Home in Melksham to Gatwick Airport - easy by public transport
Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2015-04-29 16:04:44 - Graham Ellis
Day one - off on travels and a feast of transport to share. Two years ago, the start of this trip would have been a lift or taxi. Today, living in Melksham, we're just a couple of hundred yards from the bus stop at "The Spa", and the Melksham Rail Link bus at 07:25 took us to the station, Weaving our way thtough the outer suburbs of Melksham, we ended up with 12 people on that bus; three got out as we passed through the town centre - to work there, or for onward connections to the Bath or Trowbridge buses which leave a few minutes later.
The bus is really effieicnt too, as it's the same driver and vehicle that's in place to run the School service that the Council has to provide anyway!
And so to the station - a scattering of people there already when the bus arrived, our bus load significantly swelled the numbers, and others walked in and more were dropped off in the few minutes before the train arrived. Indeed numbers are sufficiently high for it to be hard to take an accurate count of leavers / joiners - but I made it 2 off and 38 on. Where I can be accurate is that there were 88 people on that train as it travelled up to Chippenham; with it being just a single carriage, that meant that there were about a dozen people standing, but if concerned to sit down there was a small handful of seats unoccupied.
A good run up to Chippenham - with the conductor getting most of the way through the carriage to check and sell tickets, aided by a late running train on the mainline that left us five minutes late into Chippenham; no big problem, as we were scheduled to have a 25 minute wait there, and in fact we bumped into a good friend and one of the key instigators of the service which we had just travelled on - we were able to say a big "thank you" and "look - it's working". In fact he's very much onto the next stage - "Vision 2020" for TransWilts - and is off to a meeting at Southampton Airport today.
08:25, to Swindon, Didcot and Reading - a few minutes late, most seats taken, no need to stand on this one. A discussion about whether we wanted to go through to the buffet, and risk loosing our seats at any of the intermediate stations - we decided to wait for Reading, even though we knew we had lost connection time and may have to forgoe breakfast - but we eould have bought from a Trolley. Good ontrain announcements (but crackly old system that sometine cut bits out) and we know our onward train was 09:34, but not where it left from.
A dash into the lift - right beside our door as we got off - to the transfer dack. I don't know our ongoing platform but I knew it wouldn't be the one on the main Bristol and South Wales line ... and a look around at the top of th elift for just WHERE the departure board wa. Gut instrinct lead me across the bridge and found the "next train for XXXX" board - excellent, but wrongly places for people just comming off expresses coming up from Swindon. I walkd over (with Lisa) to a lift labelled "platform 7". She expressed concern - "but our train is from five". Somehow my protest that this would do because 5 is below 7 didn't totally convince her until we came out of the lift and I pointed along the platformto the bay platforms on the East. A case, I think, of confusing labelling. that perhaps could be improved. in a couple of cases.
A quick stop at Pumpkin, with a tendering of the Bite card (alas just 10% discount now, but better than a complete kick in the teeth) and onwarss with our supplies into 166 209 for Gatwick. Left on time; perhaps 15% to 20% of seats occupied on departure, but picking u as we go. Noticing very few people choocing to sit in the middle of the 3 seats. And so a run along the Noth Downs line via Guildford, Dorking, Reigate and Redhill then a reversal to Gatwick.
I took time to muse over how much the North Downs line has changed since my youth; I recall catching the "Tadpole" from Tonbridge, reversing and going all the way through to Reading with interminable stops along the way. I think there was a train every couple of hours on Sunday, and it took off so slowly at each intermediate station that you could have a sleep bewteen counting each rail joint. The current service was fast, efficient, no long stop at Guildford to let the grass grow (something I remember from my past) and even the Redhill reversal seemed quite quick. A pause just outside Redhill station though, and a transfer to the Quarry line for the run to Gatwick, which I hadn't expected - is this now usuaul? And at Gatwick, a quick walk to the shuttle to the North terminal, an efficient checkin, security much easier than I can recall in a while, and a quick Lebanese Brunch before we took off ... but there's another story there that shouldn't go under UK Transport.
In summary - home to airport, relaxing and worked well. Overcrowded just on the one train; transfer bus with 12 people (it seats 26) was excellent. Bit of a higher occupany rate in the HST. Good transfers on at Reading too. Had it been my first timefor that journey, I might have needed help at Reading, but it really works.
