Meet the UK’s unluckiest rail passenger: Pat Williams from Crewe

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Simon Calder, also referred to as The Man Who Pays His Way, has been writing about journey for The Independent since 1994. In his weekly opinion column, he explores a key journey problem – and what it means for you.

The first time I met Pat Williams from Crewe was on Friday 22 December. At the time, she was enduring a reasonably bleak midwinter journey to go to household in southern France. Pat had carried out the proper – if troublesome and costly – factor. Rather than hopping on the 42-minute prepare from her native station to Manchester airport and flying from there, she was decided to restrict her harm to the planet. Pat booked a visit by rail by way of London and Paris.

The earlier day, her journey from Crewe to London Euston had been delayed for 5 hours on the West Coast predominant line. With each minute, the stress grew. Pat quickly knew it was inevitable that she would miss her booked Eurostar prepare from St Pancras International to Paris. Regrettably, the rail business is not so good as airways at defending passengers whose deliberate itineraries fail at the first hurdle. Would she lose her deliberate prepare and must pay probably lots of of kilos to get her plans again on monitor?

Fortunately, that proved educational. Her Eurostar prepare had already been cancelled because of a sudden walk-out by French employees working in the Eurotunnel management centre in Calais. With 30 trains axed on one in all the busiest days of the winter, she grew to become one in all 25,000 passengers needing someplace to remain and a substitute Eurostar prepare. Her household sourced a London lodge, and Eurostar discovered a seat the following afternoon – which was once I met Pat, whereas I used to be reporting on the pre-Christmas journey chaos.

I bade Pat farewell. She now experiences: “I finally arrived at my destination in France around 36 hours after leaving home. I enjoyed Christmas with my family, although bad luck continued: I had a fall on my first full day there, and had numerous bruises, and was in quite a lot of pain.”

Pat had booked her homeward journey for 28 December – that means she missed the subsequent Eurostar festive foul-up, involving flooding in a tunnel beneath the Thames. “The Eurostar was uneventful, no issues at all,” she experiences. But after her arrival at London St Pancras, the journey unravelled as soon as extra.

“I dashed, well, hobbled to Euston to catch my train to Crewe,” Pat experiences.

Very sadly, no trains had been working on the West Coast predominant line attributable to a fatality.

“I was told to go back to St Pancras – at which point my case suddenly felt twice as heavy.”

Pat was re-routed from London to Derby, from the place it ought to have been a easy matter to connect with a Crewe prepare. But her issues had been far from over: “On arriving at Derby, all trains to Crewe were cancelled due to floods. Eventually, we were told to go outside and coaches would arrive to take us to Stoke.”

Going outdoors concerned passing by the ticket barrier. “I put my ticket in the slot at the exit barrier, but by this time I was so exhausted, I didn’t fully get through the gates before they closed, trapping my already bruised ribs and legs.”

Even when the coaches lastly appeared, says Pat: “Our coach was delayed as police got on and searched for someone. The person was not found.”

Impressively, Pat nonetheless has the energy and sunny outlook to depend her blessings: “At least coming home I managed the journey in one long day. And I was still smiling. I don’t do grumpy.”

For rail travellers all over the place in the UK, the new 12 months has begun miserably – with flooding, fallen bushes and employees shortages wrecking thousands and thousands of journeys. I counsel, subsequently, that we rejoice the begin of 2024 in the method of countries equivalent to Serbia and North Macedonia the place many individuals adhere to the previous Julian calendar.

The annual reboot occurs on what the new-fangled Gregorian calendar regards as 14 January. But with no strikes presently threatened, I hereby want Pat and each different rail passenger a contented new 12 months.