Day 22 - You Couldn’t Make It Up

I hadn’t planned to do a Day 22 blog, but I felt the following events needed recording.

The flight took 13 hours before finally landing at Heathrow at exactly 6.30am local time. We again breezed through passport control, customs and had time for a coffee, make phone calls etc before boarding the 7.55am National Express Coach to Hickstead. We learnt from a neighbour that our garden fence at the front of the house was leaning over and in danger of hitting our car so she had propped our bin against it. Great!

We showed our Hickstead ticket to the coach driver and confirmed we were getting off at Hickstead when he loaded our rucksacks on to the coach.

The coach was unpleasant, we initially sat near the back, but Jackie could smell poo. Apparently the toilet was blocked, so the driver had to lock it. Jackie believed the smell was from a drunkard Irishman who was telling people around him that he had travelled from Gatwick to Heathrow by coach, but was having to go back to Gatwick because he had dropped his phone there. His voice was grating on me so I put my earphones in and listened to Joy Division.

As our coach headed down the M23 towards Hickstead, we booked a taxi to meet us at the coach stop. The taxi driver rang us back within minutes to ask where were we. We apologised and informed him we would be with him in 2 minutes. The coach turned off on the Hickstead slip road, so we gathered up our belongings to disembark as the coach unbelievably sailed past the stop and back onto the M23.

I ran down the coach to the driver and told him that we were supposed to get off at Hickstead. He said “You said Patcham”. “No I didn’t”. “Yes you did”. A couple immediately behind the driver confirmed that they were getting off at Patcham, which was maybe how he got confused.

At this point I assumed he was going to pull off at the next junction and drop us back off at Hickstead. I was wrong and he continued to head south. To say I was incensed was an understatement and I shoved our ticket that said Hickstead on it right under his nose. It probably wasn’t the wisest thing to do when he was driving the coach along at 60 miles an hour.

He insisted that the next stop was Patcham and Jackie explained the situation to our waiting taxi driver, who advised her to make another booking from where we would end up.

Another 10 minutes or so later we eventually disembarked at Patcham outside the Miller & Carter pub. I had a stand up row with the driver, forced him to read my ticket properly and he finally conceded that he was wrong and apologised. He offered us no solutions to our predicament other than to tell me that I could make a complaint via their website. We will definitely be complaining AND trying to get compensation. I can’t promise I didn’t swear during my rants at the driver!

We rang the taxi company to explain the situation and to ask them to pick us up from Patcham. They quoted us £40 to collect us, so we declined their ‘kind’ offer. The next plan was to catch the next National Express Coach heading north back to Hickstead. The next coach was at 10.09am, but we couldn’t book it on their app, notwithstanding that both are phones were perilously low on charge.

We crossed the road to the northbound bus stop and had a revelation. There were several Metro buses heading north and the 271 at 10.24am actually stopped in Cuckfield. This was the bus we were going to catch. 10.24am came and went with no sign of the 271. A Japanese lady joined us at the bus stop and she was able to get the Metro bus website up on her phone and was able to let us know the bus was running 17 minutes late.

To cut a long story short, the bus which cost us just £3 each dropped us off at the bottom of our road. We walked through our front door at 11.47am after a long and tiring journey.

Song of the Day - A New Dawn Fades by Joy Division.Read more