Today, I went to Leeds

[lexin]

I was attending a meeting, called in December when obviously they didn't know that northern Britain was going to resemble Canada.

I had an exciting journey up, in which a passing train broke a window in our train and showered everyone in the carriage with glass and snow. This meant that our train was delayed as they obviously then had to go slowly. (This is the third time I've been on trains where windows have broken for one reason or another, and people wonder why I don't like to sit in the window seat.) It didn't get really snowy until north of Peterborough - the Arctic conditions around Doncaster came as something of a surprise, though possibly wouldn't have if I'd paid more attention to the news.

I arrived in Leeds, late, to discover that the meeting was called off. D'oh. The only two people who'd turned up were myself and another colleague who'd come from Inverness - he said the snow got really bad around Aviemore. Everyone else cried off, even the people who work in Leeds - proving that they had more sense than we did.

I ate a baguette in an accusing way, (bacon and brie if you were wondering), commiserated with my Scottish colleague, turned around and went back to Leeds station.

This is where I stood for two hours, in the freezing cold, while they cancelled trains to London. At last about three trains worth of people piled on to the one train which was going to run, and sat back in the relatively warm. That train crawled back to London, allowing us plenty of time to admire the pretty snow around Doncaster and Wakefield.

Now I've had tea and a delivery Chinese meal I'm feeling a bit more human.

Comments

[m31andy.livejournal.com]

the Arctic conditions around Doncaster came as something of a surprise, though possibly wouldn't have if I'd paid more attention to the news.

Doncaster seems to have its own microclimate. I've never stood on that station without being freezing cold (and in a heatwave, that's impressive!) and more than once I've encountered snow as we pull into the city and lost it just after the postal depot.

The station is also an impressive wind tunnel. It's also quite likely I've spent far too much of my lifetime stood on the platform waiting for trains...

[lexin.livejournal.com]

Have you ever stood on Crewe station? That's a wind tunnel, if ever there was one.

I once stood on Crewe station in a snow storm, waiting for the only train to run into Wales that day. It did run, but we arrived in Llanfairfechan, where we were living at the time like blocks of ice - and later that day opened the door to a policeman, as my parents had heard on the news that no trains had run into Wales, but hadn't heard from us, and so panicked.

This was in the days before mobile phones, of course, and students couldn't afford phones in student accommodation.