11a.m. tomorrow - that's 13th January 2026 - I'm being interviewed on West Wilts Radio and will be talking (now here's a big surprise) about the West Wiltshire Rail User Group and our / their involvement in public transport - especially rail - in the area.

Listen live via their web site at https://westwiltsradio.com

 

Well - they *could* but people from Barnstaple are headed predominantly for the Exeter area.

Three times as many passengers by train from Barnstaple are travelling according to ticket data to Exeter Central than to any other destination. So that's the logical thing to replace. Here is the service before and during the engineering works.

18th March 2026
11:35 - 12:41 to EXD continued to EXC at 12:45

25th March 2026
10:57 - 12:32 to EXD where it terminates.
12:42 train EXD to EXC arrives there at 12:45

The following major passenger flows are to Exeter St Davids, and to Digby and Sowton.  Together with the Exeter Central flow, these are the only three that exceed 10%.  Tiverton is not a major flow, and only 2 of the top 10 flows are north east of Tiverton.

 

Congratulations to the crew for getting it running just 10 minutes late.   The above message still being issued three quarters of an hour after the train had left Salisbury - even though it implies it's still there - and it still suggests it's stuck at Salisbury at 08:07 as I write.

 

Cotswold trains were using the Didcot West curve yesterday and reversing at Foxhall Junction - wonder if that’s why?

Regardless, the Hereford starter is cancelled today so that’s 18 coaches of passengers trying to fit into just 5. Quite likely people will be left on the platform at Hanborough by the sound of it.

 

Is it just me or... or are the old crocks put on our line?   Feels like that sometimes!

 
Just wondering if express bus/coach services could also deployed direct from Tiverton to Barnstaple.

 

Agreed. Image not available to guests

 

My bet is that HM Government is not prepared to pay for full Border (Immigration) Force presence at Immingham, so DFDS are only allowed to carry bona fidei lorry drivers on their ships.

As to the inebriated Scandinavian stories, on my first trip to Norway (the 1979 one) I was surprised (or perhaps, not surprised) to see drunk Norwegians spark out asleep on the streets of Oslo, in the middle of the day and clearly from their clothes not down-and-outs.

On my second trip, in 1985 and using my Bilturlogi pass, I stayed for a night in one of the weirdest hotels ever in Sweden near Lake Vattern. Almost the entire interior was painted light green, and the only on-site staff was what I assume was a night porter who was dressed like an extra from The Addams Family. The only other guests were the members of a Canadian international motorcycle racing team who were in Sweden to get their bikes set up for the coming season at the Husquvarna factory. They told me that they did this every year. They said they used to bring a bottle of Canadian Whiskey to give to each mechanic as a thank you present, but after seeing the way that many of them simply took the tops of their bottles and glugged it down like Coca Cola, thought that perhaps something else might be better.

To be fair, I think from more recent visits that a rather less restrictive regime for alcohol in recent years has meant that many Scandinavians' relationship with it has become less problematic.

 

Accepted. Image not available to guests

 
Apologies.......

 

I strongly suspect that at least three lessons have been robustly learned.

 
My 5 foot high (at the high point) basement squat was my cheapest, and lasted several months before being discovered and evicted. Spent most of my time at that home sitting or sleeping. It worked - sort of - when you are 5'11".

 

This is a true story. On one of our family holidays, courtesy of a friend who owned a narrowboat on the Kennet & Avon Canal, we moored somewhere and at about 9:30am went to stroll into the village for fresh bread and milk.  There on the towpath in front of us, next to his narrowboat, was the most inebriated Swede I have ever seen - trying to drive his boat's anchor into the towpath. Image not available to guests

 
The (gradually-increasing, but still low) bus fare cap seem to have resulted in some ridiculously long journeys from west London to Hertfordshire Uni in Hatfield on (former Green Line) route 724.  Now £6 a day rather than whatever student digs cost nowadays.  Most of them appear to spend the near 2 hour journey catching up on sleep rather than studying.

I do feel a bit sorry for them.  I started off living with my parents when studying at a then-polytechnic, at which commuting in was more normal than at a university.  I fairly soon decided though that I was missing out on a significant part of student life, and put up with a succession of fairly dire but cheap bedsits to be closer.

 

I looked that up (isn't the Internet wonderful) and find that from Immingham DFDS are running to
Brevik (2 journeys per week))
Cuxhaven (5)
Esbjerg (6)
Fredrikstad (1)
Gothenburg (6)
Rotterdam (6)
Zeebrugge (1)
A couple of those journeys are "subject to traffic levels"

I suspect the 80/20 rule applies - 20% of the booking hassle is for 80% of the business income  (freight traffic) and that 80% of the hassle of booking would be for 20% more business (passenger cars and food passengers), and the "Can't do that at Immingham is rather convenient".   And if the ship is close to full on the bread and butter business, why worry about the hastleish icing on the cake?   Called the "free market economy"

Viking invasion?  Perhaps you never met the Norwegians coming across from Stavanger to Newcastle, getting drunk ad going home on the Color line ship I once had the pleasure of using!

 
It's hard to come to any conclusion which doesn't involve some fairly robust larking about and fiddling with an emergency exit handle.  The message needs to be rather firmer than just staying seated.

 
I was trying to think of phrases that would match CfA but still link to our master merger. 

 

Ahem! Image not available to guests  Please don't dare to suggest that I had anything to do with that ghastly faceless entity which used to be called Avon.

I have, however, followed your suggestion and moved / merged a couple of topics here.

Chris from NAILSEA.  Image not available to guests