Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026That's part of the plan too. Since the end of the Marne-la-Vallée service, there's no routine need for immigration checks on arrival (although there still is for Customs). I think the plan is for arriving passengers to stream off the front of the platforms, rather than go downstairs. 040
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026No! I like the bakeries! Solve the crowding problem by having 1000 people and their enormous bags in the station for 10-30 minutes, instead of 60-90. It would be a shame to rip out the pleasant bits, just for it to become a soulless passenger processing facility. 340
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026They plan to board trains earlier (among other things), reducing the time you'll spend in the departures area. I hope they also speed up processing, and let people turn up later. Having us arrive 75 minutes before departure and clogging up the place is madness! 140
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026I still think it would be possible to move the Javelins to P1&4, and use the current platforms to terminate a 200m cross channel train. Requires work at the station - not least how & where to process passengers - but no track work. 010
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 07/10/2026Urgh. That’s gonna take bleedin’ ages to clean up. 000
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 07/10/2026Not every day, I admit. But I’ve been to enough group meals to grow weary of the bill-splitting phase. 000
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 07/10/2026My app idea - and this is free to anyone who wants to develop it - is for when you go to a restaurant in a group of 20. They give you an iPad at the end of the meal with your bill on it. And it gets passed around the table for everyone to tap on the items they ate, add a tip, and pay contactlessly. 100
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 04/10/2026Once, the stream raged loud Latterly the flow is weak Everything is dammed 010
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 04/10/2026French people: wait HERE, you shall not pass Basque people: thanks a million Spanish & English people: stop with your fancy payment methods 010
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 03/10/2026A Gen Z couple asked me to take a photo of them, then watched in confusion and horror as I instinctively rotated the phone into landscape format. I am approximately one million years old. 020
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 03/10/2026The world would be a lot better. With less grammar, Nazis. 000
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 27/09/2026Finally, Westbahn are acknowledging that first class Interrail passes exist @seatsixtyone.bsky.social westbahn.at/en/news/inte... 010
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 27/09/2026About time too!. They were quoting absurd ‘upgrade’ prices the last time I checked, especially on international routes. 020
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 26/09/2026On the subject of dumb, and no doubt far away, marketers disastrously misunderstanding the UK (and the world), I submit this promotion from Voi. 100
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 26/09/2026But would any game show do that? That’s the $64,000 question. 040
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 18/09/2026… and that is why I’m formally requesting under the Equality Act 2010 that you make reasonable adjustments. 090
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Since it has your email inside, I'd think any helpful finder would've checked and made contact already, so you can discount that possibility? My only suggestion would be to try above and below the target area. Is there a car park? Also, assume it's only the phone, and all else has been chucked. 000
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 17/09/2026Just Nigel Farage, the man who wants to be your Prime Minister, laughing with glee in full support of racism. This woman was speaking eloquently and emotionally about the fear she and her mixed-race family are experiencing at the hands of the far right. Fuck them all 040
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 16/09/2026Equally, if you car is too long to fit in your drive. The solution is not ‘fuck it, the pedestrians can squeeze past, what am I supposed to do?’; the solution is to get a smaller car or a bigger house. 0150
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 11/09/2026Yeah, that’s what I mean. They would be better with the German approach: optional on AVE, perhaps obligatory (but lightly enforced) on key routes in summer. Absolutely not compulsory on anything else. 251
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 11/09/2026Spanish high speed rail could be world-class - if they did away with the security theatre, took a German attitude to seat reservations, and increased frequency fivefold. A train with any kind of check in nonsense is effectively 30 minutes slower. 1110
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 05/09/2026The Johnny Cash cover of Hurt, and the Hendrix version of All Along the Watchtower are both better than the originals. 2310
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 04/09/2026There’s a sweet spot. If it serves *only* coffee, then it’s shit but you have to pretend it’s good. If it serves coffee and petrol, then it’s shit but nobody has to pretend. If it serves coffee, wine, one type of beer & small sandwiches, then *provided that there’s no traybakes* it’s banging. 010
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 03/09/2026Damn. That’s my plans for the evening in tatters. 000
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 02/09/2026I’m used to being ignored, begrudged, and on one occasion threatened, when politely asking someone if they’d mind using headphones. But I experienced a new, horrifying development today: some arse FaceTiming on speaker in a pub actually had the neck to ask us (having a conversation) to be quiet. 🤯 000
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 30/08/2026A newsletter, you say? And it's free? Delivered direct to my Inbox EVERY SINGLE DAY? Incredible. What a time to be alive! 030
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 20/08/2026I agree. Germany has plenty of redundancy in its network. Trains can reroute, you can reroute through a different hub. Maybe even catch up with your itinerary. I keep moving in the correct direction, keep replanning, and expect to arrive with 2h delay. That’s (almost) never failed me! 010
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 19/08/2026I would hope that the 12 month rule doesn't apply when somebody has deliberately sought to avoid paying! Estimate usage, and pursue a prosecution for abstracting electricity/ fraud at the same time? Although perhaps the leccy in question is actually being paid for by some other poor bugger nearby? 100
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 18/08/2026A classic of the genre. This payment will be almost instant when they send it. “5 to 10 working days” just means they’d like permission to procrastinate for two full weeks before clicking send. 010
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 15/08/2026There was also talk of exit controls in Belgrade (and others, presumably), and Schengen control on board, though that doesn’t sound very plausible! n1info.rs/biznis/voz-z...n1info.rsProkop dobio granični prelaz: Pasoška kontrola na stanici zbog dva direktna polaska dnevno za BudimpeštuProkop je postao granični prelaz uoči starta brze pruge ka Budimpešti. Saznajte kako će izgledati kontrola putnika i red vožnje. 240
Reposted by Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺Terence Eden @edent.tel · 14/08/2026I know you all hate the emergency alert about disposable barbeques. But yesterday I watched a man at our hotel breakfast set fire to a toaster by trying to toast a croissant - despite multiple signs telling him not to. Today he tried again. So, you know, calibrate for the average person. 243399520
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 13/08/2026Came here to recommend them too. They were a great bunch 030
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 10/08/2026I’m generally ok with a bit of NIMBYism. I do think one should listen to people who have objections - even if those objections are dumb, and the people are dumb, and Rowling is piece of shit. But wow. This is actually off-the-charts insane. 000
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 10/08/2026My heart bleeds for publishers who are now going to have to ‘divert valuable resources’ towards finding new ways to trap customers in unwanted subscriptions. 011
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 05/08/2026Yes. I listened to it and it sounded perfectly normal. If I'd listened to the original 30 second previously, I would've noticed. But not listening to it cold. 010
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 03/08/2026is useful, expensive, anti-social, necessary, unnecessary, the default, not a sign of wealth or status, subsidised. does not entitle you to free reign over public space, should be disincentivised, ruins cities. 010
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 03/08/2026And with that, I rest my case, Your Honour. 000
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 31/07/2026Once upon a time, in a restaurant in deepest France, a fellow diner leapt from his table to prevent me from eating my cheese in the wrong order. 030
Rich Alderton | 🏳️🌈 🇪🇺 @ralderton.bsky.social · 30/07/2026This is absolutely true. I whinge a lot about Eurostar - sometimes with justification - but without exception, the staff are friendly and brilliant. (And the underlying story is true too. A ‘2 hour’ flight takes 4 hours, and even if the train takes 5, it’s a SO much nicer.) 020