All trains late

 It hardly mattered to me but a broken down goods train and another matter 'still under investigation' rendered all traffic on the lines to Bournemouth run late in varying degrees from 'several' minutes to 52 minutes.

My first, the Bournemouth train which started in Manchester was absolutely packed even in first class. A kind person gave me their seat when I declared I had reserved it. Some had truly enormous suitcases which couldn't pass each other in the aisle and surely were too heavy to lift. When one of their owners got off at Oxford they had to use the door towards the front of the carriage while a kind person wheeled the suitcase to the rear door. By Reading most had disembarked.

Acting on Tim's advice I changed to a Southwestern (SW) train at Winchester to take me to Eastleigh (ESL) for lunch. Brilliant! my satnav and speedometer worked perfectly.

The Eastleigh pub was yet another Wetherspoon, this one a little drab but the food and drink were perfectly OK. 

Then another SW train to Southampton and yet another to Bournemouth.

A brief story about the above photo. The guy you see in the driver's cab isn't the driver, another SW employee got on the train with me and started chatting with him. When he was about to go and find a seat he pointed to the driver and said "Drive safely now". Then he thought he should explain himself to me and said "It's alright, she's my daughter".

 Here the train I arrived on (on the right in the pic) was split into two, one half for Weymouth and the other to sidings. Meanwhile another SW train on the opposite platform was waiting for a few more carriages to be hooked up before they set off for London Waterloo.

My Manchester-bound train arrived late and set off a few minutes late. I got the best seat in the carriage even to the effect that when the train changed directions at Reading I was able to change seats to the opposite side of my table. Through the New Forrest  I did see a small herd of deer but my phone's camera was too slow to catch them.

This train was constantly loosing time, at one point it was 23 minutes late but we arrived Birmingham only 17 minutes late. I walked to the hotel, dropped some things in my room, found a free table in the very busy and noisy bar/restaurant, ordered dinner, ate and drank and was back in my room in under an hour from arriving at the station.