Booking a ticket in advance is advisable during busy periods, though the First Great Western website is terrible. Singles are often expensive and you need to seek out “super saver return” tickets under a hidden “more flexible options” button. Even then you are not guaranteed a seat when collecting your tickets. 
If you don’t book, you can get a seat if you stand in the right place at Paddington train station. Stand as close as possible to the platforms whilst keeping on an eye on the announcement boards. With experience you can sniff out the train and once announced dash for coach C or D, the unreserved coach.
When busy (i.e. Friday evenings), some seats generally only free up around the Newton Abbot stop, so prepare to wait standing (hours) till then if you didn’t grab a seat. So catching the Express from Reading station without a booked seat is silly. Catching the Express from Exeter St. Davids (perhaps you came via Westbury) means usually just standing for one stop on the Express on a busy evening. Not bad.
After Newton Abbot the Riviera Express is really stunning. The sea a stone throw away… and the Tamar bridge. It’s an incredible train journey… back home to Praze Farm at Bodmin Parkway, my favourite train station. The station is within walking distance of the fabulous Lanhydrock estate.
When travelling weekends upgrade to first class for 25GBP. Highly recommended except beware of their silly positioning of the plugs. The power plug outlets are better in coach/second class.
mvi_1557.ogg Size: 28M
3G internet on the train is sporadic, though it's not too bad. I usually manage to do some work on a Sunday evening, back to the big smoke for work on Monday morning.
Since my DAM rejection earlier this year I’ve been trying to cut down on Debian work. Unsurprisingly (and perhaps surprisingly to some) I fealt a bit emotionally drained and demotivated from defending myself and working with debian security.
Lately I have been working with new maintainer Andrea De Iacovo and I am very pleased with his work on Wordpress. Wordpress takes most of my time, like the beautiful day of Saturday yesterday. 
Unfortunately Andrea has had problems finding a sponsor, though a Wordpress security release expedited matters and got Nico Golde’s upload powers into action. So if you’re a DD and you use Wordpress, please help out Andrea.
Before I get unsubscribed from Debian Planet, I thought I should pimp my:
- Debian tips and tricks site – the current 400-odd tips are in the public domain so please rip them, update them or add some!
- The fantastic Web kiosk distribution Webconverger based on Debian Live, which also has a blog
Both based on ikiwiki. 
Anyway, I am still around of course. Met some great people in the Debian community and sadly some pretty pedantic unfriendly ones too. Final suggestion for DDs: Revoke your GPG keys more often and go to less key signing parties. :P