Travel

Going on a P&O ‘mini-cruise’ to Bruges

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P&O Ferry 'Pride of Bruges' docked at Zeebrugge

Last weekend Christine and I went on a ‘mini-cruise’ to Bruges with P&O Ferries. The ‘mini-cruise’ is a package that includes return overnight ferry journeys for two people from Hull to Zeebrugge or Rotterdam, and return coach transfer to Bruges or Amsterdam respectively. This can be taken over two consecutive nights there and back, or over three nights with an overnight stop at your destination.

We did the two night option, which gave us around 8 hours to spend in Bruges. I’ll write more about what we got up to in Bruges later this week but today I’ll focus on the ‘mini-cruise’ experience.

‘Mini-cruise’

I keep using ‘mini-cruise’ in quote marks because this is most definitely not a cruise. You travel on a standard cross-channel ferry – for the Hull-Zeebrugge crossing this is either the Pride of Bruges or Pride of York which are comparatively small ships (around eight decks) but the Hull-Rotterdam ferries are somewhat bigger. The on-board facilities are therefore not like you would expect on a large cruise ship, and are limited to a couple of restaurants and bars, a shop, café and small cinema.

We were on the Pride of Bruges which was introduced into service in 1987 – and it shows. There hasn’t been much done to the ship since then and it retains its 1980s feel in many parts despite some effort in refurbishing it. This includes the cabins.

The cabins sit somewhere between ‘sleeper train’ and ‘budget hotel’. They are en-suite so a shower, basin and toilet are squeezed into a tiny wetroom with each cabin. The beds are bunkbeds, and are rather narrow too – I can’t imagine many children will be conceived out at sea. And you get one unearthed plug socket, about 7 foot off the ground above the mirror, which uses the European standard connector. The walls were also not particularly thick and so the rowdy hen party (bachelorette party for the Americans amongst you) in the next cabin kept Christine awake for most of the night; I slept through it. You have to pay around £10 extra if you want a window in your cabin – we didn’t, so our cabin was in the middle of the boat rather than at the edge. In any case, it’s late October and it gets dark early, so there wouldn’t have been much to see.

Staying connected

There were some signs of modernisation elsewhere on board. Wifi is available, charged at £3 for 90 minutes, which is actually quite reasonable considering you’re out at sea. I didn’t test it so I can’t say how fast or reliable it was, although it seemed to be only available in the public areas and not the cabins. Mobile phone reception seems to also be available at sea, but only for calls and texts, not for data – again, I didn’t test this nor find out how much extra it costs to use. In any case, when leaving Hull I still had phone reception on my own network, 3, for quite some time after departing.

Eating and drinking

Of the two bars, the Sunset Show Bar is the biggest with live entertainment and a casino table, with another smaller and quieter bar next door. The drinks selection is reasonable and not whilst not cheap it wasn’t ridiculously expensive either. The café serves Starbucks coffee, but not the full range – no pumpkin spiced lattes here – and no soya milk. Then there are the two restaurants – The Kitchen and The Brasserie.

The Kitchen is a buffet. We didn’t go there at any point because of the queues – instead we booked into The Brasserie each time, for both evening meals and breakfasts. You do have to book but it’s worth it – it’s a full waiter service restaurant and the food is reasonably good. Not outstanding but I’ve paid far more for worse. The best thing is that it’s also reasonably quiet in there, whereas we could hear the noise from The Kitchen out in the foyer.

When you book your ‘mini-cruise’ tickets online you have the option of pre-paying for your meals – for two people this adds £88 to the cost but at £11 per person per meal it’s not bad overall. It’s enough to cover The Kitchen, and in The Brasserie it will get you £16.50 per person for dinner – anything over that just has to be paid by cash or credit card. We only went over by about £5 between the two of us for our meals – two courses and non-alcoholic drinks. I imagine we would have spent more overall had we paid for each meal individually rather than pre-paying, and because you have to check-in before 5:30pm it’s not really feasible to have a meal before you travel.

