Ghost train

The alarm went off at 5am. I had a 5km cycle ride down a dark overgrown towpath through a wilderness countryside in an unfamiliar place. I set off with the batteries in my head torch fading into the slow approaching dawn.

Squinting into the darkness, I kept thinking at any moment a rabid fox was going to block my path and savage me like a werewolf on steroids.

Eventually, I arrived at Bochain train station, it was 6.15am. Apart from a ticket machine and a mounted TV monitor that played an annoying yet reassuring jingle every so often, I was alone. The station looked disused and neglected, although every so often the signals would ring at a crossing further up the track.

It was like the twilight zone, I half expected a ghost train stopping for me, “Is this the seven eleven to heaven? No it’s the six fifty two, hell bound for you!” Very spooky.

So you can imagine my relief when I heard a car pull up, but the person who got out must have been getting dropped off, only to be picked up by a work colleague as they never made it to the haunted platform. Then I heard another car, this time I walked around and asked the young man getting out if he could double check the board with me to make sure I was reading it right. 7.05am that’s the one you want he indicated before hopping on a coach that arrived and left in an instant, waving and smiling through the glass as he went on his way.

By 7.15am I was beginning to wonder what was going on, and approached yet an other chap being dropped off who informed me the trains hadn’t run for ages and would not be running for a long time due to a crash a couple weeks back. “Coaches have been provided to take us from here to Valenciennes” he said all French like.

So one coach, four trains, one tram and a bus later I’d picked up my parcel from Kortrijk. It was my iPhone which I had to send back to a friend, Gennine, in England to unlock.

Before we left the UK, we had tried to get the phone unlocked but O2 were less than helpful informing us that two days was not enough notice. They didn’t tell us that there were other options like doing it ourselves online. Big thanks O2 the moment we cancelled our contract we were no longer deemed a ‘gold customer’ and were dropped like a flea infested cushion at an allergy convention.

But all’s well that ends well and by 7pm that night I was drinking English tea with Tracy as Gennine had included English tea bags with my phone, how thoughtful is that?