The worst thing was not knowing where the next bomb would go off

"I CAN honestly say I have never been so scared in my life. Yesterday morning I was waiting at King's Cross station to get a train back to Darlington after a night out in the capital.

The station was as busy as ever, full of commuters and holidaymakers.

The first sign that there was something wrong was a woman, who appeared in front of me crying and covered in what looked like soot.

She was followed by two men, similarly distraught, but there was still no real sense that something major had happened.

Then, suddenly, we were ordered out of the station and told a power surge had caused an explosion.

We started to walk away from King's Cross towards Russell Square, but before we got there we heard people saying a bus had been blown up.

We joined a crowd of people outside a TV rental shop, craning our necks to see the screens to find out what was going on.

That was the worst thing - not knowing what was happening or where the next bomb would go off.

Before we knew what had happened, a man I didn't know was talking about his experiences. This was London. People don't talk to strangers. Something quite exceptional had happened and people just needed to talk.

Apparently, he had been on the tube at the time of the first blast. He said that people were so terrified they were breaking the windows to get out.

One woman, standing behind me, summed it up when she said: "We were all so happy yesterday. I can't believe this has happened - you just can't be happy in this world anymore."

As we walked through the streets surrounding King's Cross things became increasingly bizarre. I felt like I was wandering through a film set.

At first the streets were eerily deserted. Empty buses stood at the side of the road. They had been abandoned by passengers and drivers anxious to steer clear of any public transport.

Taxi drivers, no doubt scared themselves, refused to take fares. They drove away from people desperately trying to flag them down, hoping to get away from central London. Fear and suspicion was everywhere. No one said it, but we all feared this was the work of al Qaida.

So we carried on walking, heading I have no idea where. As we did so, the the number of people walking beside us just grew.

We were having difficulties getting through to people on mobile phones. It made me wonder how on earth people managed in situations like this before mobiles - at least we were able to reach friends and family and let them know we were safe.

My instinct was to get away from where people were, but that is difficult in London at the best of times.

Instead, we were forced to walk on with the crowd.

Every time I heard a siren, my heart stopped as I thought about what it could mean.

Believing I would not be leaving the capital that night, my thoughts turned to a hotel room, but every room in every hotel was being searched and we were turned away.

As the scale of what had happened became clear, I began to realise that it could have been much worse.

Just ten minutes before the first blast, I realised that our tube train had travelled through a station that was hit.

Despite the fear, my overwhelming feeling was of how lucky we had been.

At about teatime, I started making my way on foot from Holburn to try to find a main line train station to get home to the North-East.

By this time, the streets were once again eerily quiet, with only a few people still venturing about. It was really strange to see London with so few people.

Lots of the roads continued to be cordoned off and it was hard to know which way to go.

I waited at a bus stop, but the buses going past were packed to the rafters, so it seemed easier to walk.

It takes about an hour-and-a-half to get from Holborn to Finsbury Park, but I felt glad just to be able to walk the distance. I felt lucky to be alive."