If you do the two night ‘mini-cruise’, then, where possible, P&O will try to ensure that you get the same cabin in each direction, so you can leave your luggage there. This isn’t always available, and won’t be an option for the three night option as you’ll go out and come back on two different ferries.

The clientele on board was a mix – some couples like us, presumably on the ‘mini-cruise’ deal, but also a few families, a couple of stag and hen parties, a few school groups and some lorry drivers. Because it’s a ferry you can bring your car, coach or lorry with you, although we went as foot passengers.

Getting there

Speaking of which, if you are travelling by train to Hull, I would strongly advise getting a taxi from the railway station to the ferry terminal. The Zeebrugge ferries leave from Terminal 2 at the ferry port, which is up the arse end of nowhere. According to Google Maps it’s a good 15 minute walk from Terminal 1, used by the Rotterdam ferries, where there is a regular bus service to the railway station. So if you’re going to Rotterdam then consider the bus but a taxi is a must for Zeebrugge. It’ll cost you less than a tenner each way, and on the return there will be a number of taxis waiting at the terminal when you arrive.

The foot passenger terminal at Hull mirrors the ferry in being very 1980s. It’s not like an airport with lounges and shops and so forth – the facilities are pretty basic. Think ‘small regional railway station’ rather than ‘international travel hub’. That being said all of the facilities you’d normally see in an airport are on the ferry anyway. The Zeebrugge terminal was a bit more modern and was full of adverts (in English) selling Hull and East Yorkshire as a tourist destination – I get the impression that Brits going abroad makes up a higher proportion of their customer base than Europeans visiting Britain.

The weather wasn’t too bad for our journey although the sea was rather choppy on the return. When you’re in bed you only notice it a bit though and neither of us got seasick. The ferries lumber across the seas at around 20 miles per hour so they’re reasonably steady, and tend only to be cancelled in the worst of conditions.

In a world where low cost airlines zip you from place to place and international trains carry you under the English Channel at high speeds, it’s perhaps a little odd that we still use these huge ferries to get around. But would you rather spend the whole day travelling, or have the travelling done for you whilst you’re asleep? Sometimes it’s nice to go to sleep in one place and wake up at your destination.

Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester

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Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester

On Saturday, whilst Christine was working, I took myself off to the Museum of Transport, Greater Manchester. I’ve been meaning to go for a while, but the recent opening of Queens Road Metrolink station nearby has made it somewhat easier to get to. Although railway engineering works, and the temporary closure of the Metrolink platforms at Victoria station, meant that it was still something of a trek taking a couple of hours each way from Sowerby Bridge. Normally, it’d take around an hour.

Anyway, the museum. It’s in the Cheetham Hill area of Manchester, to the north of the city centre, and is housed in the back of what was the Queens Road tramshed for Manchester Corportation Tramways – now used by First buses as a bus depot. It’s home to a wide variety of buses that operated in or are linked with Greater Manchester, plus a few other bits and bobs. But mostly buses – other forms of transport were not very well represented.

There are three trams, only one of which is complete (a horse tram). Of the others, one is Metrolink 1000, a half-tram mock-up of what would become the production T68 tram series. The T68s have only recently been retired from revenue service in Manchester and I imagine that a production model may enter the collection when one is preserved. The other bit of tram is the lower passenger compartment of what was originally a double decker tram, in the process of being restored.

There are also re-created transport offices, as well as an extensive collection of bus tickets, roller blinds and old signs. But, buses form the main attraction here.

On the whole I found it interesting but it’s not as good as other transport museums – particularly the excellent London Transport Museum. You definitely need to be more of a transport geek to enjoy it, and I’m sure Christine would have been bored stiff by it had I dragged her along. (I very nearly did last summer, but we ended up going bra shopping instead.)

The museum is open three days a week – Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays, or all week in August. Entry is only £4 for adults, and free for accompanied under-16s, which is good value for a museum that can keep your average transport geek occupied for a couple of hours.

Photos from my visit are available on Flickr.

