau.

We arrived in Llandudno on time and my train back to Chester arrived within a minute of it’s scheduled time. Unfortunately, it was only two cars long and spectacularly busy. At each station down the line it got progressively later as people tried to squeeze on so that by the time we reached Flint the train was running 18 minutes late, exactly the same length of time as my connection in Chester was.

Thankfully, the train managed to make up a couple of minutes between Flit and Chester and we arrived in with two minutes to make the sprint down the platform to the London train. Thankfully most of the train was also making the sprint so it was pretty obvious to the Virgin train crew that they couldn’t really get away with leaving this number of people abandoned, so they held the train for a couple of minutes to allow everyone to board.

Slumped into my seat I finally caught my breath and was able to unwind a little from the previous hours increasing tension, and enjoy the journey through the evening sunshine back to London.