Travel in Britain? A breeze

 

When travelling to England the BritRail pass is the way to go. Don’t try buying it here. You can only buy it abroad, to the envy of the Brits. It will save you literally hundreds of dollars on relatively expensive train fares. I bought a pass in Canada for $933.40. Sound expensive? It’s for 15 round trips within a two-month period within England. You can also buy passes that include Wales and Scotland. But if I had bought separate train tickets here I would have been out a whole lot more money. The pass is also good for First Class travel (photo), a bonus in itself. Most trains have First Class sections. And you often don’t need to make reservations. Just arrive at the station and board a First-Class coach. If you’re worried the train might be crowded head to the ticket office and make a seat reservation – at no cost. Once aboard you’ll get the privilege of free food and beverages, including booze. Attendants, like in planes, wheel trolleys down the aisle. But First-Class service varies. The best I’ve had is on the London – York LNER line, where attendants took meal requests and served hot dinners on real plates. Booze was also served in glasses. But on the return trip no hot meals but beverages flowed frequently. Other services and railways didn’t have sandwiches, just snacks and drinks but usually booze. The Southeastern high-speed service had no first class at all.

Train travel generally here is a charm. Trains are frequent, even to long distance locations. If you miss a train there’s usually another in a half hour or hour. On board information is excellent. LED reads outs tell you the next stations, sometimes graphics will display how crowded each coach is and where the restrooms are. Upcoming stations are announced by an identical female voice sounding like actress Emma Thomspon. Beyond that, onboard “train managers” will welcome you aboard, inform how to connect to another train at a transfer point, and let you know why we might be hesitating or slightly behind schedule. Moreover, if you’re late usually beyond 15 minutes you can apply for a Delay Repay refund. Station signage is also good. Even at the most rural stations, and after hours when ticket offices have closed, electronic platform signs inform about next arrivals and departures.

The one downside of train travel – and city buses for that matter – is the passengers. On London buses people invariably talk on their phones. On trains, there’s yakking but also inconsiderate behaviour. Groups are often loud and have no conception of how their behaviour impacts others. Trains can have one “quiet car”; I wish there were more.

London buses are frequent and onboard signage informs of the next stop along with audio announcements. If a bus is delayed at a stop you’ll be told a reason such as a wait to “spread out” service or because of a driver change. Pay is no problem, you just tap your credit or debit card. All buses are accessible and have buttons on the side you push for a ramp to come down from the middle door. About half the tube stations have elevators. And all the stations along the gleaming new 72-mile Elizabeth Line bisecting London are accessible.

This last point isn’t about trains. But upon arrival at London’s Heathrow this was the best Customs experience I’ve had. No speaking to agents just an electronic gate using passport recognition. Sort of what's at Pearson without the added “speak-to-Customs” bit.

- Ron Stang, Windsor Ontario Canada, a frequent traveller

Lost in currency conversion

You’ve heard of lost in translation. Often happens when you travel. But how about lost in currency conversion. This appears what happened when the Nova Scotia Health Authority (NSHA) incorrectly billed for an overnight stay in June of last year at the Cape Berton Regional Hospital. The health department sent two notices (together) that an outstanding amount hadn’t been paid up. The original cost was $7818.10 (Yup, that’s what it costs for overnight and a few tests). Yet, the dear people at Nova Scotia Health didn’t seem to make the connection between Canadian and US dollars, or should that be the conversion. They kept insisting that $1637.69 was owing. Uh, no. The patient, an American, was covered by GeoBlue travel insurance, a US provider. The bill was paid in full. Their payment, dated Nov. 17 of last year, was for the total $7818.10. It even says this on the form to “NSHA Accounts Receivable Service Centre $7818.10 Canada Dollars.” But it was paid in US currency which was $6180.41, the equivalent of the Canadian amount. So, Nova Scotia Health made a boo-boo. They thought the $6180.41 was Canadian dollars and therefore remitted a balance (two notices) of $1637.69 ($7818.10 minus $6180.41). Clearly, they assumed the payment by GeoBlue was in Canadian money when it was in US. We alerted Nova Scotia Health August 30, resending GeoBlue’s documentation as proof of payment. We’re still waiting to hear from them as to whether the bill has been cleared. The wheels of bureaucracy turn...

- Ron Stang, Windsor Ontario Canada, a frequent traveller

Unknown customs that make a foreigner look foolish

When at a Waitrose store in Bath, England, yesterday and purchasing a reporter's notebook – a great writing pad that I've never seen for sale in North America, it having the perfect dimensions of not being too small or large - I checked it through a self-checkout only to find the machine wouldn't tally my payment. I had to call an attendant, whose long beard made him look like a philosophy professor. He took my item and simply moved it from a lower shelf to an upper shelf at the top of the till. I’d never seen this kind of configuration, at home having a till where you move items in parallel from one side to the other. 