Taking the Megabusplus to London

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Leading on from yesterday’s post about our trip to London, here’s a little more about the Megabusplus service that we used. I’ve taken it before, when I needed to get down to London to fly to France for a holiday in 2009, but this was Christine’s first time, and also my first return trip.

Like the regular Megabus, it is run by the Stagecoach Group, and takes advantage of the fact that Stagecoach is also the current East Midlands Trains franchisee. So rather than getting a coach all of the way, time-wise roughly half of the journey is by coach and the reminder by train, with the switchover talking place at East Midlands Parkway railway station.

This is significantly quicker than taking a coach all of the way. Taking Halifax-London as the example, to do this by coach takes almost 6 hours in total. Megabusplus knocks this down to a little over four hours. You also arrive into London St Pancras railway station, which has much better onward transport links, than Victoria coach station. And I find that I can’t read on coaches (I get travel sick), so for me there’s less ‘downtime’ than a regular coach.

However, compared with a direct train Megabusplus is still slower – the 08:06 Grand Central train from Halifax left a few minutes after our coach and would have reached King’s Cross a full hour before we did.

The prices are about the same as regular Megabus, with fares starting at £1 one way, plus a 50p booking fee. I was too late to get it this cheap, but it was still much more affordable than the train at the last minute. Your ‘ticket’ is the reference number that you get by email when you pay – most people print this out but you can just show it on your phone to the driver, like I did.

The Halifax service actually starts from Bradford, then calls at Halifax and onto Huddersfield, before running direct to East Midlands Parkway. I say ‘direct’ – Huddersfield’s links with the southbound M1 are pretty poor and so we went on some very narrow and windy roads to get there. On the way down we briefly called at a service station, but this was only to change to a different driver and customers were not allowed to alight. East Midlands Parkway is effectively a service station though, with a café, toilets and a vending machine.

The Megabusplus coaches themselves are reasonably bog-standard – single-decker, space below for luggage, and a toilet. There’s no on-board catering, and seats aren’t allocated. Most of the people on the two journeys we made were travelling on their own, so if the coach is busy you’ll have to sit next to a stranger. Pre-booking is mandatory – there’s no facility to turn up and pay, although you can book up until the night before, as I did. On the other hand, this means that if everyone arrives early, then the coach can leave early – as happened on the return leg.

I would definitely recommend bringing a music player. Unlike trains, there’s no quiet coach, or any way of moving to another carriage if it’s too noisy. On the way back there was a very restless baby, so I was glad I had some music to listen to.

If you need to get to London cheaply, and don’t want it to take all day, then Megabusplus is worth it. But if you’re able to get a cheaper train ticket, then the train is a quicker and better experience.

The Transpennine Real Ale Trail

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Huddersfield Station

On Saturday myself and a group of friends went to do the Transpennine Real Ale Trail. Many of the stations on the railway line between Leeds and Manchester via Huddersfield have pubs serving real ale either on the station or nearby, and eight of these form part of an official trail.

Though it’s been done for years, the trail grew in popularity following the broadcast of Oz and James Drink to Britain, a BBC TV show with Oz Clarke and Top Gear’s James May which was broadcast in 2009. The number of people attempting the real ale trail increased significantly, although sadly many weren’t in it for the real ale. Go back a to any Saturday afternoon earlier this year and you would expect to see large groups of people – mostly men – frequently in fancy dress, drinking lager and engaging in anti-social behaviour.

A particular problem point was the small and usually quiet village of Marsden. Though Marsden has a pub right by the railway station, conveniently called The Railway, many prefer to go into the village to the Riverhead Brewery Tap and others. This BBC News video gives you an idea of how bad it was last year.

