Today there was very little cycling, only from our hotel to the railway station and then a short ride at Bournemouth.

The day was taken up by train rides, waiting at stations, and being forced off a train as the remainder of its journey had been canceled.

Yes, a frustrating day on the trains. The plan was to catch a train to Brighton then a 10 minute wait for a train to Southampton where we were due to change trains again. This time catching a train to Bournemouth.

We started off too well getting an earlier train to Brighton than expected, at least we had some time to spare before our next train. So we wouldn’t have to rush between platforms.

Little did we know that there were signal problems and the train we were due to catch had been canceled. So instead of a 10-minute wait, we had a 90-minute wait.

The train that we eventually caught from Brighton was running late, due to the signal problems, and eventually, it was running so late that it stopped early and was turned around to go back to London. We were left stranded on the platform.

More trains came and went, none going to Southampton and the crowd on the platform was growing with each arrival. Would there be room for us?

Eventually, a Southampton train arrived and we managed to board it OK with our bikes.

A Bournemouth train arrived on the same platform as us and although it was a slow train we boarded it as we did not want to change platforms entailing the use of the ancient lifts.

After an exhausting day sitting on trains, we eventually arrived in Bournemouth and had a very nice cycle ride into the main town center, up through the gardens to our home for the next few weeks our European cycle ride was completed. Not quite the loop we had envisioned but a pretty could approximation.