A post of congratulations to Virgin for having a well sorted approach to bikes (with a couple of caveats).

I was booked to travel from Haymarket (Edinburgh) to Lancaster through trainline. After trying a few times, a month before they still couldn’t reserve a bike space – not a plus point for Trainline as it transpired… After a grumpy tweet to VT they easily reserved me a space from Waverley which I fortunately collected in advance to be told about you can’t book bikes from Haymarket given the short platform and likelihood the bike carriage won’t be accessible. So good on Virgin for booking it and amazingly lucky I was organised enough to collect in advance and learn I needed to boars at Waverley.

Cometh the day and Mr Virgin platform attendant escorts me to the bike carriage and explains how cyclists seats are reserved right next to the bike carriage – good bit of thinking and all went seamlessly.

For the return journey, had a grumble getting on the train because the waiting sign for carriage A said bike carriage, so I waited there but no bike carriage and no one to help. After finding someone she pointed to the other end of the train – this worked better because I didn’t realise I’d booked 1St class tickets which were down that end. After the attendant this time said “you’re lucky were leaving in X minutes” I snapped back to say the bike waiting sign is down the other end and had an exchange related to having to know which type of train you’re on.

But once on the train, I realised I hadn’t booked first class, just the cyclist seats, being next to the cycle carriage, were in the first class section. Knew I was tighter than that.

So here I am blethering on after lots of free food and cups of tea, thanks for reading 8)