Since then, many of the pubs on the route have stopped serving lager and spirits on Saturdays, and will refuse service to those in fancy dress. In other words, patrons have to drink real ale or soft drinks. And, based on our experiences, it seems to be working – whilst a Saturday in late October is bound to be less busy than in mid-summer, the route was much quieter and the people there were better behaved. At Slaithwaite (pronounced ‘slowwwit’) station, Northern Rail had provided a couple of marshals to manage the numbers of people on the small platforms. And at Huddersfield there were a number of British Transport Police officers around, but that may be more to do with the local football team playing local rivals Leeds United at home that day.

On our visit, we went to six of the eight ‘main’ pubs on the trail. Starting at Stalybridge, we then called at Greenfield, Marsden and Slaithwaite, before then skipping straight to Dewsbury and then back to Mirfield. By this point it was getting late, so we didn’t go to Huddersfield or Batley this time around.

I’ve done Huddersfield many times before though, and the station actually plays host to two pubs. They’re both on platform 1 – The Kings Head and The Head of Steam – although the introduction of ticket barriers means that you need to exist the station to access them now. The Head of Steam is my favourite and has the largest overall drinks selection (including a good cider menu) but real ale drinkers tend to prefer The Kings Head as its ale selection is stronger.

It’s a good way to spend an afternoon with friends and I’m pleased that the solution to the problems with rowdy drinkers seems to have worked. Other ale trails are available around the country and this month’s CAMRA magazine has a special feature on pubs at stations, which seem to be enjoying something of a renaissance of late. CAMRA also published a book last year; it’s out of stock on Amazon unfortunately but is available in CAMRA’s own shop, and members get £2 off.

Metrolink to the Trafford Centre

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Metrolink 3025 at Victoria

Greater Manchester’s Metrolink network is undergoing a period of expansion at present. Last summer I wrote about the new line to Oldham, which has now been extended a little further to Shaw and Compton, and the new line between Piccadilly and Droylsden is due to open imminently. Further extensions will see it reaching Rochdale, Ashton under Lyne, Wythenshawe and Manchester Airport over the next 3-4 years. But one key destination that’s missing from that list is the Trafford Centre.

A bit of history

The Trafford Centre is one of Britain’s largest shopping centres; indeed, it is third largest by floor area. Its lavish mock baroque design was intended to attract more upmarket brands, such as Selfridges and John Lewis, who have large anchor stores there. Its location in south-west Manchester means that it is easily reached from Cheshire, a largely affluent county which is home to, amongst others, a number of millionaire footballers who play for teams like Manchester United, Manchester City and Liverpool.

Consequently the centre provides ample car parking and is located just off the M60 motorway. This is essentially Manchester and Salford’s outer ring road and connects with all of the major roads going into the city, so getting there by car is quite easy.

However, if you’re not a car driver, and need to use public transport, then buses are your only option. There is a bus station with 16 stands at the Trafford Centre. But it’s almost an afterthought – it’s located at the far end of the site, accessible via one of the car parks. It’s rather open to the elements with just one canopy providing some shelter for the rain.

No railway station

Unlike other big shopping centres, like Meadowhall in Sheffield and the MetroCentre in Gateshead, a railway station was not built at the same time. In fairness, those two shopping centres already had railway lines nearby – the Trafford Centre does not, so any requirement to build a station would also require a new railway line at a considerable extra expense. A light rail link, however, would have been cheaper. When the Trafford Centre opened in 1998, Manchester Metrolink had been running for six years, with construction already underway on the second phase to Eccles.

So why wasn’t a Metrolink line included in the building project? The simple answer is that the plans to build the Trafford Centre pre-date Metrolink. The original planning application was submitted way back in 1988 – a full 12 years before the Trafford Centre opened, and indeed 8 years before construction began in 1996. The 8 year delay was due two public enquiries, a rejection of the planning permission by the Court of Appeal in 1993 and eventual intervention by the House of Lords.

By comparison, work to build Metrolink only started in 1988, and it would have been premature to require the construction of a tram line for a system that didn’t exist at the time. And considering the battle that the developers faced in getting it approved, I doubt that they would have been receptive to demands to change the planning permission to include such a line. So, in summary, the developers of the Trafford Centre, Peel Holdings, were under no obligation to provide a Metrolink station.

