Great Western Coffee Shop

Had a mildly disastrous rail trip on Tuesday 30th, in brief:

2 specified time singles outward and return from Bristol (Redland) to Ryde Hoverport and back.

Trains to Portsmouth and Southsea fine but hovercraft service suspended on arrival due to wind with hourly (and later half hourly) reviews.

I kept checking with the Hoverport staff but in the end, all of the hovercraft services were cancelled until after my return home time.

The specified time return leg 18.27 form Portsmouth and Southsea was a bit of a disaster with various cancelations and breakdowns resulting in arriving back at Redland 43 minutes late.

The questions are:

Can you get a refund from GWR for the cancelled cross Solent part of the journey?

Is 43 mins late enough to qualify for delay repay?

If both possible, are these done separately or together?

Any advice welcome!

Delay/Repay now operated by GWR, so you should be able to claim for your 43 minute delay.

Re the hovercraft, you'll need to check the T&Cs on the ticket - you did, before you bought, right? Hovercraft often cancelled owing to the weather. I suspect you'd have been carried by other operators across the Solent in these cases, but what does the hovercraft operators website say about canx crossings?

I checked with the staff at the Hoverport who said that in order to go on another service you had to buy another ticket from whichever service you opt for and to later apply for a refund for the original journey from the ticket supplier, GWR in this case as I bought through tickets from their website.

So did you? Or did you just sit it out at the Hoverport hoping they might be able to fly? I'm guessing the latter from your original post...

Well rather than sit it out in the Hoverport, I explored Southsea a bit and called in every hour for updates.

pretty much thew same thing, that you waited rather than buy another crossing & seek a refund for the hover.

I think I would put in for the delay refund and seek refund for the hovercraft prt, which I guess is the difference between what you paid and the travel ticket on it's own?

There is a case to be made for buying a ticket to Ryde St John's Road (or another Island Line destination South of there, especially if going there of course!) for a time like that. It's probably not economical with Advances due to the admin fee, but with a walk up ticket it can then be route excessed for around £4 to go via Wightlink/Ryde Pier Head which is cheaper than buying another ticket/separate ferry ticket.

Sorry your day to the IoW was ruined johnneyw, but hopefully you can get some money back.

I did a similar trip from Reading the other week. In my case I worry that it is going to be overwhelmed with bikes, but no problem in the end. Although I must admit that I was surprised when the person in front of me in the queue at Southsea was charged for a Hovercraft return not much less than my total ticket, with Railcard discount.

I must admit for Solent trips I do check the Shipping Forecast and Inshore Waters Forecast before committing myself, but probably not applicable for advanced.