Simon Calder: The Man Who Pays His Way

The long arm of Murphy's Law

Murphy's Law is the name of an Irish pub in Milan I happened to visit this week. It is also the polite name for the well-known phenomenon that, in any remotely complex itinerary, if something can go wrong it probably will, leaving the traveller flummoxed – and, possibly, out of pocket to the tune of 400,000 per cent. (More on that about 90 per cent of the way through this column.)

When Britain's new, unimproved summer rail schedules come into effect tomorrow, the scope for Murphy's Law to intervene increases dramatically.

The National Rail Timetable is a 2,352-page catalogue of woe. If you have long suspected that Britain's rail network is on a one-way trip to oblivion, with part of the journey covered by a bus replacement service, then this £10 work of non-fiction (or so it is classified) is for you.

The Collected Works of South West Trains, Midland Mainline and all stations to ScotRail customarily begins with a "What's New" section, which seeks to inspire travellers with enhancements for the coming season. But this summer, the chapter doesn't bother to try to put on a brave face. Instead, it details "service reductions in areas where route congestion has resulted in unreliability". In other words: rail links originally designed to help the holidaymaker are being culled in a bid to get other trains to run on time.

Anyone hoping to change at Crewe for Manchester airport cannot anymore, and the key tourist link between Oxford, Bath and Bristol is to be abandoned. You can make these journeys with connecting trains, but from tomorrow the complexity of these journeys increases, making them more susceptible to Murphy's Law.

* Murphy himself may have had a hand in some of the scheduling in the new timetable. Perhaps he was responsible for the absurd decision to ditch Anglo-Scottish sleeper services over the summer peak, the late August bank holiday: "ALL Sleeping Car services are subject to delay and cancellation from 22 to 31 August", yells the book. Hapless English travellers who try to reach Scotland by other means will find life trickier than, say, in 1980. That summer, the morning train from Leeds to Carlisle was 20 minutes faster than today, and had the grace to continue to Glasgow; these days, a connection is necessary.

* the Government's commitment to an integrated transport policy is epitomised by the 10.17am Saturday service from Darlington. The first stop is Teesside airport. But if you miss the train, you have to wait a week for the next one.

* Anyone who uses trains to reach airports will be accustomed to at least one, if not two, back-up plans. Travelling from London to Gatwick for an easyJet flight to Milan, both Thameslink and SouthCentral trains let me down. I reached the airport half an hour before the easyJet flight was due to depart. No, I would not be allowed on, even with only cabin baggage.

I was offered the chance to rebook for the following day's flight, which in accordance with Murphy's Law was scheduled to arrive in Milan after my homebound flight was booked to depart.

The two leading no-frills airlines, easyJet and Ryanair, have recently increased minimum check-in times. If you turn up at the airport desk any later than 40 minutes before your Ryanair flight is scheduled to leave Stansted, or 40 minutes before any easyJet departure, you will be denied boarding. Airlines make more money from passengers who turn up late than they do from actually flying them. Because low-cost airlines keep the Air Passenger Duty and other charges paid by the passenger, you can understand why they do not keep check-in desks open a nano-second later than advertised.

* Another day, another attempt at reaching Italy – this time from Stansted. Neither back-up plan for reaching the airport was required, and soon I was sipping a Murphy's Stout at Murphy's Law. Even better, the inbound flight to Stansted was showing "on time" when I checked in. This was crucial, because I had booked a connection from Stansted to Dublin. Yes, I know easyJet is a point-to-point airline, but I bet I'm not the only mug who takes a timetable – be it for trains or planes – at face value and plans accordingly.

At about the time the flight was due to depart, boarding began. We eventually left half-an-hour late, with predictable results. I reached check-in at Stansted just after the 40-minute deadline, and was invited to pay £40 to travel on the next flight. Since I had paid a basic fare of £0.01p for the original journey, this was some inflation. There was plenty of time to wander through to the departure gate to wave off all my intended fellow passengers as they boarded the original flight. It left five minutes early. Ryanair flight 227, which I had to pay 4,000 times the basic fare to travel on, eventually departed 20 minutes late.

The return trip was also late, but close enough to make it worth a dash to the station at Stansted, where the doors of the last fast train to London closed as I approached. With exquisite symmetry, a week that began with a couple of late trains and a missed plane ended with a couple of late planes and a missed train. Mine's a Murphy's.