LAST time we travelled south by road it was one of those journeys from hell. Traffic jams, roadworks, diversions, wrong turnings. And, best of all, we had four boys suffering from vomiting and diarrhoea - inside the car.

This week, taking the children to see the stage production of The Lion King in London, we thought we would, as the advert said... let the train take the strain. Well, what a sick joke that slogan turned out to be.

I thought we had been to hell before. But now I realise it was only a short stop in purgatory. My husband did warn it was hard to get into the station car park at York. Travelling from there regularly on business, he often has to queue for half an hour. At times, he has even given up and gone to Doncaster to queue there instead.

Most of York's car parks close at around 6pm and the park-and-ride finishes at 7.30pm, so if you're returning from London any later, or staying overnight, they are no use.

So we arrived at the station a whole hour before our train was due and joined the queue. Thirty minutes later just one car had come out and there was no time to drive round the city looking for somewhere else.

With ten minutes to go, we decided I would take the children on our reserved tickets and dad would wait to park the car and join us in London later. But our train had been cancelled. "Are we going to miss The Lion King?", wailed the boys. At least it gave us an extra hour to drive through York's congested streets to a 24-hour car park the station parking attendant told us about.

At last, we got a space. But this was a short-stay car park masquerading as a long-stay one. The ticket machine only accepted coins, so we needed £16 in loose change to pay for a two-day stay. It was not secure, an exposed spot in a non-residential area. Would the car still be here when we got back? Meanwhile, the thought of standing all the way from York to London with four children, as two loads of passengers were now going to be squashed into one train, didn't appeal.

It was at this point that my husband, who has recently had one of those slap-head haircuts which, on a good day, makes him look David Beckham-ish (well, David Beckham's dad-ish) suddenly became Alf Garnett.

As we drove south out of York to find another station we could get a train from, he entertained us with his colourful views on our shambles of a transport system, how difficult it is to travel in this over-crowded country and what a mess this bleedin' Government is making of it all.

And who can blame him, as a regular rail traveller, having to put up with such frustrations on a weekly basis, simply in order to get to work? It occurred to me that a whole army of seething, brassed-off Alf Garnetts is being created. Which can't be doing much for our economy.

When we finally got to London, from a small station near Peterborough, it was late and we were tired. Rickshaw carriages, driven by men on bicycles, were weaving their way through the city's congested streets.

We even considered booking one for the journey home. Anything would be better than the railway. And to think we once had little else to complain about than the sandwiches.

Published: 29/03/2002