Are our trains really that busy?

[whole diary]

[Bob_Blakey]

Just booked a DIG-OXF^» (Oxford - next trains) via RDG^‡(resolve) trip for 'She Who Believes She Must Be Obeyed' in early October(Out 5th, Return 8th) and there are apparently absolutely no reservable seats available on many of the Off-Peak services. The ticket is a Super Off Peak Return. I tried both FGW^▸ (First Great Western) & East Coast interwebs just in case it was a search engine issue but got the same result on two consecutive days on both sites.

Any thoughts? - I reckoned it was a little late for the returning/fresher hordes of unwashed undergraduates.

[ChrisB]

they're turbos from rdg?....

[devon_metro]

Oxford goes to uni on the 4th, might be some overspill.

[eightf48544]

Presumably you are talking about the Exeter To Reading leg there would be plenty of seats from Reading to Oxford  even on the HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train).

[inspector_blakey]

Unlikely to be anything to do with Oxford University (esp as what devon_metro posted isn't actually correct ). "Full term", meaning classes, lectures etc, starts on 11 Oct (for some reason the university week always begins on a Sunday). Most colleges expect the undergrads to arrive by the Thursday before, except the freshers who will have been there a few days before that. There's no one big influx/exodus in practice, and students tend to trickle in steadily over a period of a couple of weeks. And it's not as if they all travel up from Devon either!

Definitely odd that the booking system says there supposedly no reservable seats on the HSTs^▸ (High Speed Train) between Exeter and Reading though, I really don't understand that one.