Last Sunday afternoon I had to trek across country for work. Normally I travel into London and out when going to Birmingham but with all the disruption we face every weekend on the Norwich to London line whilst work goes on at Shenfield for Cross Rail, the only option was cross country through the Fens.

I remembered as I got de-trained at Ely that I had been here before on a dark Winter’s night when the London to Ipswich route was blocked and the only way home was via Ely for some reason. I can recall it now as if it were yesterday. Not much has changed. That night I believe Lady Archer was also on platform 2 as we waited for an incredibly short train to take on board displaced commuters.

The journey from Ipswich was a busy one full of Sunday shoppers and a few dogs. It always throws me when I travel out the wrong way from Ipswich but it was good to see the landscape from the elevated height of the trackbed – as dour and cold and misty as only an East Anglian landscape can look on a cold February day.

Kicking one’s heels in a middle of a nowhere railway station actually forces one, if one is so inclined, to look at what is around them. There had been not a glimmer of sunshine all day but as I walked down the platform in search of old buffers – (I know, sad but what else is there to do in the Fens?) there was a sudden glow of setting sun on the very distant horizon. You can see for miles and miles and miles here – Yes you can.

After that initial golden blob there was an almost instant switch to red in a West Ham sort of sense. The sky really did look like that above. A real cathedral if you like to wonder at our littleness in the scale of things.

The cross country connection arrived like clockwork and several churns of content took place on the tortuous loop around to Birmingham. That is when my second time travelling moment came some 5 hours after leaving home. I exited from the grandly re-furbished New Street station, nothing like the 1970s dump it used to be to find a tramway running past the Midland Hotel which no longer seemed to be an hotel. Memories of Computer Audit meetings in the bar flooded back and then 5 minutes later my heart sank.

I had been booked into the Britannia, as the hotel we normally use was full up and needs must, but as I stepped through the unlit revolving door and into the gloom of reception I stepped back to 1989 and then when I stepped out of the lift onto the sticky threadbare carpet I wondered whether this was the same sticky carpet redolent of any Britannia hotel and then opening the hotel room door I was thankful for safety razors. I told myself to grin and bear it. Just three nights so off I went to buy some nosebag.

By this stage I was peckish and having a non-working TV in the room settled down to munch through a cheese and onion butty whilst I swotted up on CSS to numb my brain to sleep. Halfway though my first half of what really was a delightful butty the sounds of congress, coupling if you like came through from Room 534 as if they were actually in my room. I was put off my butty but having been brought up not to waste food I choked it down and the noisy crisps did mask some of the groaning and moaning. Then peace descended and the numbing ability of reading a CSS manual was beginning to kick in and then the coupling started again. I wondered if a porn movie was being made and it went on and on and on.

The second night was almost normal with just hearing the belching, farting and urinating from the next room – normality was prevailing and no moaning and groaning plus an actual night’s kip. That all changed on the third night with Room 532 having a noisy conversation through to 0500 and Room 534 playing load music until 2358 when I thumped the wall all went silent until the film crew arrived and coupling of lower decibels than night one then proceeded to take place.

I revisit places regularly when making long term photographic projects but my Tardis co-ordinates are now firmly set to never enter the alien universe that exists in the form of a Britannia Hotel ever again (I made this promise in 1989 but was almost convinced they had upgraded from their website). As for their website – a total misrepresentation of what the rooms are really like in my view. Maybe they have one room that resembles what is on the site.

Britannia Hotels are a living nightmare – use them at your peril.