We had our first try at potty training at New Year when DD was 2.7. We abandoned our attempt after 6 days as we had no real progress - she still had no awareness of when she was going to do wees and poos and it was a battle to get her to sit on the potty.
We went cold turkey first time, but as my DS (1) is now crawling over the place we have taken a more softly softly approach, building up the time she was spending nappy free (starting with a couple of hours, to all the time at home, to whole days). The first couple of days she was weeing every 10 minutes and i thought i would never leave the house again, but she soon settled down to every 2-3hrs and she can definitely hold it until she's at a potty or toilet.
Now, after 3.5 weeks we we are all happy to be going out and about nappy free and no potty - no wee accidents for three days now, and she's pretty much there with poos too.
So i think we definitely made the right choice to go back to nappies, she was just not ready then and she was this time. I felt there was pressure from my mum and all her other friends have been potty trained from about 2.5yrs but she just wasn't ready and in comparison it's been pretty stress free (especially compared to our first attempt!)