Sunday train travel in Great Britain is known to be hazardous because of the significant amount of engineering work which routinely disrupts services. So when I needed to go from St. Albans, 33 km north of London, to Rotherhithe, in London's Docklands, one Sunday, I checked my options very carefully.

A major problem was the London Underground - the Hammersmith & City, Jubilee, and relevant parts of the Circle and London Overground (former North London Line) were all shut. Thameslink was, as usual, not crossing London: trains from the north terminated at St. Pancras.

According to the National Rail web-site, the journey wasn't possible. I was given the last connection on Saturday night and the first on Monday morning: Sunday was a non-day!

Both the Transport Direct and the Transport for London (TfL) web-sites recommended changing at St. Pancras to the Northern Line, and changing to a C10 bus at Borough.

A useful option on Transport Direct's web-site is the choice of mode - you can tick or untick modes you do or don't want to use. So I unticked bus, assuming that I'd be given the option of changing at London Bridge and again at New Cross.

But no - I was offered the Jubilee Line rail replacement bus service from London Bridge!

Now come on, guys, if I don't want to travel by bus, I don't even want to travel by one which happens to be replacing a rail service!

As it happened, the journey went quite smoothly - using the recommended route through Borough.