Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast, the first one since Christmas.

Yes, it's Boxing Day, 26th of December, and I am very happy to be spending a sunny afternoon, Monday afternoon, here at Victoria Coach Station.

Yes, you might know that this is an amazing building art deco dating from

1932. Absolutely gorgeous celebrating its 90th anniversary this year and I don't think I've ever

seen it this busy. I've been here for a few hours, tens of thousands of people going through

on hundreds and hundreds of bus services and showing what great demand there is for travel

at Christmas. This was very, very busy yesterday as well. Of course, it was Christmas Day,

but lots of people wanted to travel, and so there were

lots of coaches, mostly going to the airports and to the big cities. But even then, if you wanted

to travel between London and Bristol, you had a choice of nine buses on National Express alone,

other services on Flix Bus, on Megabus.

It's a real kind of dawn of a new age for the long-distance coaches.

And that's fantastic.

We'd all be happier, unfortunately, on trains, I think, even though buses are commendable.

But if there is a train available that is the the optimum way to go

but of course there is nothing running on any UK line today now lots and lots of controversy

funnly enough quite a lot of it on social media. People getting angry because there's no trains.

Other people who know the railways very well,

getting angry because people are being told there's no trains because of the strike,

whereas normally there's no trains because there's no trains because boxing day.

Now, the answer is that more progressive train operators have actually been looking at running trains increasingly on Boxing Day.

You've had some airport services, you've had, for example, a pretty regular London-Gatwick-Brighton service,

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