British travellers timid? Try going to Cornwall on a bank holiday

Isuppose it was my fault for booking a train to Cornwall on the bank holiday weekend. But last May, during a journey from Paddington to Penzance, I witnessed true savagery. It started before we’d boarded; hordes of passengers gathered under the ticker waiting for the train platform to come up, eyeing fellow travellers as if to pick off the weak ones. Then, BANG, the platform was announced and we were off like refugees fleeing war.

If you were elderly with a dodgy hip, you were out of luck. I’m no slouch but by the time I reached the platform, with no reserved seat, it was standing room only next to the loos. Still, I clambered on and watched smugly as harried people rushed up and down outside like chickens, peering in to see if they could find a chink of space.

It was a scarring experience and explains why I’m astonished by the LNER survey revealing that 56 per cent of us would rather stand than challenge a passenger who was in their seat.

Who are these 56 per cent? I am not one of them, and they certainly weren’t on the 14.03 to Penzance with me last year, when people were fighting for seats as if we were on the last chopper out of Saigon, instead of heading to the West Country for pasties and ice cream. Are they perhaps the same people as the shy Tories you hear of? Nervous sorts who shiver like whippets and fear confrontation? Admittedly, we Brits often find public showdowns embarrassing, but an overcrowded train is the moment to channel your inner boldness.

There’s a way of approaching someone in your seat, of course. You do not storm up swearing like Captain Haddock. Instead, you gently remonstrate, “I’m so sorry, I think you might be in my seat.” There may be harrumphing, but if you have proof, it’s too bad. The lummox has to vacate your spot. Very satisfying it is, too, to claim your rightful seat. You’d do the same on an aeroplane. Why should a train be different?

One in three travellers said they wouldn’t disturb a sleeping passenger. But these Rip Van Winkles are probably only pretending. Go on, give them a good shake: there’s no place for such reticence on our rail network, 56 percenters. Stiffen the sinews – you paid handsomely for that ticket in the first place. There’s little point in remortgaging for a fare only to have to stand for four hours.

Sometimes, asking mildly may not be enough. A colleague talks of a tiresome journey where all seat reservations were cancelled minutes before the train departed in an administrative error. This left a mother with baby pleading vainly for her seat, as originally booked, from a man who refused to budge. In such a scenario, I would head for first class and tell the ticket inspector to whistle. We must hope that the barbarian who wouldn’t move spends his afterlife on an eternal bank holiday train to Truro, with the buffet car closed.

A good wheeze on weekends, if you can, is to pay for an upgrade to first class when most train companies offer it cheaply. That way the mildmannered sorts can avoid awkward exchanges and you get a bigger seat. I did this once on a crowded train and ended up opposite Jeremy Paxman, across from a woman travelling with a parrot. “He doesn’t like Tories,” she told a laughing Paxo, after they fell into conversation about said parrot. That alone was worth the upgrade cost.