Leuven; Thursday, 23 February, 2017

Storm Doris had been pounding the South East, so I was really quite glad I’d been working from home rather than having to get down from the office in Hertfordshire, but even as I was counting my blessings that I wasn’t caught up in the chaos taking place on the West Coast mainline a tree was in the process of falling onto the line about half a mile from my home station.

By the time I’d finished work and headed down to the station the trains were totally messed up with nothing due for over an hour and even that looking like it might get cancelled and my backup plan of getting the bus up to the tube at Brixton was thwarted as I saw several buses going past all packed to capacity and the countdown app showing there wouldn’t be another bus for nearly 20 minutes.

Thankfully, next door to the station is a very nice cab company, who had a driver available, and after a quick visit to the cash point I was in the cab and heading up into tow.

The traffic was pretty light most of the way in, until we hit Waterloo bridge and crawled across it and up towards Kingsway. By the time I got to St Pancras it had taken nearly 90 minutes, but the locked gates of the tube station, the hordes of people milling around and the general look of chaos everywhere pretty much proved I’d made the best choice.

The cab dropped me next to the Eurostar entrance and I was very surprised to see that compared to the masses of chaos outside inside the terminal was peaceful, calm and virtually deserted. I’ve never been through the checkin and security process at St Pancras so quickly.

Through to departures and I had time for a leisurely dinner in the bar before my train was called.

We left on time and headed out towards the continent, but got stuck behind a slow-moving freight train through the tunnel so by the time we arrived into Brussels we were nearly 15 minutes late. Thankfully my hotel for the evening was just a two-minute walk from Midi station so I was very soon checked in then turning in for the night.