If you live in the South East and you have to commute along the M25 regularly then sooner or later you’re going to have a REALLY bad journey. My two spectacular ones were both journeys home, one where my car got shunted in heavy traffic on the A3 by a white van man who didn’t grasp the simple rule of physics that white vans don’t have the same performance attributes that top-end Mercs have. He was tailgating the Merc, a couple of feet off its back bumper. The Merc hit the brake, so did the white van. The Merc had a wonderful braking system, which meant a quick touch and all was well and the white van had mud, which meant the van lost it big time, shunted the car next to me into my side, then came across my front and hit my front wing just for good measure.

Another spectacular one – left the office at 5.30, got home 30 miles away at 10.15pm – on this occasion an oil tanker on its side on fire on the M25 – gorgeous!

I suppose therefore that I am about due for a spectacular train day so I shouldn’t be surprised in the grand scheme of things that that day was today.

I got up at the crack of sparrows to undertake a 500 mile round-trip, with three important meetings between my scheduled arrival at the office and a scoot off home. I set off at 6.40am and have just arrived back at 10.20pm, a total of 15 ½ hours give or take a few minutes. But, in the meantime, instead of four of those hours in the office in meetings, I missed the first two meetings and got there just in time for the last, turning around to go home a mere 1 hour after arriving and spending over 14 hours travelling.

I’d already had a sleepless night fretting about the meetings (very tricky ones) and the travelling as it was obvious even to a cloth-eared numbskull like me that it was extremely windy. My parting shot to Claz at 6.40am as I left was ‘I may be back in 40 mins if the trains are all up the chute’. I got to the station and was pleasantly surprised to find the board indicating smooth travelling.

All went well as far as Westbury then disaster – a tree on the line meant a big-ish diversion adding 20 mins to the expected arrival of my train. Then, a further 20 mins added because the driver of the train had to get off and manhandle someone’s shed roof off the line. By now, I was 40 mins late so I missed all my connections.

Therein lay the problem. By a quirk of fate meaning I was on a much later train than I should have been, I found myself conceding defeat on the first meeting in my mind and planning what I’d do and say in the second, when I saw something big coming towards the front of the train fast. Thwack went the ‘thing’ up went the ‘thing' I could see into the air, shedding bits of ‘stuff’. OMG, OMG, don’t let that have been a person.

The train screeched to a halt and the driver got off to investigate. It was a sizable tree that had fallen down into our path at exactly the moment we were passing. So, my third train of the day was in a crash with a tree. Now things got depressing – the tree had been thrown over the top of the first few carriages and down between two of the later ones. A foot thick trunk and several branches were entangled with the wheels and running gear of the train, which meant that moving the train would cause derailment.

All I have to say is thank heavens it was not my first thought - a person, and thank heavens again it wasn't a slightly bigger tree or we'd have been a goner!

I asked the guard nicely who let me take this shot through his opening window, although he’d only let me half-way down the train to his guard carriage, not really close enough for my 50mm lens so this is cropped. This shot is of the back of the train, not the front!The 'Dunkirk spirit' of Brits in a crisis was, as always, very nice and comforting - you make friends with all sorts of unlikely people you'd probably never speak to in normal circumstances. That sort of weirdly made up for a BAD day if you know what I mean.

Bang went the train into the tree, bang went my chances of getting to my second meeting and bang went my day……three strikes and I was out!

Last year, I also did a shot out of a train window....only then it was a much more benign chalk white horse.