The theme for the day - train stations amd luggage
LOCATION: Bournemouth to Liverpool
What's happening?
A repositioning day. Had two trains scheduled. A long haul in reserved seats from Biurnemouth to Burmingham. And a tight connection of 14 minutes to get the second train m, with unallocated seating, from Birmingham to Liverpool.
Bottom line. We made it.
The reality- sometimes there are wrinkles in the plans with "severe delays" and "unscheduled outages." With a combination of @Mac tracking (pun intended @Gary) our journey (no missed piers today), the constant announcments in the train,the suggestions and updates from AI, human intervention from the locals and the railway staff, we were never in doubt.
Supervised by @Paul, the taxi arrived spot on time and somehow, woth all the choices of gates and entries at the train station delivered us to the right door. We arrived to signs announcing "severe delays" but somehow our train was still running and it was on time.
We had four seat booked and it included a table. Spread out and made ourselves comfortable. As the train progressed along the line, especially at Reading, the carriage was flooded owth passengers all looking for seats. We found ourselves waving evidence of our 4 seats at newly arrived passengers salivating at the prospect of joining us at our table. No way, even struck up running conversations with the @Littlens and wush we had thought if @Gary's suggestion to hang a picture of their faces on the seats. Would have worked a treat.
Of course our train was delayed along the line and our 14 minutes would shrink to as low as four minutes.
Seemed everyone was alighting at Birmingham and we did have a little queue to navigate (a local told us to relax, we had plenty of time) and raced across the platform to jump on the waiting Liverpool train. We were no sooner on biard than the doors closed and two minutes before schedule it departed. Wow. Close call
The reality was, this was a delayed train - it was the one before ours .And, there was a high probability that our trainvwould have been cancelled.
Smugly settled into another four seats for this 90 minute journey right next to the luggage. With about 30 minutes to go it was announced the train would terminate 12 kms short of our Lime Street station and the announcer advised we could hop a local train!
Right.
New challenge for @Mac. As it turned out, he could get us within 300 metres of our accommodation (rather than the 1 km from Lime Street.) This seemed like a win and, because the train had terminated early, the announcer said our ongoing fare was included.
Our little diversion to the Northern line meant our story had to be told numerous times. Gate 1, staffers waved us through. Gate 2, staffers refused us entry and sent us back to the ticket office. @Mac turned on tge charm at the ticket office and staffer 3 escorted us back to Gate 2 and instructed staffer 2 to let us through.
Navigated the lifts to the platform and waved to the back of the train as it departed. Had missed it by seconds. Not to worry, next one in 15 minutes.
One last Gate Keeper to navigate at Moorfields and of course we only had the ticket from the incompleted journey. "What's your final destination?" was the query here. Thought we were in trouble. Not the case, staffer 4 wanted to give us directions and be helpful.
Pushed and pulled our luggage through busy Beatle-stuff everywhere-Liverpool and found our blue door and successfully navigated the instructions to get through multiple doors, levels, stairs, a lift and landings to access keys and doors to our apartment.
What a welcome after hours on the train. Two bedroom apartment, living room, dining and kitchen and a washing machine!
Our only goal for the day was to eat a meal, at a table, with knives and forks! Found Harrison's, a pub venue with music at background volume level that let us have a conversation. Pork ribs, Guinness pie and chicken something- all consumed using a knife and fork.
First impressions of Liverpool - busy, big, noisy and music emanating from every doorway. We are in our Castle Inn property perfectly located for tomorrow's adventures.
PS: just saying - we are having trouble with the accent here and these scousers speak so fast!!
Survival Barometer
Steps: 6 632
Weather: 29
Can you believe that?
A little background from Co-Pilot.
🟦 CrossCountry (Bournemouth → Birmingham leg) Known for crowded services, tight turnarounds, and higher-than-average minor delays.Expect a delay of 5–15 minutes on roughly 1 in 5 journeys (inference based on national long‑distance trends + operator reputation).
Avanti West Coast (Birmingham → Liverpool leg)Generally better punctuality than CrossCountry.Minor delays still common, but major delays (>30 min) are less frequent.
Short answer for yesterday's delays:
Yesterday’s Bournemouth → Birmingham delays and cancellations were caused by a fire next to the track near New Milton, which damaged the signalling system and forced all lines between Bournemouth and Brockenhurst to close. This directly disrupted CrossCountry services running from Bournemouth → Birmingham, causing cancellations and major delays.
"Maybe you should have just 'got on yer bike.'"
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