I think a factor nowadays may be the start and finish points. It is no great secret that for some people the favoured starting train doesn't leave until 0650, and if you're finishing at Heathrow then T4 shuts at 2400, so that potentially cuts up to 2.5 hours from the time available for completion if other start and finish points had been used.geofftech wrote:
Maybe what I'm trying to get at here is at what point do people (if at all) chuck it in?
What really has inspired me to be intruiged by this, is that i guess i've always been quite fortunate in only ever giving up once (around 5pm) and all the others I've always carried on. Have i had better luck? Do others give up too easy? Or is there only a 66% (say) chance of getting round the entire network. If we could compare that figure from 5 years ago to now, it would be interesting to see as it might be an indicator as to if the network is getting more reliable, or not.
For me one factor is accommodation - as I live to the east of London, if I finish late it's not very easy to get back (for some reason I don't fancy travelling through the night on night busues as I know some do). Also I drive to the start, so I've still got to pick up my car. So I usually pre-book a cheap hotel in Hounslow for a Heathrow finish. Back in April you could cancel up to 6pm on the day of arrival at no cost - this has subsequently been tightened up to 2pm. So if it all goes disastrously wrong early on I've got a bit of a financial incentive to quit. Otherwise now, I think I will press on if I can. As a relative newbie, the thrill is just completing in a relatively quick time. Perversely, I'm not too fussed about getting official recognition as a record holder (and anyway on my recent attempts I don't think I would have satisfied GWR with my record keeping).