Southern Railway : London Victoria to Shoreham-by Sea (gone wrong)

I stupidly, and now regret to be fair, decided to go on a little camping trip to the south coast this week. That meant leaving the comfort of London with its bars, Prets, Greggs and other home comforts, for the wilds of the South Downs.

With not much time spare (very unusually for me) I arrived at London Victoria. The platform for the train to Littlehampton wasn’t announced until 10:41, which isn’t entirely ideal when the service leaves at 10:45. Although, that gave me time to play guess the platform, and I guessed correctly that it would be platform 12, so I was ready and waiting. Any passenger in another part of the railway station with mobility issues would have had a rather more entertaining and stressful four minutes.

Here we are, ready to board. At this stage, I didn’t think there would be much of interest during this rail journey, so I didn’t expect to use these photos.

The Southern Train pulls in, all seems to be going to plan. It was a long train which was nearly entirely empty, but all was on time.

The carriage. And with that, I was expecting to arrive into Shoreham-by-Sea around an hour later with no issues or delays.

We got past Gatwick and there was then an announcement that the railway network on the southern coast had run out of power or something similar. This didn’t sound ideal, but a staff member at Haywards Heath said to just board the next train to Brighton and then change there. So I did that, whilst carrying my bag and traipsing another bag about. It’s fair to say, I’m not really getting into this camping thing. Indeed, I’ve spent most of the day moaning about it to people.

Boarding the 11:43 to Brighton.

On board that train into Brighton, carting all this bloody camping equipment with me.

When at Brighton railway station it was evident that I had about fifteen minutes until the train to Hove, where I could catch a train to Shoreham from. I popped to the gateline and asked to be let out of the railway station (implying I also wanted letting back in shortly afterwards) so that I could visit Pret to get an emergency hot chocolate.

I still have my Pret subscription, so this was a handy stop and got me an unexpected free drink.

Back in the railway station I boarded the train to Hove, also relieved that I had been let back through the gateline without any problems.

This train journey wasn’t particularly busy and since it only went to Hove it lasted all of around five minutes. My hot chocolate was so hot I still hadn’t drunk any of it by the time that we got to Hove (not that anyone will be too bothered about that).

Anyway, I got off at Hove and this railway employee was giving advice on what to do next as it was clear not much rail traffic was leaving this station. The advice was primarily to get a bus and this was all arranged with the local company so that rail passengers wouldn’t have to pay. I liked his “there’s no point standing here” as some customers didn’t believe him when he said there were no trains for some time. As I understand, it transpired that it took the about three hours to fix the problem, so anyone waiting at the station for the services to be restored wouldn’t have had a quick departure.

And a five minute walk saw me find a bus to Shoreham, which helpfully dropped me off slightly nearer to the campsite than the train would have done. But, I was well over an hour late, so at least this rail fare will be refunded under delay repay. With that, my camping adventure would begin, although writing this one day later, I can’t say that this is my favourite adventure that I’ve ever had. But we’ll see how it goes from here.