Section 106

The Trafford Centre expanded in 2006, after Peel Holdings were granted planning permission in 2005 to build Barton Square. This could have been an opportunity to force the developers to build a tram line, using a ‘Section 106′ agreement. Section 106 refers to a section of Town and Country Planning Act 1990 which allows local authorities to include extra conditions when granting planning permission, usually to insist on associated infrastructure improvements. For whatever reason, this never happened; the only transport-related improvements that Barton Square brought was yet another car park.

Essentially, plans to build a new Metrolink line to the Trafford Centre were at an impasse. The local authorities, represented by Transport for Greater Manchester, were keen for private sector funding for the new line. And the private sector owners of the Trafford Centre weren’t particularly willing to pay for it; after all, they’re a more upmarket shopping centre aimed at affluent people who can drive. So the plans were essentially shelved and have not formed part of Metrolink’s recent expansion plans.

The situation today

This leaves the present situation where the quickest way to get to the Trafford Centre from central Manchester is actually by bus, using the X50 service from Manchester Piccadilly station. This, however, takes around half an hour, and costs £3.90 return. Alternatively, it is possible to get a tram to Stretford Metrolink station, and then catch a connecting shuttle bus (the ML1) to the Trafford Centre. The trams also serve Victoria station, but it’s slower, requires a change of mode at Stretford and is more expensive at £4.40 for a return ticket.

Stretford isn’t even the closest Metrolink station to the Trafford Centre – it’s around 2.5 miles away. The nearest tram station is actually Eccles, which is a little under 2 miles away. But it’s at the very end of a line which takes a rather slow and circuitous route around Salford Quays and therefore not ideal. Trafford Park station, on one of the national railway lines between Manchester and Liverpool, is also a little under two miles away. But with trains every two hours and no Sunday service it doesn’t compare favourably with Stretford’s 10 trams per hour from Manchester. For now, at least, the X50 and the shuttle bus service from Stretford probably provide the best compromise.

A future Metrolink station?

There may, however, be some hope in the future. In 2011, Peel Holdings sold the Trafford Centre to Capital Shopping Centres (CSC), who own many other shopping centres in the UK, including the MetroCentre and the large Lakeside centre in Kent.

As an aside, CSC is rebranding as ‘intu’, which will see all of its properties gain the ‘intu’ prefix, so later this year the centre will become the ‘intu Trafford Centre’. Personally I doubt anyone will use its new name in casual conversation.

Perhaps the Trafford Centre’s new owners may be more amenable to part-funding a new Metrolink line. Although the plans are on hold, it is still a long-term aim of Transport for Greater Manchester to get trams running out there. We shall have to see what the future holds.

Update: In June 2013, it was announced that funding should be available for the extension to the Trafford Centre to be built. It’s currently in the planning stage and you can view the route on Transport for Greater Manchester’s web site. It is likely to be at least 2018 before the line is open, however.

Manchester Metrolink reaches Oldham

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Market Street Tram Stop

I’m going to engage my public transport geek mode once again and talk a bit about the latest extension to Manchester’s Metrolink tram network.

Firstly, a bit of history. Metrolink first opened in 1992 and took over operation of two formerly ‘heavy rail’ (regular train service) lines, combined with track through Manchester city centre. Manchester has two main railway stations in the city centre – Piccadilly and Victoria – and the tram service allowed these stations to be linked together.

Of the two heavy rail lines converted, one was the line from Manchester Victoria to Bury; this used electric trains built in the 1960s and non-standard electrification equipment that wasn’t used anywhere else in the UK. Furthermore, this equipment, and the trains, were life-expired, so this was a good opportunity to upgrade to newer equipment. The trams could use the same track, but instead run from overhead electric cables.

The other line went south of Manchester towards Altrincham. This line had a lot of stations over a relatively short line, so using heavy rail trains wasn’t particularly efficient, so putting trams on this route made sense, on the whole. That said, not all trains called at all stations and this lead to some of the faster services being diverted through to Stockport, which now has capacity problems. This is because, unlike on other light rail networks such as the Tyne & Wear Metro in the north east where trains and light rail vehicles share tracks in places, Metrolink is kept separate from the National Rail network.

