Had planned to meet up with some guys at Swinley, figured I'd get the train as its nearby and probably works out cheaper than petrol.

Problem number 1, finding the bloomin station
Winnersh triangle station is closed off from cars as they're building a new bridge, fine, unless you've never used it before and they havent put up any diversion signs telling you where in the whole building site the station is!

problem number 2
Then once you get to the station, buy your ticket, work out which platform and go and wait for a few minutes, work out that something is a miss, call southern trains to be told there is a replacement bus service from opposite the plant hire office (remember the whole area is a building site, spot the plant hire office?) Spend 20min riding round winnersh triangle looking for anything resembling a plant hire office and give up. Phone up again and ask for an address, work out where that is, its round the perimiter fence of the station, under the tracks, through the housing estate and over the road! I didn't know this short cut beforehand, but figured they couldn't be sending people down the dual carriageway to get there.

If I get a hold of anyone at southern trains they had better hope there're witnesses!

Then it gets better when you find out you can't take your bike on the replacement bus.

Problem 3 will be when the bus turns up and they won't take your bike…

You would have thought that he'd have worked that out, but it would appear not!

"Engineering work may affect train services particularly at
weekends. Please check before travelling. Cycles are not
conveyed on replacement buses during engineering works."

I passed my driving test purely so i didn't have to mess about with trains anymore.

Cycles are not conveyed on replacement buses during engineering works.

If it's a coach there's plenty of room and the driver doesn't mind

If it's a coach there's plenty of room and the driver doesn't mind

Great for the outward journey, hope you get the same driver on the way back.

http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/

So was it cheaper than driving?

FFS I've just seen where Winnersh is – you could ride to Swinley from there!

And it can't be a gallon for a round-trip anyway.

It's less than 10 miles isn't it?

Its about 7 miles or so (8 if you include the mile from my house to Winnersh).

In the end I went home, crawled back into bed with the missus, grumbled a bit, then she droped me off at the lookout and I cycled back, thats a whole other nightmare after some cycle hating nutter (I presume) gave me directions for bagshot rather than blackwater turning a 3 mile spin to the train station (blackwater to wokingham was running) into a 30 mile epic ride home, I gave up somewhere arround blackwater after cycling what felt like the length of the A30, ate about 1000 calories of haribo and pressed on.

Anoying really, I was quite happy that I could ride Swinley whenever I liked for £2.90 return.

>Anoying really, I was quite happy that I could ride Swinley whenever I liked for £2.90 return.

+ the permit you purchased presumably ?

Yup, a bight orange sticker for my bike as I didnt have £20 in cash for an anual one.

Seemed odd that no one checks them though. Surely some kind of race board type arrangement would be better and actualy policeable (does anyone ever check?) as I presume the anual permit isnt a sticker as no one else had one on their bike. And £20 per bike might put people off.

Well to be a pedant its actually South West trains who run the the Winnersh – Martins Heron route.

well seeing as they never turned up I wouldn't know :-p

as a note the stations / track are being redone by network rail not SWT.

Still doesn't help, the only notice saying anythign was amis was printed to look like a train time table but with a different heading, so when faced with a series of big A2 billboards and your looking for "train time table" your not exactly drawn to its neighbour which admitedly in very pretty pastle blue letters on a white background tells you not to expect to get anywhere in a hurry today.

How about a big sign, in big red letters saying "This station is closed on 11th April, here's a map showing you where to get the bus to Wokingham station from, ohh and you wont be able to take a bike or a pushchair"

In their defence all the information was there, but it was displayed in such an inconspicuous way that you'd never read it unless you were so bored after faffing for 40 minutes that you had taken to reading every notice at the station for a clue.

How about, "I'm travelling by train later, perhaps I'll be proactive and do some research into times and travel details"?

Or, "It's only seven miles. I'll ride it"?

Duh. 😉

7 miles there, 7 miles back, plus 3 to get form the lookout to the MTB area, and 3 back.

Thats 20miles, which is a ride in itself.

I'd considder checking the trian time table to be sufficient. In what other industry is it acceptable to say the product will be XYZ and will cost you £a.bc

Then when the product fails to be anything like XYZ the company finds it acceptable to say, well you should have researched more to find out that we were selling you a product which was unavailable.

Say you bought a new car, you pay your £8000 and are told your ford fiesta will be available for collection on Sunday.

You arrive on Sunday and are handed a voucher for a pair of walking boots. The salesman politely points out that cars collected on Sundays are now being replaced by walking boots, which will transport you arround town just as well as the car, a bit slower perhapse, but you'll get there. Ohh and you have to go a mile away to collect them form opposite the plant hire depot.

also winnersh tri is a bit of mon-fri station normally anyhow.. but you were not to know that

Ohh and you have to go a mile away to collect them form opposite the plant hire depot.

In bare feet.

7 miles there, 7 miles back, plus 3 to get form the lookout to the MTB area, and 3 back.

Yep, I've just worked it out to be 7.1 miles from the station to the Lookout, but NO WAY is it 3 miles to the trails from there! Not even close!

And if you turn right at the roundabout on Nine Mile Ride before you get to the Lookout, then left at the next one just up the road where the kebab van usually is, you're about 1/4 mile from the Corkscrew, so I'd say it's actually less than 7 miles to the trails from there.

Like the back of my hand you say? 😉

Or you can head off road at the little roundabout in Crowthorne at the bottom of TRL, straight under the 3095 and you're at the end of the Seagull run… but as this was going to be TINAS' first ride round Swinley there's no way he'd know all this stuff.

And I didn't have a permit, so had to go via the lookout anyway.

Still, all's well that ends well and all that. Had a cracking day out and probably barely scratched the surface of whats there. I presume it must have been the corkscrew I was sessioning (the one with the berms staked into the hillside?), it'd take a while to get tired of that one!

You arrive on Sunday and are handed a voucher for a pair of walking boots.

This is apt. Virgin once refused to compensate me for a journey from Holyhead to London. When I booked (£10) there was going to be a rail service. By the time I made the trip there wasn't a rail service, there was just a bus. I had a bike with me, so I had to buy a ticket for another day (£95).

They refunded me my £10, which was sweet of them.

I've also stood in a Southern Trains ticket office with a bike and been sold a ticket for immediate travel, after which the bloke said "you do know there's no trains today, so you won't be able to go with your bike". No, no I didn't. The most obvious way for me to find out would have been you telling me, and I'd rather you'd done that before taking my money… 🙂

but as this was going to be TINAS' first ride round Swinley there's no way he'd know all this stuff.

Fair comment. 🙂

Still only 7.1 miles to the Lookout, and maybe 0.5 to the trails though. 🙂