I went to Wembley at the weekend. It was mostly amazing. The weather was glorious, Saints won and for an encore there was some great musical entertainment at BOXPARK. The capital letters are their’s by the way. They are quite fitting as BOXPARK is a venue at which shouting is encouraged.
But there is always something, isn’t there? Something which puts a dampener on the experience and leaves you feeling like if you were considered an afterthought it would be an elevation from where you are currently. Let me explain the background to the ensuing farce. Emma and I stayed in High Wycombe on Friday and Saturday night. Emma’s mum and dad live there so it was a chance for us to meet up with them and then make the short train journey to Wembley on Saturday morning. Emma hasn’t seen them much during the pandemic, maybe once. I hadn’t seen them for several months before the first lockdown.
On Saturday morning there were other Saints fans at the platform at High Wycombe station. Clearly travelling to London from High Wycombe is not so unusual, particularly on Challenge Cup final day. Yet for us it ended up feeling like we had tried to get back home from the moon on the back of a scooter.
Things seemed fine before the game. We bought return tickets and received all the right assistance to board the train. The fact that people with my level of mobility still need assistance to get on a train in 2021 is a bloody outrage but I was prepared to grin and bear it to get to Wembley to watch my team play. Saints win a lot. They have now won the Challenge Cup eight times in my lifetime and have also added another eight Super League titles in that time. But before Saturday they hadn’t won at Wembley since 2008. That is 13 years. Who knows where any of us will be in 13 years? I don’t take their success for granted so if they get to Wembley I want to do everything I can to be there.
Another obstacle to that aim was overcome when we were met at Wembley Stadium station by another ramp-wielding assistant. It’s important to make a distinction here. Wembley has two stations. Wembley Stadium and Wembley Park. The vagaries of the transport system mean that the overground train from High Wycombe only goes to Wembley Stadium station. Had we been able to travel on the underground to Wembley Park - as we did when Saints lost at Wembley in 2019 and we stayed in London - I would have been able to get on and off the train without assistance. Whoever upgraded the London Underground system - presumably before the Paralympics in 2012 - understands what is meant by wheelchair access.
Instead after a successful disembarking we were stopped by a staff member at absolute pains to explain to us exactly what we needed to do to get back on the train to High Wycombe later. Go over the bridge, take the lift, security will help you. She even spoke to someone on her radio to make sure that the lift was working that day. I mean why would it be? There were only 45,000 people trying to get to Wembley after all. The lift was confirmed as operational and so that was that. All we had to do was make sure we didn’t miss the last train, which as it turned out was not until around 10.50pm.
We left BOXPARK about 9.30. We knew there were around three or four trains to High Wycombe after 10.00 but we also knew that we are never the best at navigation in unfamiliar surroundings, especially after drinking since midday. We needed to give ourselves plenty of time. Predictably there was a fair amount of self-inflicted stress as we wandered around not really knowing for sure that we were going the right way. But we found Wembley Stadium station in what we thought was plenty of time. It must have been about 9.45-9.50. We found the lift we had been told about at the start of the day pretty easily. But - and you’re probably ahead of me if you have read MOAFH before - it was not working. Not only was it not working, nor was the telecom system used to call for assistance on either the lift or the ticket machine.
There were no staff around. We didn’t really know what to do. I’ve never slept on a railway station platform before but it was starting to look like a possibility. I did almost end up roughing it in Cardiff after the 2004 Challenge Cup final. I ended up paying more than £100 to stay in the only hotel that my cousin and I could find that had room for us. At their prices it’s easy to see why. But that was our fault because we drunkenly but quite deliberately missed our mini bus back to St Helens. This was different. We’d seemingly been left high and dry by shite advice and for having the temerity to stay on for a few drinks after the game.
Emma went down the stairs to the platform to see if she could find anyone who might resemble staff who might help us. For several minutes I could see her in conversation with the driver of a train which had just stopped. It didn’t seem to be going well considering how long it was taking. When she came back she told me that the train driver had phoned somebody to arrange for a taxi to take us back to High Wycombe. In essence what they were saying is that it is not possible for a wheelchair user to get on a train from our national stadium to High Wycombe or anywhere else after dark. Which makes perfect sense because as we all know disabled people couldn’t possibly need to go anywhere after sunset. Even if I had been able to get on to the platform the only person who would have been able to assist me on to the train would have been the train driver. In my experience their willingness to unlock a small ramp and plonk it on the platform up to the train is a bit hit and miss. If I had been on my own I would have been on the platform for the night, no doubt.
I was irked by this as you might imagine, but slightly relieved that it now looked like we would at least get back ok. Yet it got worse before it got better. Emma received a message to say that a taxi had been booked and that we should be met on Preston Road, which is the road on which Wembley Stadium station stands. We were not sure which side of the station was Preston Road but we reckoned they’d find us. Emma then spoke to a driver. She explained where we were and where we were going and why. He agreed to everything and we had an update to inform us he was one minute away. Moments later we received another update telling us that our driver was EIGHT minutes away! How had this happened? Had we made some sort of leap back in time? We never got an explanation. I suspect the driver - having listened to Emma’s explanation - just cancelled us. Couldn’t be arsed. Disabled people are just too much trouble, aren’t they?
Ten minutes or so passed during which I was convinced we wouldn’t find any driver willing to help us and that the one who had been eight minutes away would soon update us with news that he had been urgently called away to Glasgow. It was longer than eight minutes but thankfully the next driver was a good deal more civilised and did his job. His fare was around £100 and I hope he got every penny of it from Chiltern Railways. Sadly, even if they had to pay it I get the feeling that they would rather do that occasionally than pay whatever it would cost to make train travel accessible. Or even to just staff the bloody station at night.
Naturally I complained. Firstly on Twitter but Emma has also emailed them. Guess what? It’s our fault. Wembley Stadium station is not a staffed station except when there is an event on. And that is only due to the safety issues created by having so many people attending. So essentially accessibility is not an issue as far as they are concerned and this is fine because apparently this information is available on their website. This information is not available on Google Maps but even if it were, there is no justification for just not being arsed to provide access, and for not explaining this when we arrived. It is effectively banning disabled people from travelling. If a train company banned any other minority group would it be ok as long as that information was available on their website?
We’ll be staying in London next time. Even if it is in 13 years time. On this evidence and given how far there is to go the chances of overground rail travel being fully accessible by 2034 are somewhere between slim and none.