So that was the first phase. Its success spawned a second phase – a new line to Eccles, opened in 2000. This didn’t follow any existing railway lines, and served Salford Quays which has seen a lot of regeneration recently.

Getting the third phase – known as ‘The Big Bang’ due to it almost doubling the size of the network – built has been more of a challenge, due to money. It was denied central government funding in 2004, and so was split into two small phases – 3a and 3b – with work eventually starting in 2009. The first bit to be completed was a short 360 metre spur from the Eccles line to the new MediaCityUK complex in Salford which also better serves The Lowry and the Imperial War Museum North, and last year the first phase of the South Manchester Line opened to Chorlton-cum-Hardy – eventually, this will reach Manchester Airport. Although the South Manchester Line does follow the route of an old railway line, it was one that closed many years ago, as opposed to an existing line that was converted as with the lines to Bury and Altrincham.

The next bit to open was the line to Oldham, which I alluded to in the title of this post, and it is this particular line that I’m going to focus on. Like with the Bury and Altrincham routes, this follows an existing railway line that was converted – in this case, the Oldham Loop Line, which ran from Manchester Victoria to Rochdale where it met the Caldervale Line and looped back to Manchester. (I wrote about the Caldervale Line a couple of years ago – this is now the line I use to go to work every day, although not this particular bit)

The railway line closed in October 2009, and so it has been almost three years since Oldham had any public transport other than buses serving it. Opening last week, trams leave from a temporary station at the site of Oldham Mumps railway station, and head towards Manchester Victoria – they’ll then head through Manchester city centre and onwards to Chorlton-cum-Hardy. When the project is complete, trams will also serve Rochdale, new stations in Oldham town centre and continue through to Manchester Airport.

Trams will run roughly every 12 minutes – or five each hour – initially, but will increase to ten per hour (a tram every six minutes) in a few years time, once a second line through Manchester city centre has been built. This compares favourably with the old heavy rail train service, which ran four times an hour (but two of those only called at key stations), and once complete it will serve more destinations – there will be direct links to Deansgate railway station and Manchester Airport for the first time, plus there are extra stops on the new line serving places like the new Central Park development. The existing stations have all been rebuilt to be wheelchair friendly, and the trams can be boarded by wheelchair users without assistance, unlike the trains. And the trams are electric, so they won’t emit diesel fumes like the trains they replaced.

But arguably it’s not a complete improvement. The extra stops and slightly longer route means that the service is slower than the old heavy rail service, even with the improved acceleration offered by the trams over trains. The trams are smaller and have fewer seats that the trains, although they will run more frequently, and do not have toilets on board. Bikes also cannot be carried on board the trams, unlike on trains.

Tickets on Metrolink are not integrated with National Rail, so it’s no longer possible to buy a through ticket from, say, London to Oldham. And although the trams will serve more places than before, this does not include Manchester Piccadilly station, although they do call at Market Street which is somewhat closer than Victoria where the trains previously terminated.

On the whole I do hope it’s an improvement in service for the people of Oldham, and it will hopefully relieve pressure on the Caldervale Line which has been taking the strain from passengers displaced by the closure of the railway line. Issues like integrated ticketing with National Rail could be solved with computer and ticket machine upgrades, and there should be cycle storage at tram stops for cyclists. But converting lines to light rail like this, although providing many benefits, can also make things worse, especially for some groups of passengers.

My Travelodge Experience

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A photo of a Travelodge hotel in Manchester

Update (15th December): I have since spoken to Travelodge about this blog post, and had a good conversation about the points raised. We agreed that my experience was below what I should have expected and that I should be refunded; in turn, I have agreed to make some clarifications to this post. The points about poor customer service and the doors not being locked in particular were taken on board. I would like to thank the manager for getting back to me and taking my concerns seriously.

