yesterday's meeting

So the meetings actually went pretty damn well yesterday.

The day itself was a horrifyingly long nightmare of trains, tubes, trams, hot & sticky journeys, long walks in shoes and all that rubbish, but the meeting itself was fine.

I had to get up at 5:45 to get a 7:00 train from Farnham. The journey from Farnham to London Waterloo always takes bloody ages, even though, to give some idea of the actual distance you could drive it in 20 minutes by Car (traffic not withstanding).

Then went on the tube to St Pancreas, which was fairly smooth. It was a little busy, but just that bit too early for the commuting hordes to appear, I think.

St. Pancreas you have to walk miles in to get to the actual platforms and there was a huge, 40 minute wait for the train. It was the quick train (only one stop) so it took about 1.5 hours (compare that to the hour it takes to get from Farnham to Waterloo :/).

Then there's a tram in Nottingham, but we got a bit lost when we got off so we walked around a bit much.

The meetings lasted about 4 hours, I think, then I headed off on the tram, this time walking straight there in less than 5 minutes.

Got to the station and the info there is crap - it's really hard to work out which platform is which and you've no idea until you actually get down onto a platform, so inevitably you pick the wrong one and have to go back up and come down on another platform.

The train took ages before it set off--a good 45 minute wait. And it was a stopping service, so it took two hours. Unfortunately, I also had someone sat opposite me so I couldn't stretch out my legs properly.

We got into St Pancreas at a couple minutes past six, which is tail end of rush hour, so the tube was pretty busy. Grabbed a bite to eat and the next train for Farnham was at about seven, so I was back home for about 8:30 with the car journey back home.

So in summary I set off from Farnham at 7am and got back to Farnham at 8pm. Four hour meeting means I spent 9 hours "in transit".

You may have gotten the impression I'm not hugely enamoured of public transport. You'd be right.

Oh, and it cost £120 each for us to have the pleasure of this 9 hour trek. (And that's excluding the £4.50 for car park at Farnham station and the £2.60 for the tram).

Also to go to Nottingham by car is about 180 miles. So call it 400 miles round trip. That's approximately a tank of petrol for me. At today's prices that works out to about £40. Even if you call it £50 or double it to two tanks at £80, that would still make it £160 cheaper than using public transport.