Penrith; Friday, 01 September, 2017

The 33rd day of strike action on Southern had very little effect, other than ensuring that I had to work from home rather than the office as mine was one of the few trains cancelled. Which was a shame as it would have been much easier to get to Euston for my train from Watford than it was from South London.

I made it to Euston with lots of time to spare before we boarded to start the journey north which started out of Euston on time. Less than 20 minutes later we were crawling through a series of failed signals that meant by the time we finally crawled through Milton Keynes we were running nearly 30 minutes late.

The train managed to make up some of the time, but it was still 20 minutes late by the time it finally pulled into Penrith, nearly 4 hours after leaving Euston.

It was already gone 10, so by the time I’d walked down into the centre of town and checked into my hotel I was ready to turn in for the night.