Top class service from Cross Country trains

After a fantastic time with friends and family in Worcester, it was time to hit the road again and head south.

Somerset was our next stop and, to give us another day with Sam’s mum, we decided to get the train to speed up our travel between Worcester and Bristol.

For those who have travelled with a bike on the train you may know that it can be a bit of a mixed bag with some operators accommodating bikes and others, maybe not so much… We contributed to a blog post about various train/bike experiences on the Bike Worcester site.

Arriving at Worcester Parkway station (don’t get us started on the “cycle access” to the station which involves an enormous flight of stairs from the little lane connecting it to Worcester. Instead with a bike you’re forced onto a busy road and huge roundabout to get to it…) the station was deserted. With the train I’d booked being Cross Country on an unfamiliar route, I wanted to find out a bit of information from staff including what the bike provision was like, where to stand on the platform to get our bikes on, and whether we needed to unload all of our luggage before boarding. But there was no-one around! At 5pm on Friday the ticket office was closed and there was no conductor on the platform so I was starting to get stressed. I don’t want to cause a delay to the train and we’ve found a few of the train staff on other services to be obstructive about accommodating bikes.

We worked out from the electronic information screen that there were bike spaces near the front of the train so we waited on the platform for the train which was delayed by 5 minutes. As a note, there’s barely any shelter on the platform and there are no benches if you’re travelling from Worcs Parkway.

The train approached and along came the conductor from the train to greet us with a smile and she immediately reassured us about getting the bikes on to the train. Sam got his loaded bike on and then the train doors closed with me still on the platform. The conductor calmly turned to me and told me not to worry, waved down the driver and the doors opened to let me on.

Once on board, the conductor announced that she was a cyclist too and that she understood that train/bike combination could be a bit tricky. She very kindly asked us to get the bags off the bikes, offering to assist in stowing them in the luggage area, and to hang one of them up in the cupboard. My bike went up quite easily and the cupboard was a little larger than the GWR ones. The conductor then said not to worry about the other bike and to just make sure that it was not blocking any of the doors. Sam’s handlebars are quite wide and we were thankful that we didn’t have to force the bike up into the second hook which would have been a squeeze. The understanding from the staff member made a stressful situation really manageable and we were extremely grateful for the kindness and assistance to get the bikes on an unfamiliar train.

As we approached Bristol Parkway we started getting our luggage ready to unload and the conductor came to check we were ok. We then sparked up a conversation and discovered that she had a Tern GSD for transporting her children around (the cargo bike we had to replace our car), had recently taught the youngest to ride and had a folding bike to commute to work. We immediately connected in the joy and freedom cycling can bring. The final gem was that her local bike repair shop was the very shop where our bikes were made! We will remember this connection for a long time to come and one interaction with a friendly, welcoming and incredibly helpful person made everything so easy. Based on this, we would use Cross Country again and hope every cyclist gets to meet her too!

After worrying about this part of the trip, it worked out really well and had we cycled (at our slow pace) it would have taken us a day and a half but instead it took only 45 mins between Worcestershire Parkway and Bristol Parkway. One more day in our schedule to catch up with family before moving further south.