Philip Dyer-Perry

The final remnants of our once large group are almost home!

We were unimpressed by European Sleeper. Delays are one thing, but poorly maintained cars (70% of everything was faulty) & staff ill-prepared for problems made a bad situation worse. Previously I've wanted ES to do well. After these two rides & their impact on our group, well...

Due to another broken down train at Antwerp, our departure was delayed another couple of hours. Our Eurostar came in from the south, and will thus head to London in reverse formation.

We got to Brussels the 'standard' five hours late - and there followed the most stressful few hours of all my travel life. Every Eurostar was full, but thanks to the best efforts of the excellent manager there, we were dispatched on various trains, the last of us on the 20.56!

Cheeekily, ticket acceptance was not arranged for on our onward ride to Brussels (costs were promised to be reimbursed). The queue was long, the website was down, we had no money left, so our group jumped on the next train anyway and we are all now hiding in the toilet...

Eventually a replacement loco arrived and took us to Berchem, where our train terminated.

We sang hymns, but it seems that even prayer cannot help the European Sleeper!

Then, just outside Antwerp we stopped - for three hours. The locomotive had failed. Now we are awaiting a rescue loco.

Over the night we accrued an hour's delay. We had a cushion at Brussels, so no big deal.

Let's take a break from the pilgrimage description to talk about the journey home. We boarded the European Sleeper at Berlin this time. It was early, we boarded easily, all went well...

Next day we took the Baltic Express to Jablonne nad Orlici, where we transferred to a coach. Group booking with CD is amazingly easy!

Luckily we still had time to see some key sights.

Around five and half hours late, we crossed the Czech border and eventually arrived in Prague, very hungry...

At Arnhem we stopped for what seemed like hours - and in the morning we were woken for an unplanned refreshment stop at Hannover. With breakfast imminent, and most having no idea of the scale of the delay, we mainly stayed in bed.

Boarding the European Sleeper was basically chaos, with the coaches seemingly arranged in a random mystery formation. 40 minutes into the journey we managed to rescue our group from the various compartments they'd ended up in.

The cafe that served Yorkshire tea at St. Pancras departures has been turned into a Pret. Nevertheless we made it to Brussels without incident.

Last week we set off on our annual parish pilgrimage. Obviously we took the train.

My parents dropped me off at Cosham station, from where I travelled to Havant for the first off-peak service in UK. We love to complain about UK rail, but every route has half-hourly departures, and there is a cafe and free toilets on both platforms. It's not SNCF...

Well, we tried the C-Club Lounge. It was basically a more expensive version of La Litoral, with a poorer choice of food. We won't be doing that again. And no, wine and beer was not complimentary. @BrittanyFerries – at Havant, England