After four weeks of working abroad in Azerbaijan and Germany it feels great to be home. Both the European Games and Pentathlon Worlds were fun but nothing quite compares to a proper English summer; warm weather, glorious long evenings, Wimbledon and train strikes. This week, however, I am not about to embark on another tirade about the inefficiency of public transport - I want to talk about the unforeseen positive effects of train strikes.
My first week back in the UK was manic to say the least. I was working all over the country and clocked up some serious miles in the car travelling back and forth. On Thursday I had to travel up to London for a meeting at 10 am so I booked my train tickets well in advance hoping to get some work done on my journey up from home. After a terrible trip back from Germany, my heart sank when I heard on the news that both the train and underground would be on strike that day with passengers advised to expect severe delays. I got up extra early on Thursday morning to catch the earliest train possible and braced myself for the worst.
What actually happened came as a pleasant surprise. The train I caught up was relatively empty and arrived on time. Clearly many commuters had been put off by the doomsday warnings of travel Armageddon. Yes the underground was closed but I packed a pair of trainers and enjoyed a brisk walk to my meeting – it was great to see so many people out enjoying a healthy stroll to work in the nice weather. Once my meeting was over, I hurried back to the station eager to avoid rush hour and boarded the first train I could. This one wasn’t too packed either and to compensate the passengers for the ‘inconvenience’ of the industrial action we were all given free ice lollies and biscuits. My kind of strike!
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