Had just over a week off from doing my blog as I travelled north to visit family. It was a quick visit but managed to see quite a few of my family while I was there.
I managed to get a cheap train ticket from Ipswich to Hull, and I had a lift home so it wasn’t too expensive a trip. Had 2 changes on the train journey, Peterborough and Doncaster. Changing at Peterborough was quite easy, not too long of a walk between platforms.
Doncaster was a nightmare! The train was a few minutes late, so I only had less than 10 minutes to change. I asked which platform I needed and was told it was platform 0, which was the furthest one to get to!
Basically I needed to go down the lift from platform 4 that I had arrived on, along the subway to platform 3b and up the lift there. All the way to the end of 3b to another lift, another short subway to platform 0 and another lift up to the platform. Apparently a good 5 minute walk, I knew it would be tight as it would definitely take me longer than others to do it.
The lift at platform 4 was ok, and a short walk to platform 3b in the subway was fine. Unfortunately the lift at 3b was not working, so there was no option but to get myself up the stairs. Got up the stairs ok, carrying my rollator so was a bit slower. Set of walking towards the end of the platform and got about 2/3rds of the way before being stopped by a woman pushing a pram. She told me she had just been to platform 0 and the train for Hull had already gone!
She had missed the train too after having to get up the stairs with her pram because of the lift being out of order. Apparently there was another train to Hull leaving in about 20 minutes from platform 4. So it was back down the stairs and along the subway, then the lift back up to the platform.
I had just sat down back on platform 4 when they announced that the train for Hull was being changed to platform 3b! So back down the lift, along the subway and up the stairs once more to platform 3b!
Obviously after all this I was totally knackered and was really happy to get seated on the train. The rest of the journey was without incident and arrived in Hull, then got picked up from the station by mother and taken to hers as I was staying there.
Stayed in Hull for a couple of days and visited some family, before returning home on the Saturday. Mother had planned on staying at mine for a week anyway, so that is why I had planned the trip around that.
Well that will do for today, I was only planning on doing a short blog anyway.
Rob
My Life and My MS 