Derby; Thursday, 20 July, 2023

After finishing work for the day I headed out to catch the penultimate train of the day – with another rail strike on, the last train was just after 6pm, which meant my original route of taking the train up to Birmingham had had to change a couple of weeks earlier when the strikes were confirmed.

Instead I caught the train up to Victoria and walked the short distance round to the Coach station to pick up the National Express coach up to Birmingham.

Due to a problem with loading passengers on a relief coach to Bristol that had been parked in our bay, the coach to Birmingham ended up being 30 minutes late leaving.

At one point it looked like we might claw most of that back, but then we hit roadworks on the M40 and in the end the coach pulled into the Digbeth coach station in Birmingham exactly 30 minutes late.

Rather than the 25 minute slog across town I decided just to order an Uber and catch that round to my hotel for the night, checkin in and then head to bed.