Southampton; Friday, 04 February, 2011

I just about managed to squeeze myself and my luggage into the already heaving train, feeling guilty that I was paying considerably less for this than the majority of my fellow passengers who are paying considerably more than £3.75 each way just to go to Horsham, let alone all the way down to Southampton.

A couple of stops down the line, with careful positioning, I was able to secure a seat which then improved to a window seat a couple of stops further down the line.

Part of the reason for the fantastically cheap ticket was that the journey time from Croydon to Southampton is not particularly express like. In fact it would have been quicker, by some way, to have gone up into London, over to Waterloo and gotten the train down from there. Though I would still have had to squeeze into a horrifically overcrowded sardine tin, except in that instance for the better part of £40.

So, nearly two and a half hours after leaving Croydon, but in a first for Southern, five minutes early, the train pulled into Southampton and disgorged the final few remaining passengers who were travelling on it.

I walked the short distance from the station to the hotel, checked in, dropped off my stuff and headed out into the misty, slightly damp night to have a look around the city centre.

I wasn’t expecting particularly much. After all, Southampton has been one of the UK’s major ports for a long time, and got pretty extensively bombed during WWII. Most of the area around the hotel has been developed into a retail and entertainment park, so after walking across acres of desolate car park and past cavernous superstore after cavernous superstore, it was a bit of a surprise to suddenly stumble along a chunk of the old medieval city walls.

I had quite a long wander around the city centre before grabbing a late bite to eat and heading back to the hotel for a good night’s sleep.