juliewatt's Photo Stream

Saturday, August 30, 2008

The Stena High Speed ferry arrived too late to make the connecting train at Stranraer


3 boos for Stena HSS Ferry on way back from Belfast to Stranraer - why the schedule change - still don't know.



The boat was about 25 minutes later arriving back in Stranraer and on disembarking from the ferry we had to watch the connection train we should have been on leave - that would have taken me home directly,- we had to watch it pull away from station while we could only watch from the edge of platform.


Don't know why the Stena people couldn't have arranged for the train to wait a bit longer! Really disappointing end to what had been a great day until then. And meant the journey home was going to take about an hour longer than originally planned.

The saga and journey continued then with Stena loading all those who missed the train onto their plan B bus, and after an almost 2 hour bus journey we were deposited at Ayr Train station, just in time to watch yet another connection pulling away again from platform - so yet another train i should have been on missed. There had been 2 Stena reps on our bus - one driving and one standing beside them at front - wonder why the non driver didn't call ahead to station to ask them to hold the train for just a minute or two more....

Infuriatingly, we all then had another 30 min wait for the next connection heading for Glasgow. So the irony of the sign in the picture was not lost on us! Still we didn't let it completely ruin the day and just used the time to discuss all the fun things we had done on the trip, then moved on to discuss how the end of day delays could have better been handled by Stena, and train people. A little bit more consideration for tired and weary customers on their part could have saved a lot of additional hassle for those travelling.

3 comments:

Julie Watt said...

Picture taken on mobile phone camera and mobile blogged from Ayr station.

Technology is a great thing - i could post live updates to my blog throughout the day/night. See other posts for Belfast Day trip on the blog.

Julie Watt said...

andy complained to stena next day and they explained high speed ferry running slower by company Instruction to keep prices down for customer with current fuel prices running higher than had been anticipated

Julie Watt said...

Stena sending goodwill voucher by way of compensation for the inconvenience we had