A young friend of mine has been regaling friends online with her attempted train journey from Chichester through Bristol and back down home to beyond Truro this afternoon, this evening and now tonight. The latest is that she's been stuck in car park in Taunton for the past three hours waiting for a promised rail replacement bus heading south.
Thought you might appreciate hearing the end of this story. Remember, this is a young girl, travelling alone. We last left her in Taunton at about 11pm, having set out 12 hours before from Chichester. Here we are, in her own words:
"It was taxi from Taunton in the end. They called all the taxis they could for miles around, but obviously the roads were all blocked too, so they let us onto taxis as they arrived, and it took hours. Bristol had booked all the coaches.
They ran out of hot drinks before they got to me. Station staff made an executive decision and ordered takeaway pizzas for everyone - unfortunately they turned up and there was only pepperoni or ham and pineapple. Nothing else. Myself and the other vegetarians did try manfully not to look like we were sulking (bearing in mind most of us hadn't eaten since lunch time and this was getting on to midnight and it was freezing cold), but I don't think we were too successful. I shared peanuts with a couple of lads (not a euphemism), and then a taxi arrived going as far as Plymouth.
When we got to Plymouth it was packed and there was no food there either, or any coaches or trains. Luckily the taxi driver offered to take us on to Truro, where all of us in the taxi were going, because he said that his company had booked him to go as far as Penzance (or Penjance as he called it), and he needed to get the mileage in anyway.
So he put the post code for Truro station into his Sat Nav and we drove onwards through the night, in silence, occasionally letting out tired gasps and screams when the car aquaplaned. It was biblical weather and some bits of the roads were more like rivers.
And then the taxi driver stops the car at Chiverton roundabout at 3am, which is about 5 miles from Truro, a lot of it unlit roads with no pavement, and says we have to get out there, in the middle of the storm with all our luggage, or pay him £25 to take us into Truro.
I think he expected us to meekly pay him. But none of us had any money on us anyway, and he had certainly underestimated exactly how close to breaking point we all were by then.
We weren't having it. We didn't have it. There were 4 of us and one of him. There was no violence, but it came out in a variety of ways...the lady in the front started getting tearful, another person started calling the police...my own particular reaction was to give him a stern telling off.
In the end he drove us into Truro, where myself and another passenger got another taxi onwards together - which I managed to pay for because a very, very kind person, who I won't embarrass by naming them, had earlier sent me some money online when they saw my predicament.
And then crisps, hot water bottle and bed.
And that's all the story."
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