The Time I Saved 30p by Walking For Two Hours

I had a really horrible physics teacher. I mean, like Darth Vader evil-my friend Dave even hummed 'The Imperial Death March' whenever she walked past. Dave and I used to struggle with physics due to our insane fear of Janet and her Sith Lord powers, and consequently had to go into college on Study Day. We would attend a special extra class for about half an hour, then spend the rest of the day playing bullshit in the cafeteria. Dave got brave (oooh rhyme!) and decided to stop coming in on his study day, leaving me alone all day. Now I don't know if you've ever tried to find something to do for five hours when you're on your own in semi-rural Lancashire, but you run out of ideas quickly. I did all my homework, wandered around the park, and eventually decided to head home. One problem however: the train fare was £5.80, and I had £5.40. I scoured the college for dropped money, checking the change thingy (Bucket? Slot? Well?) in all the vending machines. I must have looked like a tramp. Alas, no money. It was then that I had what I thought was an excellent idea: I would walk to Croston train station, thus bypassing the Leyland-Preston-Croston leg of the journey and save myself 30p! I knew the way, since the bus went through Croston every day, and it only took ten minutes to get from Croston to college.


So I set off on my epic adventure. The first sign that this wasn't going to be a relaxing stroll through the countryside was when I realised that I would be spending the next hour or so dicing with death. The thing about the countryside is that there are lots of fields, and the farmers don't really like fancy city folk (stereotyping? Me?) building roads on them. Therefore the roads are as narrow as possible, a feat which is achieved by doing away with pavements. As I tramped along the side of the road, occasionally leaping into the bushes to avoid oncoming cars, I began to wonder whether this was a good idea. The drivers looked rather angry as they sped past me, I think a few even laughed as I jumped into the mud as I heard them approach.


I also realised that even though I had spent approximately eight months at college, catching a bus that went the same route every day, my sense of direction would still fail me. Around halfway through my journey, I was faced with a fork in the road. I spent around five minutes trying to decide which road the bus had gone down every night, before realising that I had a train to catch and the clock was ticking. I thought "Hmm, the left fork looks vaguely familiar, I'll go down here". The left fork continued looking vaguely familiar for about fifteen minutes, before I reached a church that didn't look familiar at all. It appeared that I was in a place called Lower Eccleston. I was upset. I was also confused, since I was pretty sure Lower Eccleston was a village about ten miles north of where I was currently standing. I turned around and ran back the way I had come.

The next stage in the journey was far more pleasant. I was going the right way, which is always good, and there was a pavement, so I was unlikely to die. Eventually I reached Croston, and words cannot describe how happy I was to have made it, alive and only slightly sweaty (it was the middle of summer). Just one more obstacle to overcome however: finding the station. I was under the impression that Croston basically consisted of just one road. After wandering up and down this road a few times, I admitted defeat and asked the man who had been watching me from his garden, presumably fearing that I was some sort of criminal casing the joint. He pointed me in the direction of the station, and I set off again. I had just five minutes to run for the train. It was like an action sequence from a film, only it was a sweaty seventeen year-old running through a quiet village instead of Bruce Willis running around LA. Anyway after some crazy-ass, undignified running, I finally made it to the station. The man at the ticket stand looked at me like I was a freak as I collapsed on to the desk red-faced and panting. I didn't care though, I was going home! Nevermind that by the time I actually got home, it was 5:00pm, the time I would have got home had I taken the bus. I had achieved something incredible that day. Also, I would have something to blog about a year and a half later.

The Time I Saved 30p by Walking For Two Hours