> anywhere much North of London

You don't need to go that much North - I used to live in Oxfordshire, trying to get to Cambridge for work was a joke (I don't drive). It would take 3.5h+ for a 140km journey from Oxford to Cambridge because train journeys were only through London (+ a railway station change), and there was only one coach that stopped in every town along the way (and which has been axed into two separate legs since the pandemic, making it 4h+ now).

In the end I moved to London, so that's manageable now...

I didn't mean much North! Heh, another of those BrE words like 'quite'.

Oxford/Cambridge is a classic example, yes. (For those unfamiliar, they're like two spokes right next to each other on quite a small rim where London is the hub. But large enough (or close enough spokes) that 'in and back out' seems silly.)

This is actually being fixed. Someone put huge telescopes on part of the old line, but they are building a new one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_West_Rail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullard_Radio_Astronomy_Observ...

That's being fixed in theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_West_Rail

Actually, it seems like the fastest driving route goes down to London as well.

In fact, since Oxfordshire isn't very far north of London it's kind of a bad example. Of course it goes through London.

South West connectivity is fine, you can get from Plymouth to Exeter to Bristol to Birmingham and up to Edinburgh without going anywhere near London.

At an average speed that makes a horse blush, and a capacity that is barely more than a Vauxhall corsa.

Cross country routes are local trains masquerading as long distance, thus with ridiculous prices and the requirement to do split tickets. There’s nowhere near enough capacity on the line.

Penzance to Exeter takes 3 hours - half the speed of a drive. From Exeter to Birmingham it’s another 2h30 at just 60mph average.

A good line would be an hour faster on both legs.

You’d be hard pushed to drive Penzance to Exeter in 1hr30, more like 2 hours really. And whilst the train is slow the journey is lovely along the Exe estuary and then along the coast. Having said that it is a bit silly that when going from London to Penzance most of the time is spent on the final third of the journey past Exeter.

The South West is er not at all 'North of London' though, last I was there (where I was 'born and raised').

We also don't really have any of the major cities I meant in that context, Bristol I suppose. How do you get from Bournemouth to Bristol for example - via Dorchester with a station change? How about Southampton to Exeter - via Bristol? It's by no means the worst region, and I claimed the opposite, but it still suffers in the same way (albeit on a smaller scale) really, NW-SE rather than W-E in the North, in both cases its opposing the 'spokes' into London.