Wednesday, September 24, 2008

British Railways





In the past couple of weeks I have been very busy driving around Europe. I have been double driving on the Gloria Estefan tour and the Madonna tour. The fist job entailed driving from Calais to Zaragoza in Spain, flying back to the UK and then a few days later flying to Alicante in Spain and then catching a train up to Valencia and driving one of the Madonna Steel trucks to the port of Ancona in Italy were it would board a ferry to Greece. Then from Ancona I jumped into one of the Budva advance trucks and drove it down to the port of Bari in southern Italy for the ferry to Montenegro. Job done, it was time to get back to the UK. the flights from Bari were full so it was a pleasant train journey up the Adriatic coast on a Italian Euro Star train to Bologna to catch a flight to Gatwick airport England, a six hour journey that cost 53 euro, the train from Alicante to Valencia cost 23 euros. That was the cost just turning up at the stations and getting the next available train! At Gatwick Railway station I purchased a ticket to Teesside in the north of England for £107!!! it was routed via Kings Cross. Arriving at Kings Cross, I was told if I wanted to board the 15:00 train I would have to pay a surcharge of £57 that would make it a grand total of £164 for a journey half the distance I had travelled by train in Italy. But if I waited till after 19:00 hours no surcharge would be necessary. All I can say is Rip-Off Britain is alive and well.