Imagine getting on a train and ending up in a different country.

If you’ve ever travelled by train late at night after a busy day at work or a hectic day of exploring somewhere new, you might have dozed off for a few minutes in your seat. There’s nothing wrong with this, and it happens on all public transport from trains to buses and even on the London Underground.

But has your snooze ever caused you to miss your stop? It’s not unusual for this to happen if you accidentally nod off for too long and go a couple of stops further than you had planned, but for one woman, it had seemingly dire consequences.

Lottie has been going viral after she shared a video on TikTok in which she explained she had been getting the train from Margate back to her home in London when she fell asleep.

And when she woke up, she had a strange text on her phone from her network provider – claiming she was now in France.

In her video, Lottie explained that when she boarded the train, an announcement was made that there had been a “fire on the line,” which meant the train was unable to stop at several of the scheduled stops on its journey.

However, Lottie’s stop wasn’t affected so she remained on the train and decided to get a little nap in before her train arrived in London. She said she didn’t know how long she was asleep for, but she was awoken by her phone “buzzing” on her lap to indicate that she had a text message.

The start of the message, sent by her phone’s network provider, read: “Welcome to France.”

The message went on to tell Lottie about the extra charges she would face for using her phone abroad, as well as what was included in her plan and the websites she could visit to find out more information.

Getting on a UK train that was not the Eurostar and ending up in France certainly seems strange, but it turns out there is quite a simple explanation for where Lottie ended up.

Although she never explained it in her video, several commenters were quick to tell her that her train was likely diverted around Dover, and her phone network would have picked up the signal from France – even though she was still on UK soil.

One person said: “Basically, you’ll have been diverted around by Dover, and as you go past Samphire Hoe, your phone will have picked up a French signal. I’m a railway worker who deals with this regularly.”

Another added: “I live in Dover; you must have been diverted this way; often clicks over to the French network between Dover and Folkestone.”

And a third wrote: “You can pick up French networks across a fair bit of coastal Kent.”