A hole in the plan

The intended route:

Flight from Belfast to Leeds

Train Leeds to Scarborough, changing at York.

Bus to Whitby.

What happened:

Flight diverted to Liverpool because there was a hole in the runway at Leeds. ??!!

I waited about a half hour with other passengers for the bus we were promised to take us (two hours) to Leeds airport, from where I would get a shuttle bus to Leeds train station, from where my train journeys would begin. Then fellow passengers encouraged me to take the bus to Lime Street station in Liverpool – 30 minutes – where I ran to a ticket counter, then ran to a platform and hopped onto a train to York. In York I had 9 minutes to run down stairs, along a very long tunnel, then upstairs, to find platform 2. Where I hopped on a train to Scarborough. At Scarborough I paid for an expensive taxi ride to Whitby, arriving at 8:30 pm, I'm going to say only 90 minutes behind schedule. York station below.

I was very impressed by the availability of British trains – no time hanging around anywhere along the route. And I had a gin and tonic on the train! And HF Holidays kept dinner for me. I was very pleased with myself for not pre-booking my trains before travelling. That would have been wasted money. I didn't know how long the shuttle would take to get to Leeds train station, so I figured I'd get my tickets at each stage. Worked a treat.

5 July