Gmail problems with Virgin cable

Hi

Since about lunchtime I've been finding it impossible/difficult to get to gmail. I go to www.gmail.com and as usual it redirects to mail.google.com, and thats where the problem is, after a long time i get a timeout. This is across all the PCs on my network connection, i've tried the following:

-ping gmail.com -its fine
-ping mail.google.com -its fine
-reset all the routers and PCs in the house - no change

Now the stranger bits, twice throughout the day I've got to my emails, but then soon after its stopped again. Originally i couldn't ping mail.google.com but now i can but its still not working. Also its been working fine through outlook using POP all day. I'm stumped for new things to try, so:

Is anyone else having trouble getting to Gmail
Anyone on NTL/Virgin
NTL/Virgin in Manchester
Can someone post the IP they get if they ping mail.google.com from the UK?

Any more ideas?

Thanks

 

Apologies for double post but i thought this better in a new post.

Also news.google.co.uk is doing the same and has been all day, other google sites are ok though ie groups.google.co.uk and froogle.google.co.uk

Interestingly pinging news.google.co.uk also times out, its trying to contact 209.85.137.147 Can some one possibly give that a ping for me? The rest of the web is fine so this is really bugging me.

 

POP is fine for me, but can't access mail.google.com

Virgin cable in Middlesbrough (Stockton Exchange)

 

I'm on Virgin, and it's fine for me.

 

Down for me. Virgin near Darlington (IP lookups show me as Stockton). paintballkit-auctions and parcelforce have also been down for me, and I've been having trouble accessing a few other sites on and off.
My mate was having trouble accessing some sites the other day. I think it's just Virgin being the pricks fools that they are.

 

GMail works for me, parcelforce and royailmail sites seem to be down, but I can access them through a proxy. (Virgin Media in Cambridge)

 

Thanks for the replies, glad its not just me!

Gmail is back for me at the moment but its done that before. The guy at Virgin i spoke to said they were having problems with lots of sites today, and there is a service status report mentioning German sites and World of Warcraft possible being down.

Good old NTL/Virgin and there fantastic routing and DNS servers.

Oh yeah and royal mail also down for me

Gmail still up though - 2 minutes, a record