Travel Log Lewes Newsletter www.travelloglewes.co.uk

January 2015 newsletter

Travelman says “Southern is messing us about” SOUTHERN RAIL WEB SITE DISASTER Our local rail company’s new web site has been greeted with universal despair. Perhaps the worst problem is that it often offers you tickets far more expensive than you could get on other sites or at the ticket office. Here is an analysis sent to the company by regular Travellog correspondent Manek Dubash, which summarises the problems in the early days of the new site. “I'd like to congratulate you on your new website. As a regular ticket buyer, I'm comfortable reporting that the new much-trumpeted beta version is worse in every respect than the existing site. In summary, it's slow, buggy and worst of all, it rips off the ticket-buying public. Here are seven reasons why it's worse: 1. It forces you to pay more for a ticket. Buying a ticket, for example, from Lewes to Sutton (SUO) costs £39.20 direct but the site only offers a London Travelcard at £55.30, which is £16 more expensive. Others I know have encountered this and might have paid far more had they not queued at the ticket office – so lengthening already overlong journey times. 2. It's inconsistent: when buying a ticket from Lewes to Sutton (SUO) and specifying a journey starting during the rush hour, it seems to

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offer a ticket but pressing the continue button then results in an onscreen offering of a ticket for a train at 1642, accompanied by a message that earlier trains are unavailable. It's then impossible to buy the ticket you want. It's seriously buggy. It frequently throws up an error after refusing to offer a ticket that I want, which on more than one occasion has crashed my browser. It's slow (like your trains), much slower than before. It forces the buyer to select a train service where before this was optional, but it may be that the exact journey time is unknown at the time of buying a ticket. This may not matter when buying an off-peak ticket but it is not at all clear that the ticket you buy would be available on any off-peak train, so causing confusion. It's wasteful of screen space. What exactly is the point of the map? By definition, I know where my destination is because I'm buying a ticket to go there. The map is pointless. When specifying a journey, it still isn't smart enough to automatically move the return journey date to at least equal that of the outward journey if the journey is a day or more ahead.

How could you have released this ghastly mess on paying customers? Who signed off on this? Please re-instate the old ticket-buying system until this has undergone extensive testing and is properly fixed.” Like many others, Travelman has stopped using the site, so can’t say if it has improved since. He now uses National Rail’s or, for services where he wants to take a bike with him Virgin East Coast which allows you to book a bike with your tickets (even on Southern trains)

DAYSAVE RAIL TICKETS Laurissa Tokarchuk was possibly the first to notice that daysave tickets are not available on the Southern Rail web site. A tweet to Southern reveals that this is due to problems with the web site and that it is intended that they will be added in January. Meanwhile you can still buy daysave tickets from the Tourist office at a higher price. Expect the web prices to increase when they are reavailable from the site..

The tourist office is currently open Monday to Friday, but on Saturdays only opens 10-2. It is not open on Sundays.

RAIL FARE INCREASES Here are some of the new train fares: Super off peak day return ticket to Victoria £17.90 (up 10p) Ordinary off peak day return ticket to Victoria £28.50 (up 20p) Peak day return ticket to Victoria £50.20 (up 40p) Peak day return to Aldershot via Clapham Junction £27.80 Peak day return Clapham Junction to Victoria £6 Super off peak travel card £23.50 (up 20p) Off peak travel card £32.60 (up 30p) Lewes to Brighton off peak return £4.90 Lewes to Brighton peak day return £8.40 Advance tickets still start at £5 each way, but there is no telling how many of them will be issued. All prices are before any railcard discount.

RAILWAY DELAY COMPENSATION You have always been able to claim compensation if your rail journey is delayed by half an hour or more and since July 2015, you can ask for that compensation to be in cash rather than in rail vouchers. But railway companies have been a little reluctant to tell you about this. When Travelman last looked the leaflets in Lewes station about compensation, under the banner “Delay repay” still said that you had to have a rail voucher, which runs out a year after the delay. However the on line information does make clear that you can now exchange the vouchers you will get sent for cash.

You must claim within 28 days of your delay. Apply to the company whose train was late or cancelled, causing you to be late. Here is the amount of compensation for Southern, most companies will have similar levels: Delays of 30-59 minutes: Delays of 1 hour or more

Delays of 2 hours or more

50% of single ticket price

100% of single ticket price

25% of return ticket price

50% of return ticket price 100% of return ticket price

100% of single ticket price

MARIA CAULFIELD AND GATWICK AIRPORT Travelman keeps asking our MP for her views on the expansion of Gatwick airport. Answer comes there none. You might want to ask her [email protected]

CONTACTING SOUTHERN Southern’s customer service section is so understaffed that they are asking for 20 days to reply to emails. However if you use twitter you can tweet them and get a faster reply @SouthernRailUK

JANUARY WALKS Here are some travel log walks that are largely on firm surfaces, good for January walking. Walking round St Leonards Sea, street art, (including a Banksy) fabulous regency architecture,grand art deco, aristocratic parkland, the rich, the poor, the trendy and all within a kilometre of St Leonards Station! 5.46 Km / 3.39 Miles, hilly. Can be reduced to about 2.5 miles.

Or.... What? A Hastings Town and Country walk of 12km, 7.5 miles starting from Ore Station., Hastings Country Park, the Old Town and Ore. Can be reduced to a country walk of about 5 miles or a town walk of about 4 miles. (only the town walk is probably suitable for this time of year) Brighton! (and actually a bit of Hove) Sun, sea, sex, stations, parks, promenades, palaces, bathing beaus, twittens, tourists, respectability, raffishness, arson and a model railway exhibition. Where else but Brighton? 11km, 7 miles. Lots of opportunities to shorten the walk. You can cut off about a mile by leaving out Queens Park. You can cut out a further mile by riding on the Volks Electric railway along the front. The route can be split in two by making a diversion at Palace Pier/The Old Steine. On the trail of the Daddy Longlegs 3.8miles 6.1km. This ramble follows the course of the famous railway that ran from Brighton to Rottindean in the sea. The daddy longlegs ran on twin tracks, 18ft apart. Mostly level and wheelchair accessible with a couple of steep slopes. (promenade may be closed in stormy weather at high tide)

EGRETS WAY Piece by piece bits of the Egrets Way are being constructed. Here are some photos, courtesy of Cycle Seahaven, of the works between Southease and Piddinghoe.

CYCLE RIDES WITH CYCLE SEAHAVEN This coastal cycling club continues to be active, with rides for all sorts of riders. Details here

READERS WRITE Alongside his piece about the Southern Web site, Manek Dubash emailed to say: “Much as I enjoyed and found useful the reveal by the taxi drivers, I have to

say they do themselves no favours by zooming around the town, all too often ignoring the 20mph speed limit. A little respect for the rest of the town, especially pedestrians and cyclists, might garner a little more sympathy for their position, and only cost a few seconds in time per job”

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