I daresay most of the people travelling between Cambridge and London today didn't look like essential journeys.
Let’s think about this advice not to travel unless your journey is essential. What exactly does it mean? It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be travelling because your life will be in danger, because the trains wouldn’t be running if that was the case. I think it means that if you do travel, your journey may take a lot longer than usual, the train operating companies cannot guarantee to get you where you want to go to, and they can’t guarantee to get you back home again, so if you travel you accept those risks and shouldn’t complain if you get stuck in the middle of where you’d rather not be.
People will have a different view of what’s essential. Somebody I overheard at Reading today, who was told by a member of staff that people had been advised not to travel unless it was essential, said “But it is essential. I have a plane to catch.” I don’t know if he’d allowed more time than usual or how much more. In the circumstances perhaps he should have set out yesterday and stayed somewhere overnight. Perhaps that wasn’t practical. But the weather takes precedence. Even if your journey is really important, travelling in these circumstances is going to be highly uncertain and you may not get there.
My own journey definitely wasn’t essential. I was booked to go on a Hidden London tour starting at 13.00. I caught a train at 09.52 for a journey that should have taken just over an hour to Paddington, plus about 25 minutes to Charing Cross. At 11.40 at Reading, with no trains to Paddington in prospect, I knew I wasn’t going to make it and came home. I don’t regret setting out. I hope I’ll get a refund for the tour I wasn’t able to take. Maybe if I’d got to London I might still be waiting to get back. But if trains are running I think it is reasonable, and not foolish or immoral, to weigh up the situation and reach your own decision about whether to travel or not, with the possibility that if it doesn’t work out you may have to sort out the consequences for yourself.
In the past I’ve undertaken various journeys in difficult circumstances. Some were successful and others weren’t. The most memorable was a journey in Zambia that took seventeen hours over 540 miles instead of the normal six hours for 280 miles, and included my only visit to Mulobezi.