So after successful summers working in the US and Canada, I decided I wanted a European adventure for my 3rd year. Two of my friends Sharon and Sheila also wanted to do this so, after a quick discussion, we decided our leaving cert French should be good enough to get jobs as chambermaids in Paris.
How wrong were we ! After a few days of knocking on doors and grovelling, we decided we couldn’t afford to stay in Paris any longer. We hoped good French wasn’t needed to pick fruit in Dijon, so off we went on a train to the home of French mustard on the East Coast of France. After a few days of more door knocking and grovelling it was time for plan C and Sheila suggested we go to a country where English was more widely spoken. After a quick chat, we settled on Copenhagen in Denmark. Money was tight at this stage so we bought the cheapest train tickets we could, which included an overnight journey. How surprised were we, where we woke up in the middle of the night to realise the train was driving onto a boat ! This was before the Zeebrugge disaster so you were not told to leave the train. However, we decided to go up on a deck, look around the boat and enjoy the view.
We were very happy to arrive in Copenhagen but got a shock when we discovered how expensive it was. Also, we were a week or two too late now to get the jobs students usually get. So after we discovered there was a heat wave in Ireland, we decided to throw in the towel and return home. My Parents had a supermarket in a seaside resort so I had a job waiting for me.
We couldn’t afford to fly from Copenhagen, one of the most expensive cities in Europe, so we plotted the cheapest way back. This included a train from Denmark to Germany to Holland, a boat from the Hook of Holland to Harwich in England, a train to London and then one to Holyhead in Wales and the ferry to Dublin. What could go wrong !!!
While we had lots of craic along the way, the real fun started when we arrived in Harwich, as there was a rail strike in England and we couldn’t get to Holyhead. Buses were waiting for the ferry, so we boarded one and ended up in Euston station, in the centre of London. It was late at night and not the ideal place for 3 young Irish girls to be alone. We found ourselves a quite corner and hoped to get through the night. But the police soon discovered us and we were told it wasn’t safe to stay in the station overnight. We explained we had no money and were waiting for a train to go to Holyhead. While they were relatively polite to us, they really couldn’t help us and every 20mins or so, they would return and tell us yet again we had to leave. Finally our luck changed as a British Rail Security Guard came by, clearly interested in why the police kept coming over to us. He had an Irish Daddy and felt sorry for us, so he told the police he would find us somewhere at the station to stay. He told us to follow him and he brought us to a train. He unlocked the door and showed us sleeping carriages. He told us we could stay there for the night, we were not to make a mess and that he would come and wake us the following morning before his shift finished. We got the best nights sleep in days and were ready for action the following morning when our night in shining armour appeared.
He gave us 3 tickets, as we had given him our tickets the night before and he walked us over to our train. It was 6.30am and he told us the train would leave at 7.30am and was going to Holyhead with one stop at Crew Junction. We got our rucksacks stored and found some seats. As we chatted about the pending journey, Shelia announced she had found £10 in the end of her bag last night, which she had left over from a visit to Belfast. She said we should spend it that day as would be home in Ireland later that night. As we had been rationing everything for days and were craving coffee, we decided that Sheila and I would go quickly and purchase some. We were so delighted with ourselves and off we went, confident that we had 45 minutes to spare. We checked the departure board as we passed it and our train was listed leaving at 7.30am.
However, when we returned, we discovered to our horror, that the train was gone. We both collapsed in a fit of giggles initially and then composed ourselves trying to figure out if we had come to the wrong platform, or if the train had moved a little further out of the station. But when we checked the board, our train was no longer listed. To make matters worst, for some reason we had left our tickets and passports on the train with Sharon.
We got serious very quickly when we realised the situation we now faced and started looking at the departure board for inspiration. I spotted that a train that was leaving in 30 mins going to Newcastle via Crew, so suggested we get on that and decide along the way what to do. Staying in Euston wasn’t an option as Sharon clearly hadn’t gotten off the train so we needed to get to her and closer to Holyhead. Along with several commuters, we approached the gate but got stopped by the ticket attendant. He was way too busy to listen to our story and kept shouting at us, telling us we couldn’t go any further, without a ticket and he didn’t have time to listen to our sob story !
So back we walked to the central concourse to think again. We watched the train pull out and we read the list of the departing trains again. I then said to Sheila, that it looked as if when it got close to the time for the trains to leave, that the guards were not checking tickets and seemed to just let the people through. So we watched and waited for the next train, going via Crew. We didn’t have to wait long, as it’s a busy intersection and there were now crowds in the station. With 5 mins to go to the departure time, the crowd surged forward and we allowed ourselves to be pushed along and kept our heads down, got to the train and jumped onto the first carriage. We walked down the train until we found spare seats and we sat down and finally had time to drink our coffee. We talked away to one another debating on what we were going to do next. Would we have issues getting on a train to Holyhead at Crew? Would we have to change platforms and have someone look for tickets? How and where was Sharon? Would we meet her at Holyhead or would we now miss the boat? Would she sail without us? The possibilities were endless …. Of course we didn’t have mobile phones back then so we had no way of getting in touch with Sharon.
In the middle of our debate, a dreaded ticket collector came by and asked for our tickets. Talking over one another we told him our tale of woe but he wasn’t buying it for a minute. He told us we had to get off the train at the next stop and he was having us arrested for boarding a train without tickets. We didn’t mind being told we had to get off at the next stop, as that was the plan anyway, but neither of us relished another encounter with English police after the night before. We pleaded and pleaded but everything fell on deaf ears and he called for an colleague to come to the carriage and sit with us, on his walkie talkie. At this stage, half the carriage had heard the commotion and to our absolute delight a man a few rows down approached us. He took charge immediately and challenged the ticket collector, questioning why he couldn’t call a colleague on the train we said our friend was on and have someone find her and check our story. He said she should be told to get off the train at Crewe so we could be reunited. When the ticket collector told him he didn’t believe us, the passenger said the story sounds so far fetched it could be true and they do have an extra cup of coffee ! We almost hugged him, we were so grateful he intervened. Off the ticket collector went and we never saw him again.
After close to two hours we approached Crewe. As we thanked the helpful passenger, he suggested we shouldn’t get off the train until we knew if our friend had been contacted. But we decided to take our chances and got off the train. As the crowd parted and the station cleared out, there sitting with our 3 large rucksacks and 3 backpacks was Sharon looking very forlorn ! Thankfully, she laughed when Sheila handed her the cup, saying “here is your coffee” !!!
We had such a laugh relaying our stories ! Sharon said she had assumed we had gotten on the train before it left Euston and was expecting us to walk into the carriage at any stage. She had only realised she really was on her own after about 20 mins. No-one from British rail approached her to confirm our story and she didn’t know whether to get off the train at the next stop or continue on to Holyhead and hope we would fellow. She didn’t really know why she decided to get off the train (and thank God it was Crew Junction), but we decided the travel Gods had intervened. She said once she decided she was leaving the train, she moved the 3 rucksacks close to the door and strapped the 3 smaller ones to herself. When the train stopped she was blocking the door and said she almost caused a riot as people were shouting at her and pushing her out of the way. At one stage, she had 2 rucksacks on the platform and the whistle went and she feared the train would leave with one rucksack still on it !
I have travelled a lot since that fateful day and while I have lost touch with Sheila, Sharon and I are still close friends. We have told this story many times and laughed about it. We didn’t embellish it over the years as it was crazy enough as-is. I hope Sharon doesn’t mind me relaying it now, for your amusement, on this blog!!!