At the Bath RR station waiting for the Great Western Railway train to London Paddington, the announcement says that first class loading is from Zones 1 and 2. Where are the platform zone numbers? There are numbers posted above but they seem haphazard. I had to ask a railway attendant (always wearing orange vest). He pointed to the other end of the platform, and then I saw them, circles painted on the platform floor with the zone numbers. A lot of the time you wouldn’t see these because the platforms are so crowded. 

Finally, after exiting the Elizabeth Line station in central London and walking to my bus stop I see a “diversion” (detour) notice asking me to “read down.” Only there’s no information when I look down the bus stop pole. It’s not until I walk a little ahead do I notice the information on the side of the pole indicating the next closest stop.    

There have been a couple of other mishaps recently with maps or wayfinding. Yesterday in Bath (photo: Bath's Roman Baths)I exited the surprisingly small station (for a city of 100,000) over what I thought was a river to the centre of town (it was a canal). But if this was the centre of historic Bath – a highly popular tourist destination for its Georgian architecture and Jane Austen legacy – then this was disappointing indeed. Yes, there were some fine historical residences but not much traffic and only a small commercial area, where I stopped to buy a cappuccino. There, speaking to a young family, I asked if  I’d gone the wrong way out of the train station. Yes, “there’s a tunnel,” they said, leading into the main city itself. And, yes there was, I eventually found, and leading into a vast commercial and historic quarter just teaming with shops, restaurants and people! Amazing how it’s possible to get directions so wrong having consulted my Lonely Planet map. .... And last week in Cambridge, leaving the train station and consulting the Here We Go app, I was told to walk way off in a different direction to find Trumpington Rd., leading to the city centre. I found it alright, but by a great circuitous route that probably took a half hour longer than if I’d just walked down the street straight from the station., downtown Cambridge being a mile and a half from the railway. 

- Ron Stang, Windsor Ontario Canada, a frequent traveller

No refund in arguably exceptional case

This was something we were not expecting. Arriving at the Georgian Bay Hotel  (photo) in Collingwood last week we checked-in to the reserved room only to find the beds were too high. One of us is disabled and could not climb on to it. We had never experienced this problem before. Yes, we had earlier been offered an “accessible” room at a $30 upcharge – again, something we had never seen before at any accommodation. (Usually, accessible rooms are offered free of charge if available.) Was this charge discriminatory? Perhaps, or not. (I have complained to several industry agencies.) The hotel justified this by saying the suite offered “upgraded amenities, including a kitchen and features that contribute to a more comfortable and accessible stay” and yes, “a lower bed option.” When we told the front desk about the bed height they checked if an accessible room was available but was not. We had to find another hotel. We had booked through Booking.com, whose agent assured us we would get a “full refund.” But first we had to contact the hotel to inform it Booking.com, as a broker, would be requesting the refund. I thought this a bit strange but did so. About 12 hours later I got an email saying the hotel “is unable to make an exception in this case, and you will be charged the entire cancellation fee.” The fee was the full amount for three nights or $877.67. The alternative accommodation was $491.55. So, our total trip accommodation amounted to $1369.22. By the way, the alternate accommodation, Luxury Inn, proved to have an even better suite at just over half the price. Not only were the beds lower, the room larger but there were two armchairs where Georgina Bay Hotel only offered a desk chair (though there were two outside patio chairs). Georgian Bay Hotel Trademark Collection is a Wyndham property. In a follow-up email Ashleigh Levoy, VP of hotel operations, while offering no discount, did offer this: “We would be happy to provide you with a customized discount on your next visit as compensation for your experience.”

- Ron Stang, Windsor Ontario Canada, a frequent traveller

If this is Lonely Planet's new format, count me out

I have been a fan of Lonely Planet travel guides for several years now, after I converted over from Rough Guides. Lonely Planet captured me with both a text-forward approach (like Rough Guides) but with more graphic appeal - wonderfully colorful charts, maps, section dividers - all in all a travel guide tour de force. So I was very looking forward to LP's 12th edition, published July 25 and pre-ordered it. I eagerly opened the Amazon package and sat down to look it over. Um, something different about it. The old layout was gone. The book is now way too graphic-heavy with color, photos and maps dominating. Detailed info about travel (i.e., how to get round England by train) was reduced to one graph. Something was wrong. LP has revised its guide (apparently all future guides will be like this?) for what I can only call the 'Gen Z' generation or people glued to screens and not print. Gone are the detailed text info about hotels, restaurants, visiting sites. I submitted a review to Amazon which has gone live: "Very disappointed in this new edition. I loved previous Lonely Planet guides because they were text heavy with complementary appealing layout and graphics. This edition is clearly for the Gen Z generation accustomed to looking at screens and with short attention spans. Very little text, graphics and maps heavy. In a phrase, dumbed down."...So I've packed up the book, put it in a new envelope, printed out a return label, and will drop it off tonight. I've ordered the 11th edition (2021) instead. Maybe I'll have to go back to Rough Guides.

- Ron Stang, Windsor Ontario Canada, a frequent traveller