I don’t often rant about poor customer experiences but feel that I tell you about my night in the Upper Brook Street Travelodge in Manchester.

Firstly, some background – we were going to see Uncaged Monkeys at the Manchester O2 Apollo and needed to stay the night as it didn’t finish while 11pm. We’ve used a couple of other hotels in the area when going to gigs in Manchester but as this was nearby and the rooms were recently reduced to £15 in a sale, I booked it.

Upon arrival at about 6:30pm, the bloke at the reception desk didn’t seem particularly interested in us and directed us to the two self-service check-in machines, one of which was out of order. It walked us through checking in and tried to sell us the add-ons (breakfast, late checkout etc.) that we’d opted out of before when booking before dispensing the keycard and receipt. The receptionist also mentioned that the front door would be locked at 10pn and we’d need to to use our keycard to get in – which is expected really.

The gig started at 7:30pm, so we dumped our bags in the room, quickly changed and headed straight out. The gig was brilliant, and we arrived back at the hotel at 11:30pm. It was at this point that we realised that this hotel was, to be blunt, a bit rubbish.

Firstly, the outside door wasn’t locked, as we were previously told – anyone could get in, and this hotel is on a main road – although the intermediary door to the rooms was locked. In the bedroom, the heating was off, despite it being December and during a particularly cold spell. We found that only 1 set of towels had been provided, and 3 pillows – 2 on the bed and 1 spare. As we both normally sleep with 2, I went back to reception and requested an additional pillow and a towel set, and was told someone would bring them up in about 30 minutes – remember, it’s already 11:30pm now. The receptionist wrote a note and I went back to the room. At 12:15am, there having been no knocks on the door and nothing left outside our room, I went to sleep. No-one knocked overnight as far as I can tell and in the morning there was nothing waiting for us outside the door.

The blocked-out windows at the Travelodge

In the room, there were no bedside tables – just a small alcove in the walls on each side big enough for a mobile phone or a couple of inhalers. There were also no shelves in the shower for shampoo, and no bathmat – meanwhile whilst having a shower the floor would end up very wet because the shower tray wasn’t so much a tray as basically a flat surface.

The photo shows the delightful view out of our window – or lack thereof – there was some sort of superstructure on the side of the hotel which was covered with blue plastic panels. This was due to us being on one side of the hotel with privacy screens – a condition of the planning permission as it’s next to a residential area. Considering we were in a £15 room this is understandable.

Anyway, we checked out. The receptionist, who may also have been the duty manager, asked us how our stay was and we mentioned some of the problems. His answer implied that – get this – they only provide one set of towels in each room, even though two adults had booked to stay in it, and we were supposed to request an additional set. This would have been fine (and understandable, providing two sets when not necessary would mean more washing and higher costs) but it was never explained to us, and we didn’t have time to sort it out earlier in the evening. And after requesting them, to have our request forgotten about was adding insult to injury.

[A couple of paragraphs removed].

This isn’t the first Travelodge I have stayed in – in the past 18 months, I have stayed at Travelodges in Edinburgh and Liverpool and, on the whole, I was reasonably satisfied with them.

As for alternatives – in the past we have stayed at the Ibis Hotel on Charles Street and the Holiday Inn Express on Oxford Road – the latter of which I would especially recommend. It’s a bit pricy at £71 per night (although may be cheaper if there’s an offer on, I think we paid about £50 last time) but the room was really nice, and far more was included in the price, including a hearty buffet breakfast. Similarly I’ve been impressed with my stays with Premier Inn but haven’t yet been at their hotels in the area.

Och Aye The Noo and all that

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Edinburgh Castle

Tomorrow, Christine and I are off to Edinburgh for four nights. It’ll be my first trip for a couple of years – I was there for a (unsuccessful) job interview in January 2009 – but Christine’s first time, apart from changing trains at Waverley station.

Whilst we both need a break (February has been especially hard for me at work), we’ve also got quite a bit of annual leave that we have to take before the end of the month and so are using the extra time off work to go somewhere a little further afield.

