Peshwari Naan

Felixstowe Radio blogs on 18th November 2008...

Had a lovely start to the day yesterday. Left home early to take the National Express bus to London. It's cheap, convenient and comfortable. The outward journey was lovely. A beautiful Germanic lady who used the service every week explained it all to me at the bus stop. That was extremely useful because there was no information at the stop about the service at all.

The bus arrived, a little late, but she explained that was because the timetable at Chelmsford had not changed, so we would have to wait 30 minutes once we got there - so we just ambled along at the start.

The driver was extremely helpful. There was some discussion about the fare and he hauled out a huge book full of fare tables, which left me quite faint. Finally a fare was agreed, I paid, he issued me with a receipt and a piece of yellow paper that said Return Fare (or something similar).

The driver gave us all very clear instructions before we left, and so we were all safely strapped in, knowing what to do in an emergency and off we went.

The atmosphere was cordial. The lovely lady kept us informed of possible problems ahead and I relaxed, read a book, looked out of the window, enjoyed the journey.

I had a wonderful day in London, visiting several old haunts.

Arriving early at Victoria Coach Station in the afternoon for my journey home I took a look around. It is a disgusting place. The toilets stunk from 20 feet away, and passengers are compelled to pay 20p for the service. Not a place to impress visitors. I left, crossed the road, enjoyed a proper coffee, and some relief, in a cafe nearby.

Our coach arrived at Exit 5. A different driver. I'd been told by my Germanic beauty he was a Geordie and called everyone Pet.

Not so.

I handed him my yellow return ticket, and started to climb aboard.

'Just a minute. You're supposed to have exchanged this at the office.'

'What do you mean? It's a return ticket?' I said as I continued to climb the steps into the coach.

'Hold on pal, don't walk off, you're going nowhere with this.'

I'm not easily upset, but I was now.

'Look, I was sold a ticket by the driver this morning. As he handed me the two pieces of paper he said, 'the top one, the blue is your receipt, the yellow one is your return ticket. If I was supposed to exchange it he should have told me. I'm not going to do what you say now.'

'Well, you can't travel on this.'

' Try and stop me.' I said.

'He shouldn't have sold you a day return, we don't do day returns.'

By this time I'd had enough, and sat down.

My lovely day had been ruined by this driver's attitude. I sat in the coach fuming all the way home. By this morning, as I write this blog, I'd hoped this silly incident would have passed but it hasn't.

Ironically I'd planned to make a radio programme about my day, travelling to London by coach, doing my business, then taking a slow walk through parts of London that I'd known in the past. I'll still do that, but before I do I'll need to get an explanation from National Express, partly about the training in customer relations their drivers receive.

The customer is always right. That's a basic precept. If he's wrong then that should be pointed out to avoid it happening again, and some way found to get round the problem. In this case the problem was not mine. I'd presented what I believed to be a valid ticket to the driver. He'd then blamed me - for some reason that did not make sense.

Whatever happened it ruined my day. I was extremely upset. It was the injustice that really hurt. When you behave correctly and are then falsely accused it can be very painful.

Let's see what National Express have to say. I'll report back.

Gazette Live (Teesside, Middlesbrough and the North East) reports on 17th November 2008...

Abandoned at service station Sharni was left shaky and very scared

A TEENAGE girl was stranded at a service station in the early hours and left to cross a busy motorway after a mix-up over her National Express coach.

Sharni Courtley-Russell, 19, of Guisborough, was on her way back to Sheffield Hallam University on Sunday when she noticed her bus had gone past the Sheffield turn off.

She immediately informed the driver who pulled into Tibshelf Services in Derbyshire and left her there alone at 1.10am.

Sharni claims the driver told her she would have to get to the other side of the motorway to wait for another coach even though there was no bridge.

“It would have been really dangerous to cross six lanes of traffic in the pitch black,” said the student who ended up getting into a car with a stranger to get to the other side of the road.

Sharni, who is studying her first year of Environmental Management, said she was on the second leg of her journey from Leeds to Sheffield when it turned into a nightmare.

“Basically we were going down the motorway and we went straight past the Sheffield turn off.

“I woke up the second driver and he said they were going straight to London.

“The drivers were totally unsympathetic. They practically accused me of getting on the wrong coach even though they had checked me onto it, it was the right number, in the right bay at Leeds depot and they’d checked my name off the passenger list and seen my ticket clearly showing I was going to Sheffield.”

The coach dropped the former Laurence Jackson School pupil off at Tibshelf Services, 27 miles from Sheffield.

Sharni, who appeared in the Gazette three years ago when she broke her back in a sledging accident, said: “I was really shaky and scared, I did not know where I was.

“I look really quite young for my age. But they did not ask how old I was. I could have been a minor for all they knew.

“There was one woman there and as soon as she asked if I was OK I just broke down in tears.

“She said I did not want to be crossing the motorway. It was pitch black.

“Luckily this woman found a member of staff to drive me over.”

Sharni said she waited an hour and 30 minutes before National Express called her about another bus but by that time her mum was so worried about her she had phoned her uncle, who lived nearby, to go and pick her up.

The next day Stephen Kenneth Blagg, eight, from Whinney Banks, Middlesbrough died after being hit by a BMW as he ran across the A19 near Teesside Leisure Park.

His story prompted Sharni to contact the Gazette as she says she too could have been killed if she had tried to cross the motorway on foot.

A spokeswoman for National Express said they would refund Sharni’s ticket and her uncle’s petrol costs.