The Heart of Wales Explorer Tour

We hear about this trip from an advert in our local free newspaper, The Tameside Advertiser. It is organised by Compass Tours. I check their website. The tour is provisionally due to leave Stockport at 8am and return for 10pm. A stop of half an hour in Llandrindod Wells is planned. Arrival in Cardiff is going to be 14.30, return at 18.30 allowing almost four hours to enjoy the city.

I email the organiser and discussed our requirements for a wheelchair space. All seems to be in order; I put a cheque in the post and the booking is confirmed.

Our tickets arrive a few days before the tour. We learn that due to engineering works between Wilmslow and Crewe, the train is being diverted to travel via Chester to Shrewsbury. Departure time from Stockport is now 7.24am; departure from Cardiff 18.04 and arrival in Stockport 22.30.

I phone a local taxi firm that I know to have a wheelchair accessible minibus and book it to collect us at 6.20am.

Stockport

I'd set the alarm for 5.15am but am awake and only slumbering from about 4.30 so get up at 5 anyway. At 6.20 I ring to check that the taxi is on its way. I am assured it will be there in five minutes. It arrives about twelve minutes later.

We are dropped off at Stockport station. Although I'm sure the meter is reading £9, the driver tells us the fare is £19. He says it is double-fare before 7am. I later learn that night-time rate ends at 6am and even then the fare is only one and a third!

Nonetheless we find our way into the station and are directed to platform 2. A couple of trains come and go and then the screen shows our special train as due in next. It is running 15 minutes late.

It actually arrives 25 minutes late and pulls into platform 1. The attendants get the ramp out and Christine boards the train. The door to the carriage doesn't retract fully and it is a bit of a squeeze to get her chair through.

At least she is facing forward.

By the time the train pulls out of Stockport it is running 34 minutes late. There are two more pick-up points, Altrincham and Knutsford. By now the train is 45 minutes behind schedule.

Home at last

The train gets into Knutsford ten minutes early. It then drops off in Altrincham. I ring the taxi firm to confirm that our taxi will be waiting for us at Stockport station at 10.30.

It isn't.

At 10.40 I ring again and they say it is on its way.

At 11pm we get into a Stockport taxi — a black-cab with narrow ramps, so a bit of a squeeze with the wheelchair — but we are past caring. Once on our way I phone the other taxi-firm and cancel their journey.

The Stockport driver confirms that we shouldn't have been charged double-fare this morning. His metre is reading £10.10 as we land home, but he says "just call it a tenner!".