So, as with what always happens with Tom we arrived at the station with about 10 minutes to get to our train platform and went straight to the ticket counter to see what we could do about having tickets reprinted. Of course the self-service machine only had record of our later trip back to London (and subsequently printed those tickets, so we had to be sure not to loose them). The guys at the help station counter pretty much told us we'd have to get new tickets and after they finally understood I could access them on a computer they pointed me out of the station and mumbled something about a post office with computers I could try.
Leaving Jackie in the station with our bags I sprinted out of the station and ran down the street looking for a shop that might let me borrow a computer and printer. I finally came across a place and jumped on the computer. Of course when I clicked on the file to open the tickets it didn't work, I asked the annoyed attendant for help and received a roll of the eyes, so I tried a number of tricks I've acquired over the years to confuse the computer into working. Finally it did and, ready to run out the annoyed lady told me it was £2 for printing 2 pieces of paper. (So frustrating!)
I ran back to the station and swung the bag onto my shoulder and Jackie and I ran to our platform...2 minutes after the train had departed.
I went up to a random platform attendant and he suggested we take a train to Birmingham and then switch to go to Bristol, implying it wouldn't be an issue. On board when the attendant came by, I explained that we had some ticket and platform confusion and that a platform attendant said it wouldn't be an issue for us to take this train.
Kneeling down with our paper ticket in his hand the gentelman pointed out amongst the fine print the statement "ticket is not valid on any other train or at any other time". We were looking at a £50 ticket each to cover the new journey we were taking. This guy was feeling nice though because he took the ticket and said he'd see what he could do.
About 5 minutes before our arrival in Birmingham he came back with the tickets and had written on it to allow us on this train and a subsequent train to Bristol.
We got into the platform and showed a new attendant the note and asked which platform the train would leave from. It was #9, we were at #2. And our train was 12 minutes late in an original layover period of 15 minutes. The attendant explained that the new platform was at least a ten minute walk away so I grabbed the tickets back and told Jackie to run.
Running is not particularly easy in flip flops with a big backpack in a crowded station. We found the platform and ran down the stairs, the doors on the train to our right were closing so we lunged onboard, hoping that we had made it on the correct train.
And we had. With no seat reservation we had a hard time locating seats near each other, but out of breath and a little worried we were on board and perfectly happy about that.
Phew it was a crazy one!!
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry
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