10 Unforgettable Travel Moments (so far) - Part II

#7: The Moment of Farce (aka The Journey from Hell)
Train journey from London to Manchester
January 2007

This was the Day of The Great Gale. True enough, all the other severe wind conditions before or since, as least as I've experienced in London, have been mere breezes in comparison. But nothing really justifies the way it turned out to be the Day of The Great Farce, as I’m about to tell you now.
This was also the first day of the annual conference of the Association of British Orchestras, this particular year being held in Manchester. Having been accustomed to the vast array of possible reasons obstructing normal operations of any form of British public transport, I wasn't entirely surprised when the 9:35am train I was supposed to embark on was cancelled before departure. It did mean that the passengers from two near-full services would be packed into one, the 10:05am train. I could take this, I thought. But little did I know that that was barely the beginning of what was going to be a very long day indeed.
Five minutes after the train pulled out of Euston station, the announcement came on that due to weather-related speed restriction, the journey would take five hours instead of two and a half. A sea of very un-English groans duly ensued, mostly – rightly – pointing out the absurdity of delaying this news until just after departure. About half the passengers in my carriage commented that they would have opted not to make the journey at all had they known. Well, it seemed that Virgin Trains knew exactly what they were doing – imagine them having to deal with all those refunds if that had been the case.
So we traveled on, at the greatly reduced speed of 55 miles per hour (supposedly – it felt slower). There were intermittent (unannounced, unexplained) stops along the way in between stations, so by the time we ground to a halt completely at Tamworth station, just outside Birmingham, it was well past one o’clock. After a thirty-minute pause, the announcer informed us that we were, well, to be held at the station indefinitely, because a tree had fallen on the tracks some twenty miles ahead and – I’m not making any of this up – ‘a team of engineers were on their way to the site with a view of removal of the said tree’. It was also advised that we got ourselves something to eat and drink at the station, especially as the shop on the train had sold out every last pack of crisps some time ago. I reacted quickly enough to be near the front of the queue at the single tiny shop at the station, where the flustered lady-in-charge was clearly bewildered by the sight of a meandering file of some two hundred customers suddenly materialising in the hope of getting their hands on the five sausage rolls she had for the day (my guess was that she usually had about seventeen customers a day on average). I succeeded, but the one hundred and ninety-seven people behind me had to make do with Maltesers and Mars bars – until they also ran out at customer No. 134, that was.
Back in the carriage, just as I foolishly started to feel smug about the warm sausage roll and the cup of tea I had gulped down, darkness fell – all the lights and, worse, the heating, suddenly went out. We must have, subconsciously, all been preparing ourselves for a very long doomed destiny with this journey, for by the time the next announcement came up ten minutes later it was greeted not by rage or even disbelief, but bemused roaring laughter. The new development was so utterly surreal, it could only be a true-life incident on a British train journey:
‘Ladies and gentleman, you will have noticed that we lost our power about ten minutes ago. I regret to inform you that not only were the engineers who arrived at the site unable to remove the fallen tree, the tree has apparently caught on fire, which has caused the entire West Coast main line to be out of power, and therefore this train – along with all other trains currently stopped between London and Manchester – will not be going anywhere today…’
Was there a happy ending to the story? Perhaps I should have sought a way back to London – geographically it would have made (just a little) more sense, but professional duty propelled me in the other direction, and I ended up in a rental car with two complete strangers, fellow young female professionals who were both returning home to Manchester after a work trip to London. My navigation skills faced the ultimate challenge – and proudly passed the test with flying colours – as we went through a whole maze of small country lanes across Worcestershire, Shropshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire (all the major roads were totally bottle-necked thanks to the weather and the railway fiasco) with nothing more than an old-fashioned road atlas courtesy of the rental company. SatNav? What was that? The three of us quickly bonded over an almost primal urge of taking things into our own hands, especially after all those hours we had spent on the farcical train journey that never ended. By the time I turned up at the conference it was just past 9pm, and the day has henceforth gone down in the memory lane – and to anyone willing to listen to my one hundredth retelling of the story – as ‘my epic eleven-and-a-half-hour journey from London to Manchester. Boy, was I determined to get there or not!’


#6: The Moment of True Community Spirit
Ultra-triathlon, Sado Island, Japan
September 2009

We found out that our weekend in Sado Island – our first-ever visit to this stunning part of the country where most Japanese have not visited – was going to coincide with the famous ultra-triathlon when booking our car ferry journeys. We did it just in time to get the tickets we wanted, but couldn’t help pondering whether one of our only three days on the island would be seriously disrupted by this big event on a small island. The new friends we made on the day before the race waved off our concern with a hearty smile: ‘Don’t worry at all! We’re very laid-back about these here – you’ll see.’ He also confirmed that the race would consist of 9km of swimming, followed by 140km of cycling (circling the entire island), and finally 45km of running. M beamed. I gulped.

The next morning, we took to the coastal road after breakfast, around nine o’clock. The second leg of the race was in full swing, and it was impossible not to be impressed by the gusto with which the cyclists were flying by us, considering they had done more swimming before I even woke up than I had ever done in my life. Our friend was right – there was no major-city marathon-style mania. Everything seemed, in distinctly Japanese manner of course, perfectly in order, with the clockwise side of the costal road reserved for the formidable triatheletes and the counter-clockwise side functioning as usual for us mere mortals shamefully moving about in our four-wheeled vehicles. There were the occasional policemen at major junctions, but mostly to bow their courteous bow and smile their courteous smile at similarly well-behaved motorists, rather than undertaking any ‘police duty’. So were there no cheerers with banners at all then, you ask – that fundamental element to all such events that keep the people going (especially as, let’s face it, the distances involved here are anything but human dimensions)? Well, the London/New York-sized crowds are nowhere to be seen, these toughened human beings perhaps do bristle at the idea of having their families traveling to this remote corner just to cheer them on, and for a short stretch of the road you do wonder if things are not a bit too much on the quiet side. But then you start to notice the locals sitting by the kerb, literally just outside their own front doors. Many were sprightly-looking septuagenians and beyond – Japan is known for its nation-wide longevity, and Sado Island is not a chosen destination of the young by any means. They pop themselves on little hand-made wooden stools, wearing a simple hat to shield the unforgiving sun, and cheer for each and every brave man and woman passing by in a rather quiet, understated manner. Catching these captivating sights at 50mph, I suddenly felt like being placed in an Ozu frame at slightly more modern pace, a beautifully seductive prospect. But then, at approximately five-hundred-meter intervals, there would be a bigger gathering of multi-generational families, usually led by an earnest female in her thirties, lifting – we slowed down especially to ascertain – large bowls of freshly-cut, mouth-watering (we knew because we had stuffed ourselves with them since arrival) local fruits. The pragmatism of taking pick of these seemed at once problematic, but they were a truly delightful sight compared with all the Lucozades that would be on offer instead along Tower Bridge or First Avenue. After all, for every cyclist intent on having a winning place in the race and was hard enough not to be allured by the juice watermelon chunks, there would be four who were grateful that they were there. They did not scrimp on their time so much and would stop for a few seconds and exchange a grateful smile with the ladies, take a much-needed mouthful of vitamin-filled liquid food and nod the emphatic thanks, before charging on. The race was meant to be an international gathering, proved by the dozen or so foreign faces we saw on the return ferry to the main land the next morning (although the universally expired look did not differ by nationality or any other criteria). Yet to me its exceptional charm lay in that easy, local feel. I certainly would never again be able to watch a marathon, live or otherwise, without thinking about those diminutive, smiling elderlies, or the ladies with their heart-warming fruit bowls.