All-Line Rover, Day 5

It's amazing how we all take for granted such simple pleasures as sleeping in a bed. But for five of the last six nights I've slept on a roll mat on a hard floor, and the other night was spent on a bunk on a moving train. I am therefore very grateful to Tom for providing me with a bed, and with it my first good night's sleep in a week.

Unfortunately, come the morning, my luck ran out: I had a 25-minute walk to Exmouth station, and it decided to rain - quite heavily - for the duration, and then to stop raining just as I got to the station, leaving me rather wet. To add injury to insult, I then ended up back on the same Pacer I arrived on last night.

0923 Exmouth to Exeter St. David's, arrive 0953
Distance: 13.25 miles, walk-up price: £2.05
(Headcode 2T12, operated by First Great Western using Pacer 142029)

Since it was the same train on the same line as last night, I'll not bother with the ratings for this one. Anyway, by the time the train left Exmouth, the heavy shower that I'd been caught in had passed over and we were left with some nice sunshine - not as nice, admittedly, as the arrival last night, but still a decent view of the Exe estuary.

The train was considerably busier than last night, being more like half-full than quarter-full. That said, I overheard comments that it was considerably quieter than normal, and that because it was the school holidays the roads were much clearer and people were driving into Exeter instead.

We arrived in Exeter on time, and I had fifteen minutes to grab a magazine and a newspaper before getting my first proper train of the day.

1010 Exeter St. David's to Salisbury, arrive 1215
Distance: 88.75 miles, walk-up price: £18.00
(Headcode 1L40, operated by South West Trains using Sprinters 159106+159107)

Scenery: 6/10 - Nice rolling English countryside.
Punctuality: 8/10 - A four-minute delay due to the route being single-track was made up thanks to a seven-minute scheduled stop at Yeovil Junction; all in all, not bad for a single-track line.
Speed: 6/10 - There's a lot of potential on this line for semi-fast trains, but with the restricted capacity everything has to stop everywhere, which is unfortunate.
Comfort: 9/10 - Comfortable seats and good visibility, let down only by the tables being a tad too low to get into the seats easily.
Staff: 7/10 - Just the one ticket inspection, though to be fair I suspect there were more after I left; a good trolley service which passed up and down the train twice in the space of two hours.

Sprinters are the workhorse of the regional railway network in this country: they were built in batches in the late 1980s and early 1990s to replace a multitude of different kinds of train. The process, known as "Sprinterization"(!), basically spelt the end of locomotive-hauled regional services.

Even South West Trains have a small fleet of Sprinters, based at Salisbury, which cover the few non-electrified routes they operate, the most important of which is London Waterloo to Exeter. This is the oft-forgotten second route to the south west, going through Salisbury and Yeovil rather than the Great Western route through Reading, Westbury and Taunton.

The line was, unfortunately, reduced to a single track with passing loops west of Salisbury as a cost-cutting measure in the 1960s. This means that the best possible service is one train per 90 minutes or so; the current service remains haphazard, sometimes hourly, but often with two-hour gaps.

Fortunately, the powers that be have recognised the potential of this line, which is the fastest way from Southampton and Portsmouth to the South West (changing at Salisbury). An extra passing loop is being added at Axminster to enable an hourly service between London and Exeter from this December, and fully restoring double-track and even electrifying the line have been mooted.

Anyway, having spent five hours on Monday on a Sprinter on the Liverpool-Norwich route, I had pretty much written off Sprinters as cheap and cheerful. South West Trains have, surprisingly, restored my confidence. The seats were actually comfortable, though the tables were a little low and it made getting in and out of the seats mildly difficult.

The visibility was good, which made it all the better to admire the view: the Exeter-Salisbury route isn't nearly as exciting as anything I saw yesterday, but the rolling countryside of Devon, Dorset and Wiltshire was certainly very nice.

We arrived in Salisbury on time, in spite of a few delays due to the single track working. I was pleased with the member of staff who announced that the halt-in-the-middle-of-a-field just after we'd stopped at Tisbury was in fact timetabled (we stopped for about seven minutes to let a service in the other direction go through).

I was rather pleased with Salisbury station. For one, it has a subway with not stairs, but ramps, which when you're dragging a small suitcase with half your life in it is a great help. Secondly, the cafe on the platform - admittedly one in the Pumpkin chain - was very good, the hot baguette I had being both tasty and soft (which pleased my teeth).

1241 Salisbury to Cardiff Central, arrive 1445
Distance: 90.75 miles, walk-up price: £16.85
(Headcode 1F16, operated by First Great Western using Sprinter 158951)

Scenery: 4/10 - Some nice bits, but I'd seen most of it before, and the bits I hadn't weren't particularly nice.
Punctuality: 8/10 - We ran a few minutes late to Bristol, but a quick turnaround at Bristol put us back on time.
Speed: 5/10 - Could and should be a lot better; it's a major inter-regional route and my journey averaged 44mph. No wonder people drive.
Comfort: 8/10 - Nearly as good a Sprinter as SWT, but not quite; good seats, but the visibility wasn't quite as good.
Staff: 4/10 - No catering service, which for a three-hour long service between major cities is appalling. Ticket checks were pretty thorough, though.

I proceeded on from Salisbury towards Cardiff, on the so-called Wessex Main Line. I'd been on various bits of this route, but not the whole lot in one go. The only new bits for me were Salisbury to Westbury, which passes through rural Wiltshire, and from Filton to Cardiff, which passes through the Severn Tunnel to Wales.

