Are there Paddington trains to Worcester this Sunday?

Q Regarding the latest industrial action by train drivers: I need to travel from London Paddington to Worcester. Great Western Railway says that even though there is no strike on Sunday 4 February, no trains will run on the route. GWR says to travel on Monday 5 February instead – but this is a strike day. This is chaos and it is impossible for customers to navigate the mess. Can you explain?

Nieve T

A The train drivers’ union, Aslef, is engaged in a long and bitter dispute over pay and working arrangements with the 14 English train operators that are directed by the Department for Transport. The union is demanding a decent no-strings pay offer, while ministers insist that even a modest pay rise from the current average of £60,000 per year to £65,000 is contingent on wide-ranging reforms – such as making Sunday part of the working week for all train drivers.

The union is seeking to cause maximum disruption to passengers with a combination of an overtime ban and a series of “rolling” strikes, one region at a time, which in particular makes long-distance and complex journeys much more challenging. The industrial action will run until Tuesday 6 February.

The overtime ban will have a big effect on GWR services on 4 February because of the interesting structure of industrial agreements that have emerged in a piecemeal manner since rail privatisation in the mid-1990s. The rail firm that connects the West of England and South Wales with London Paddington has drivers on several different contracts. Longer-serving long-distance train drivers do not have Sunday in their working week. Duties are covered through overtime – a situation that prevails elsewhere on the rail network. A ban on “rest-day working” means no Aslef members will cover those shifts. GWR says on that Sunday: “No trains will operate on long-distance routes between London Paddington and Bristol, South Wales and Exeter/Plymouth/Penzance.” Worcester is also off the list of direct destinations.

By Monday 5 February, things are looking a bit better, with hourly links between Paddington and Bristol, for example. But Worcester still does not appear. It is at times like this that long-distance coach providers come into their own – and confidence in the railway corrodes still further.

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​Q I want to see the northern lights. Is it worth going on a cruise to Norway to see them? Or is it better by train either in Norway or elsewhere in Scandinavia – or even elsewhere in the world?

Ros D

A In northerly latitudes on a clear and dark winter’s night, the horizon can quickly fill with colour, from intense greens and blues to soft pinks and silvers, in contorted bands that dance in time with surges from the sun and illuminate the frozen landscape. The northern lights, arguably the greatest show above earth, are created by solar wind concentrated into heavenly highways and deflected towards the North Pole by the Earth’s magnetic field. Electrically charged particles emitted by the sun collide in their billions with the nitrogen and oxygen that make up most of our air. This coming winter and next are particularly promising, as the sun’s activity will reach a peak in its 11-year cycle in July 2025.

Broadly, the further north you are, the better. I have seen the northern lights three times: once in northern Iceland, when it was a faint, pearly performance; and twice while on Hurtigruten’s “coastal express” ferry that links Bergen in Norway with Tromso and Kirkenes in the far north of the nation. I recommend this option, because crucially if you travel in late February/early March or late October you get plenty of daylight to see the magnificent scenery – and also to visit fascinating coastal communities.

Other destinations include Greenland, Canada and Alaska, but trust me: northern Norway is far more accessible and affordable. And with the generous Norwegian taxpayer subsidising the Hurtigruten coastal ferry, it also offers excellent value.

Finally, I have heard good things about viewing the northern lights in Abisko National Park in Swedish Lapland – between Kiruna and Narvik, both of them locations worth visiting. The specialist tour operator Discover the World can put a trip together. You could even combine a land-based experience with the ferry.

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Q I see you are in central America at the moment. How do you find getting around in terms of cost and enjoyment? In particular, are there any great rail journeys?

James G

A I happen to be responding from just around the corner from the main bus station in Antigua, the former capital of Guatemala and a gem of a location. The air is heavy with the aroma of poorly combusted diesel – as a result of the frenetic activities of the main form of transport in this country and beyond: repurposed US school buses. These vehicles will be familiar to anyone who has travelled far in America: they look pretty antiquated and utilitarian. Well, once they have served for 10 years or 150,000 miles, they are regarded as past their drive-by date for US schoolchildren.

So they are driven south of the Mexican border and into central America, where after a certain amount of work – primarily uprating the engine to cope with some very challenging gradients – they are assimilated into the transport network for regional journeys. While there are some longer-distance express buses, which offer a lot more comfort, I prefer the constant theatre of the “chicken bus”. Most are privately owned and operated, and that leads to wonderful decoration: Antigua’s bus station is a mobile art gallery.

Fares are low: for an hour of travel (you can reckon on 25 miles or 40km at most, because of poor roads, steep hills and lots of passenger stops) you might pay the equivalent of £2. The conductor is always helpful, though if you have a lot of valuable luggage they are not ideal – your belongings may end up on the roof. Rail travel has, as with so many parts of Latin America, declined and is now largely extinct. The line beside the Panama Canal is about the best you can expect to find. And even when trains are still running, buses are much faster.

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Q Following on from your article about tipping, can I ask your advice about tipping hotel restaurant staff when staying for several nights and eating both breakfast and dinner? I always leave a tip in my room for the cleaning staff at the end of my stay, but I don’t suppose this is shared with all hotel staff.

Anne M

A The accommodation arrangement here is half-board: where you take breakfast and dinner at the hotel and sort out lunch separately. In my experience, that is a European concept; I have not heard of it elsewhere. So I shall focus on how to do it the UK and continental Europe. It’s a tricky one to get right.

In Britain, the generous way to reward staff is to tot up roughly what the meals would cost at menu prices: perhaps £15 per person for a full breakfast, £35 for a good dinner? That would total £100 per day for two. Working on the 10 per cent principle in the UK, a £10 per day tip would, I think, be more than enough. In my observation (and talking to friends and family about what they do), a typical response is, “the hotel should build in the service charge when pricing half board”. In addition, they point out service is usually levied on the cost of drinks that many people order with their dinner. So I’m afraid that waiting staff would not be highly rewarded among people of my acquaintance.

In continental Europe, the picture is much simpler. You need not feel obliged to tip at all. But so long as you are happy with the service then it would feel appropriate to leave €10 or €20 after a three-night stay.

Outside Europe, it gets more complicated: in much of east Asia, tipping is frowned upon, and I have seen signs in Chinese hotels politely asking guests not to tip. Conversely, in North America – and in particular the US – excessive tipping is a national sport. At one hotel in Florida, where a dismal breakfast was included in the overnight rate, I declined to tip. The waitress promptly added $5 to the final account on her own behalf.

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