Growing up in York meant that Edinburgh was only 2 1/2 hours by train, so I had a number of day trips whilst growing up. Getting there from Sowerby Bridge and Bradford requires a bit more time and effort since you have to change at York, hence why I haven’t been much lately. It’s a shame as I really like Edinburgh.

Foursquare Thursday will happen as usual tomorrow, through the magic of scheduled posting, as it’s already been written. I have mental drafts for more Foursquare posts for the next few weeks too.
See you next week.

London’s public transport

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Bakerloo at Waterloo

As a non-Londoner who doesn’t drive, I am generally in awe of London’s public transport.

While any Londoner who’s had to make alternative arrangements during a tube strike will probably disagree, compared to the public transport available in most other British cities London is well ahead.

London Underground, or The Tube, is especially good. You get something like 20 trains every hour through central London, so you rarely have to wait more than 3 minutes for one. And it comes with at least 8 carriages, so you’re likely to be able to get on.

Its buses are cheap – £1.20 with an Oyster card for a single adult ticket (at the time of writing) – and pretty frequent too. And talking of Oyster, you have one card which lets you pay for basically any train, bus, tube or tram in greater London.

It’s not perfect; strikes, for one, happen more frequently than they probably should, and overcrowding is a problem. And the chaos which occurs when something breaks down during the peak periods.

Compare this to Bradford, where we have more expensive buses and no trams or tube to fall back on. The trains are thankfully cheaper but nowhere near as frequent, and not as pervasive – railway stations tend to be fewer and far between, so you’re left with the buses. Though we have some integrated ticketing, it’s only in the form of day rover tickets (which are only sold at travel interchanges) or weekly/monthly travel cards. There’s no pay-as-you-go scheme and it’s not a smartcard like Oyster.

London’s transport is on my mind as Christine and I are spending this weekend in London, and will hopefully be visiting London Zoo. It’s the first time I’ve been to London properly in almost three years, so naturally I’m a little excited.

Buying rail tickets

by
Pendolino

Buying rail tickets for train travel in the UK is complicated. Despite some simplification introduced last year, it’s still possible to buy a range of rail tickets at different prices that will get you on the same seat on the same train.

The fantastic Money Saving Expert has a very thorough guide and it’s well worth a read, but here’s my summarised advice:

  • Buy your rail tickets in advance, and as early as possible – you can get them up to 3 months ahead.
  • Rail tickets bought on the day (so-called ‘walk on fares’) offer lots of flexibility but are also usually the most expensive – you can book as little as 48 hours in advance and save a lot of money.
  • Avoid thetrainline.com – it charges extra fees.
  • You can usually book any ticket from any train company, even if your journey doesn’t use their trains. So you could book with CrossCountry to travel on a First Transpennine Express (FTPE) train and get the same price as you would booking direct with FTPE.
  • Rail Easy displays fares in a different way which can make it easier to find cheaper tickets. I also found that they are more likely to send tickets by first class post for free, rather than charge £6 for next-day delivery. They do charge a booking fee though.
  • If you spend more than £76 per year (or £6 per month) on rail tickets, get a railcard. If you are between the ages of 16 and 25 you can get a 16-25 railcard. You can order a new one right up until the day before your 26th birthday too. Family railcards and senior railcards are also available. They give you 34% off the price of almost all train tickets, including those booked in advance.
  • Sometimes two single rail tickets are cheaper than a return – always check both. This is especially true if you book in advance.
  • Megatrain is worth a look as its fares start from £1 (plus 50p booking fee). Trains run from Sheffield, Derby and Portsmouth into London, but there are connecting coaches from cities like York and Bradford (I travelled from York to London for a total of £3.50 last year). There’s also additional discounts for NUS Extra card holders.

There are many more tips out there, which shows how confusing the system is. Ultimately, the best way to get the cheapest fare is to book as far in advance as possible, use a railcard and shop around a bit.