Lost in London

Anyone who's ever travelled by train in the UK will know that things don't always go to plan. Considering I've been using trains for the past six years, I've managed to avoid the dreaded replacement bus. Until now. But more into that later, lets start at the beginning of the day, shall we?

I didn't actually take any pictures this time, so here's one from my trip last year.

My reason for visiting London this time was to see my lovely friend Georgia, who I went to university with. So last weekend I hopped on a train to London Paddington, enjoying the free WiFi and watching the English countryside zoom past. 

When I arrived I had a brief look on my phone to work out how to get to my friends house, decided on the route I thought would be simplest and jumped onto an underground train. I slowly realised that the train was terminating early due to some works going on, and ended up at Kings Cross station instead. It was then that I found out my phone had no signal or internet connection, even when I went above ground!

Whenever my mum, sister, or I are on a train
we send each other a 'train club' selfie.

Eventually I made it to my final stop and then had to work out how to walk to my friends house without the use of Google Maps. Luckily I'd taken a rough picture earlier on (before my phone failed me) of where I had to go. After walking around for a bit I was rather lost. I managed to retrace my steps back to the train station and started again. Fortunately I went the right way this time and was so relieved when I finally saw the street sign for my friend's road.

We had a good catch-up, some lunch and a G&T each before heading out to explore the local area. At this point I decided to try restarting my phone and voila, I had signal and internet again. Why didn't I think of that earlier?! We grabbed some coffees to take with us and went on a walk around a park, into some Pinterest worthy shops and through a cool overgrown graveyard. After that there was just enough time to stop at a pub, which had an open fire and a rather entertaining toddler causing mischief.

The time came to head back home and as I got to the station, a train was already there about to leave. For some reason I panicked and got onto the train without checking it was actually the right one. It started to move and I realised it was going in the opposite direction to where I needed to go, so I got off at the next stop and got on the right train! Eventually I made it back to Paddington station with plenty of time to spare and get something to eat. I looked up at the boards to see which platform my train would be leaving from only to find that it'd been cancelled. Which meant that I had to get a train to Swindon instead and get a replacement bus from there. It wasn't really that much of a hassle, and it only added an extra half hour to my journey in the end. However I was worn out from a busy week and just wanted to get home to bed!

All in all it was still a great day out and I think it's just part of the adventure when taking on the British railways. Have you had any train drama recently? Let me know in the comments!

J :)