Haha! It's a fair assessment at least and pretty much what I feared and is why I've never really used train & bike despite living, literally, 2 minutes walk from a station.
Folding bike looks like a possibility but that's a fair outlay when there's a good chance I might discover cycle commuting just doesn't work for me. Having never ridden one I'm not sure how it would fare over the 12 miles between Darlington station and work at Stockton. Mostly on shared use cycle path, so relatively bumpy, and a few miles on road. The terrain is flat but not entirely flat, shown here
https://www.strava.com/routes/7574716Leaving a bike at Darlington is possible, but that leaves the problem of how I deal with maintenance & cleaning, easy when the bike is at home and I have my hosepipe, track pump etc, at work and at a station, not so simple.