Challenge accepted, can I get to Padstow on public transport and a bike? Should be easy, what with our new Great British Railways (with both the words Great and British together it must be awesome).
Let's use the GWR app to book the ticket and a cycle reservation. Sorted. ish. It can't give me a digital ticket, instead I must collect the ticket from the station. OK, I'm leaving from a station so let's do that!
Oh. Dear. Machine out of order and ticket office closed. Nice. OK, let's hope I can collect the tickets at the connecting station. Reading here we come! Success. Ticket for me and ticket for the bike. And no disruption on the network. Honest gov, none. But if you look closely you'll see the train is delayed. Get comfy because it's going to stay delayed while you sit here for an hour. And then it's cancelled. And still no disruption on the network. Honest gov, none. No worries, there must be another train, or an alternative route. Nope. Nada. Nowt. Not with a bike. Sorry mate, no bike reservations on any train heading west until tomorrow. So no option but to head back home on a local service. This is fun. Finally, I'm there. Back to where this sorry story began.After 12 years of conservative government leadership the railways lack a guiding focus on customers, coherent leadership and strategic direction. They are too fragmented, too complicated, and too expensive to run. Innovation is difficult. Incentives are often perverse. Some working practices have not changed in decades. There must be single-minded efforts to get passengers back. In short, we need somebody in charge.
Eloquent words you say? Sorry, but those aren't my words. They're copied verbatim from the government's own Williams-Shapps plan for Great British Railways. You can read all about it here. And before you complain about my blatent copying, the 'Shapps' in Williams-Shapps is the beloved member for Welwyn Hatfield; also the previous chair of the conservative (and unionist!) party; the same Shapps named when "Google blacklisted 19 of the Shapps' business websites for violating rules on copyright infringement"; and, hysterically, also the same Shapps that used multiple made-up names in some pyramid scheme. You couldn't make this up.