This wasn’t a rail journey of any great note, but sometimes the mundane still needs to be recorded. After a rather lovely few days at Beer Con, I departed early on Easter Monday morning from Norwich railway station. It was quiet, people were focused on their Easter eggs.
There’s the Greater Anglia train to Ely at the back of the platform.
This service was only going as far as Ely due to engineering works that prevented it from reaching the promised land that is Cambridge. That meant that most sensible people were going to London directly arriving into London Liverpool Street, but that was more expensive and so I wasn’t. Although there were points failure and sadly a suicide on that line, so it might likely have been a slower option anyway. It did at least mean a quiet and peaceful train service, as this line can get rather busy.
And arriving safely into the beautiful city of Ely.
Then the exciting bus replacement service from Ely to Cambridge. I was the last person to board this before they thought it had better get going and everyone else behind crowded onto what looked like a nicer bus. This one was far too hot, I’m surprised passengers didn’t get heat stroke, but the driver was quite chirpy although it might have been delirium caused by the heat.
After a quick visit to the new Tesco opposite Cambridge railway station, I meandered to the platform with around thirty minutes before my train. For reasons I’ve never quite understood, Thameslink trains seem to sometimes depart one minute before the scheduled departure time, which caused an argument as one passenger ran to the train to try and board before being shouted to stand back as it was about to depart. I was restricted by what train I could get with an advance ticket, so I had less need to rush.
I thought I would embark on my meal deal at this point and very unusually I didn’t go for the prawn mayo option as I felt that this was a chicken day. I should probably get out more….
The Thameslink train thundering into the station.
The Thameslink service, which left one minute before the departure time, remained relatively quiet, although as there are twelve carriages it’s not exactly limited for space. And, as part of my survey of global trends, I noted that a passenger had his feet on the seats. Not that I go on about this….
Farringdon station where I was changing for another Thameslink train to take me to Luton Airport Parkway. I’m not sure why the route took me through London St. Pancras to get to Farringdon, then went back that way, so I went to a station further south than I needed. There were some young football fans shouting something about “we are the blues, we are the blue army, who are we?” as if they’d forgotten. They were ignored by everyone, which I felt was positive.
And onto the next Thameslink train which was heading to Bedford. This was relatively quiet and everything was on time, so I arrived into the delights of Luton Airport Parkway station which is slightly less annoying when leaving it than arriving into it.
And the walk to Luton Airport, which is around twenty minutes as I refuse to pay for the shuttle as it’s too expensive. The ticket price for Norwich to Luton Airport Parkway was £22 and as it was on time, annoyingly, there was no Delay Repay…. The ticket didn’t work at the Cambridge or Luton Airport Parkway station barriers, but there were gateline staff to let me through. So, one Greater Anglia train, one Greater Anglia bus replacement and two Thameslink trains….
