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I'm not a natural user of public transport - at least, not since I started driving an uncomfortable number of decades ago.
It's been a while.
I had a training course in Nearby City, a place I visit friends in the outskirts of regularly, but the centre of said conurbation is one I don't relish. However, for a full week I had to go there and have some knowledge hammered into my skull. Some of it stuck. However, Nearby City (NC from here) has very limited and expensive parking in the centre, and the training centre is but a five minutes amble from the train station, so public transport it was!
The course was Monday through Friday last week, so the Saturday before I decided to have a little recce to work out the trains and location etc. I booked a return ticket for the Saturday on the Thursday, and found out the hard way I had to collect this at A N Other train station as my local place doesn't have an automated ticket collection machine. How barbaric! That cost me a ten-mile round trip on Friday night to get a ticket for transport from another station.
Wonderful. You can tell I was loving this, can't you?
Cometh the Saturday, cometh the hour, and I attended the local station. I found out at this point that you could buy tickets from a conductor on the train, and thus my trip to A N Other station was unnecessary, but this was not mentioned on the website at all. I'm used to ordering online, and had no inkling this was still a thing. So far, so bad.
I arrived at NC and found much automation. There was a ticket barrier that asked for my ticket before it would let me out. I put my return ticket in and the gate opened.
The ticket didn't come back out. I found out from an attendant (and he sportingly looked through the bin inside the gate for me to no avail) that there should have been two tickets dispensed at A N Other station's machine. I probably grabbed the first one and ran. Oh bugger.
Oh well, it was a little less than a fiver to get a single back - money I sort of begrudged, but it was my fault, right? It was an adventure, and misadventures occur, correct? I trotted off into the bowels of NC and did my recce with gusto. It really was a five-minute amble. That being performed, and it being relatively early doors, I made my way around the local bits of NC and was baffled. I could apparently buy the same stuff here as I could back home, or in other places, but the shops were in a different order. There were a few unique establishments, and the NC branch of my usual bank was quite happy to open on a Saturday morning (my local one doesn't, the cads), and they even provided a youthful chap wearing a blazer and a smile to guide me to a cashier. Being of advanced years I can already manage this myself, so perhaps putting his wages into opening my local branch would be an idea? Just me?
Rapidly becoming bored of NC and the environs, I made my way back to the train station. This is where things went a touch awry - more so than before. I hit a ticket office, got my tickets for the next week and a receipt for the expenses, and then a single to get back home.
Being literate, I followed the advice of the large sign with glowing letters and headed to the appropriate platform. Upon this platform was a smaller sign, with glowing letters, proclaiming the time and the various destinations of the carriages at said platform. Home Town was declared amongst the destinations, so I scurried aboard a rather crowded carriage, found one of the last few seats, and stuck my face deep in my Kindle.
I occasionally glanced up, but didn't recognise any of the areas around, but I'd been face down in my Kindle on the way to NC and didn't expect much. Approaching the half-hour mark, I heard the driver announce on the tannoy that we were approaching a terminus, thus we'd all have to decant from the vehicle.
Hang on, thought I, looking around. Home Town is a through station, as are all the ones until Really Big City to the west. I saw a sign.
I'd travelled east half an hour on the train to get to NC. Why was I now in a Tourist City another half-hour east?
That cost me another twenty quid to get back.
Hey ho.
The training week was relatively uneventful, I guess.
Rapscallion
It's been a while.
I had a training course in Nearby City, a place I visit friends in the outskirts of regularly, but the centre of said conurbation is one I don't relish. However, for a full week I had to go there and have some knowledge hammered into my skull. Some of it stuck. However, Nearby City (NC from here) has very limited and expensive parking in the centre, and the training centre is but a five minutes amble from the train station, so public transport it was!
The course was Monday through Friday last week, so the Saturday before I decided to have a little recce to work out the trains and location etc. I booked a return ticket for the Saturday on the Thursday, and found out the hard way I had to collect this at A N Other train station as my local place doesn't have an automated ticket collection machine. How barbaric! That cost me a ten-mile round trip on Friday night to get a ticket for transport from another station.
Wonderful. You can tell I was loving this, can't you?
Cometh the Saturday, cometh the hour, and I attended the local station. I found out at this point that you could buy tickets from a conductor on the train, and thus my trip to A N Other station was unnecessary, but this was not mentioned on the website at all. I'm used to ordering online, and had no inkling this was still a thing. So far, so bad.
I arrived at NC and found much automation. There was a ticket barrier that asked for my ticket before it would let me out. I put my return ticket in and the gate opened.
The ticket didn't come back out. I found out from an attendant (and he sportingly looked through the bin inside the gate for me to no avail) that there should have been two tickets dispensed at A N Other station's machine. I probably grabbed the first one and ran. Oh bugger.
Oh well, it was a little less than a fiver to get a single back - money I sort of begrudged, but it was my fault, right? It was an adventure, and misadventures occur, correct? I trotted off into the bowels of NC and did my recce with gusto. It really was a five-minute amble. That being performed, and it being relatively early doors, I made my way around the local bits of NC and was baffled. I could apparently buy the same stuff here as I could back home, or in other places, but the shops were in a different order. There were a few unique establishments, and the NC branch of my usual bank was quite happy to open on a Saturday morning (my local one doesn't, the cads), and they even provided a youthful chap wearing a blazer and a smile to guide me to a cashier. Being of advanced years I can already manage this myself, so perhaps putting his wages into opening my local branch would be an idea? Just me?
Rapidly becoming bored of NC and the environs, I made my way back to the train station. This is where things went a touch awry - more so than before. I hit a ticket office, got my tickets for the next week and a receipt for the expenses, and then a single to get back home.
Being literate, I followed the advice of the large sign with glowing letters and headed to the appropriate platform. Upon this platform was a smaller sign, with glowing letters, proclaiming the time and the various destinations of the carriages at said platform. Home Town was declared amongst the destinations, so I scurried aboard a rather crowded carriage, found one of the last few seats, and stuck my face deep in my Kindle.
I occasionally glanced up, but didn't recognise any of the areas around, but I'd been face down in my Kindle on the way to NC and didn't expect much. Approaching the half-hour mark, I heard the driver announce on the tannoy that we were approaching a terminus, thus we'd all have to decant from the vehicle.
Hang on, thought I, looking around. Home Town is a through station, as are all the ones until Really Big City to the west. I saw a sign.
I'd travelled east half an hour on the train to get to NC. Why was I now in a Tourist City another half-hour east?
That cost me another twenty quid to get back.
Hey ho.
The training week was relatively uneventful, I guess.
Rapscallion
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