This was, in fact, my first time on a train in Wales. For some reason I've never been a brilliant fan of Wales; I've always thought of its scenery as a poor cousin to Scotland. To make matters worse, the Severn Tunnel deposits us in South Wales, which is, I believe, to Wales what the Firth of Clyde is to Scotland - it's the centre of industry, and thus not very pretty.

All in all, the scenery wasn't anything spectacular, though rural Wiltshire is reasonably pretty. The train itself was quite busy, it having started back at Portsmouth (via Southampton); most of the business, like that on Liverpool-Norwich, was relatively short-distance traffic, with few seeming to travel the whole length.

This particular journey was pretty much a means to an end, the end being the next train I took from Cardiff. I had a (tighter than recommended) five-minute connection at Cardiff; fortunately we arrived a little early, so I made my next train with time to spare.

1450 Cardiff Central to Crewe, arrive 1726
Distance 138.75 miles, walk-up price £28.60
(Headcode 1W27, operated by Arriva Trains Wales using "Coradia" 175006)

Scenery: 7/10 - Some very nice hills and castles, both Welsh and English.
Punctuality: 9/10 - One or two stops were a minute late, but overall it was pretty much bang on time.
Speed: 7/10 - Not too bad for an inter-regional route, but it could be better (see below).
Comfort: 1/10 - Without a doubt the worst train I've been on so far. See below.
Staff: 6/10 - The trolley service only went as far as Shrewsbury, which is a bit early to give up; ticket checks were reasonably thorough.

As soon as I sat down on this train, a so-called "Coradia" class 175, I immediately began to regret having done so; this was not a pleasant train to be on.

At one end of the carriage, there are two sets of four seats which face each other, like at a table. But there were no tables, mainly because there wasn't room for them. Seeing one of these free I took one and immediately regretted it. I had almost no legroom.

To make matters worse, my case, which is hand-luggage sized, and has fitted in every overhead rack so far this week, failed to fit in the overhead rack of this train. So I had to put it in the main luggage rack, which was a bit further away. OK, not a huge inconvenience, but I wasn't a great fan of leaving my stuff a bit out of my sight.

But these pale into insignificance when compared to my greatest complaint: the train had no bins.

Now, I'm used to stations having no bins, lest Irish terrorists drop bombs in them or something. But trains?! Since when has it been sensible for a train to have no bins?! I might not have minded so much, but the litter-pickers seems to pack up and go home at Shrewsbury, leaving me to take my rubbish with me when I got off at Crewe.

Anyway, enough moaning, because aside from the train, the route itself was actually rather nice. It forms part of the mammoth Manchester to Milford Haven route, which passes through Crewe, Shrewsbury, Hereford, Newport, Cardiff, Swansea, Llanelli and Carmarthen. The portion of the route I was on took us through the Welsh Marches, past some very nice hills and castles. It was a real pity that the train itself pissed me off.

Also, the speed of the train isn't bad for an inter-regional route, but it would be much better if the local flows - such as Newport to Cwmbran and Abergavenny - were not served by a long-distance train from Carmarthen to Manchester. Three hours from Cardiff to Manchester ought to be possible (and I understand it used to happen).

One thing that did strike me as odd is how noticeably poorer the people travelling on this train seemed to be than on, say, the Exeter-Salisbury train I had been on earlier. To go from the Exeter-Salisbury train, which had a number of women - not women in suits, just women on a day out - sitting in first class, presumably because they could afford it, to the Cardiff-Crewe train, where I sat beside a guy who was phoning in bets on horses and eating a pastie, was an unusual juxtaposition. Maybe the North-South divide really does exist.

Anyway, I was heading back to London tonight, so I tried to make a three-minute connection at Crewe to:

1729 Crewe to London Euston, arrive 1908
Distance 158 miles, walk-up price £39.15
(Headcode 1A56, operated by Virgin Trains using a Class 390 Pendolino)

Scenery: 3/10 - Rainy, drab and industrialised, and nothing I've not seen before.
Punctuality: 5/10 - We were a couple of minutes late at Crewe, and got delayed further as we went south to end up six minutes late. Disappointing.
Speed: 8/10 - Fast, yes, but the delays cost us.
Comfort: 7/10 - Good seats; didn't care about the visibility this time.
Staff: 7/10 - Helpful shop assistant and a nice conductor who carefully checked the tickets, though her announcements, while friendly, did tend to ramble on a bit.

I'd done Crewe-London before, and I'd been on a Pendolino before, so this wasn't anything new. Except, that is, for the Virgin Shop. Instead of a standard buffet car, Virgin insist that you'd much prefer to be able to buy six copies of Hello! on the train instead of a hot meal. However, they did have fruit salad, which was much healthier than anything NXEC offered me on Tuesday.

I made it into Euston a bit late, but time enough to buy some dinner and (just about) make my train back to New Beckenham.

Northern Line (City branch), Euston to London Bridge

1946 London Bridge to New Beckenham, arrive 2006
Distance 7.75 miles, walk-up price £2.45

Not a bad day, but there wasn't anything special to capture my imagination today. Today's statistics were:

Total time on trains: 9 hours, 14 minutes.
Distance covered: 497.25 miles.
Walk-up price: £107.10.

Tomorrow, I head for North Wales. I'm staying on Saturday and Sunday with a friend of mine on the west coast of Wales (in Fairbourne, to be precise), and he doesn't have any internet, so Saturday's blog post may have to wait until Monday. Never fear, I shall return soon!