Exeter; Friday, 27 May, 2016
I’d gone for an early train as I wanted to make sure I made it in time, but because I’d left so much time everything worked perfectly including the bus sailing through the centre of town from Victoria to Paddington, so I was at the station with more than 90 minutes to spare before the train left.
Paddington on the Friday evening is always a busy place, add in that it was a Bank Holiday weekend, and the start of the school half term holidays and it was clear that the concourse was close to capacity with tempers appearing to fray everywhere as people without reserved seats made mad dashes for the gates whenever a train was announced to avoid having to stand for hours on end.
Thankfully I had a reserved seat, and by careful use of the internet knew that my train would be leaving from Platform 10, so was able to be by the gates as they were released to let us onto the platform. As I got comfortable in my seat the great swarm of fellow passengers surged down the platform packing the train out, and it remained that way for nearly an hour until we reached Newbury.
As the trains were so full, and with extra ones laid on to help alleviate the crowding, it was inevitable that there would be congestion leaving Paddington and by the time we reached Reading we were already the best part of 15 minutes late, time that we didn’t make up as we meandered our way South West by virtually every station.
I now knew why the ticket I had purchased had seen so much cheaper than the one for the train just 8 minutes earlier, that one was second stop Exeter, this one as something like 9th or 10th stop Exeter.
By the time we finally pulled into the station it was long past 10pm and I was knackered so instead of hefting my luggage up the steep hill to the hotel I cheated and caught a cab.
I checked into the hotel and almost as soon as I’d made it to the room turned in for the night.
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