Regular readers of this blog will know that I was booked onto Virgin First Class travel today through the Telegraph promotion that ran in November. £18 each way is truly a bargain...
Caught the 10.50 Pendolino from Birmingham New Street. In the new timetable from 12th December, this train is shown as the last having a full breakfast service in the morning. In fact, it and the two previous departures offer hot bacon or sausage rolls in place of the breakfast range available earlier. Certainly an improvement over the cold sandwich snack but not quite what appears to be promised! As ever, two servings of cold drinks and coffee/tea to accompany the food.
Another change, at least until the end of February, is that Virgin are offering Free Wi-Fi for both standard and first-class passengers. The service is still based on T-Mobile's offering but the version for mobile devices such as iPhones now has Google co-branding. One of the downsides of this move is that the speed of connection seesm to be reduced as the bandwidth is presumably being shared even more thinly than before!
Nevertheless, another good run as Virgin prove yet again that a VHF timtable is entirely possible on the WCML...
Returned to Birmingham on the 20.03 from Euston. This service was reasonably busy in First Class being the first to accept the Telegraph promotion tickets and Virgin's own discounted advance first tickets. Interestingly, many were using it only to the first stop at Rugby.
The food selection seems to have improved for the cold snack service. I enjoyed a very tastly stilton and pear roll which was accompanied by a nicely wrapped box of two chocolates. As ever, regular servings of drinks (hot and cold) on offer.
On time arrival into New Street ended a very good, and certainly value for money, Virgin train experience...
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