Travelling in Holiday Fortnight.

Before I launch right into another post, let me explain Holiday Fortnight.

This holiday period is the perfect example of Holiday Fortnight, since there is a very neat Monday to Sunday fortnight encapsulating Christmas Day and New Year's Day. Sometimes, you get Holiday WeekPlus, especially if Christmas falls in an awkward place (like a Monday). But a great deal of people really gear up to Christmas Day in the three/four days before Christmas, take the week between Christmas and the New Year off and sometimes indulge in a day or two after New Year's Eve to recover.

This post isn't about the semantics of Holiday Weekend. This post is about what happened when I tried to travel at the beginning of Holiday Weekend. Lovely Boyfriend Face is travelling to see me at the end of Holiday Fortnight, with the added bonus of weekend travel, so I imagine he might have quite the journey.

I went Up North on Monday and came Back Down on Wednesday, last night. Both journeys require three legs. The first two legs are largely similar, except the third leg offers me a choice: either I take a slower Northern Rail service to make the journey from Sheffield to Leeds, or I take the fast Cross Country service that is part of a behemoth voyage from Plymouth to Edinburgh.

On the way there, I decided to take the Cross Country to save time. So I stopped the second leg short of Sheffield to take that train through Sheffield and onto Leeds.

There were no seats. None.

I was standing for about an hour before we got to Sheffield, where luckily one seat became available. People filled the aisles, the hallways, it was difficult to get in and out. It was one of the worst train journeys I've been on for a while.

What had exacerbated how I felt about it was the fact that the first two legs had comfortably half-full trains: not ram-packed, but not eerily empty. (Mind you, I did start my journey at 9, maybe it's to be expected).

Coming back, I learnt my lesson. I opted for the slower Northern service. The best part of that journey was that the first two legs of the journeys begun where I was getting on, so the train is sat at the platform for a good 15 minutes before it set off, and you can always get a seat. So, my journey back home was rather comfortable.

Now I don't have to do any big travelling until Boxing Day, when we're going to London for a party with a family friend with an OBE. He got it several years ago, but it's still a massively big deal to me.