Blighty 2025 - Travel

Yesterday was our third and final trip into London. We drove to Didcot Parkway railway station again, paid the nearly £8 parking fee and walked into the station concourse, as we had previously, although this time I had our travel tickets, printed when I collected the previous trip's tickets.

There had been an "Incident" somewhere between Didcot and London that was messing up the train schedule, but we managed to board a packed train that was stopping only at Reading and London. The rail network in and around London is amazing, so complex and heavily used, and it runs fairly well on any given day. Incidents, though, do mess things up and I doubt that the 1320hrs to London would have been that busy otherwise. But we all had seats, and the train was fast, and we emerged from it into the vast cavern that is Paddington Station, and I hit the noise filter on my hearing aids. London is such a noisy place.

We had to make a quick run to an Argos store, the reason isn't important. I divined that there was one some fifteen minutes walk from the station, but why walk when you have a Transport for London (TfL) Oyster card in your pocket? After the mandatory loo break, we stood on Eastbourne Terrace, curiously on the west side of the station, and waited for a bus. Now the TfL phone app is a thing of wondrous beauty, and while I had already worked out that we could get a Number 7 bus, the app said we could get a 36 as an alternative. Sure enough, a 36 lurched around the corner and we boarded it for the short trip to George Street, on the Edgeware Road.

Then it was off to Portobello Road, also on a Number 7 bus, only this time going west, not east. The app said there was "Disruption" on the route, so it was an unusual ten minute wait, but the bus wasn't too busy and we made our way up to the top deck for the fifteen minute ride. 

I have a social comment to make here, and it's about mobile phones. I have one, yes, so I don't eschew the whole rationale behind them, but boy are they ever intrusive? There was a man at the bus stop, walking around and talking loudly into his phone. He got on the bus of course, and continued to talk loudly into his phone. He got off the bus and he was still talking loudly into his phone. Everyone else was treated to half his call, which was nice. That was just one, though. All day we encountered people talking loudly into their phones while riding the bus, or the tube, or walking down the street, or whatever. Are these people so important that they can't wait to hold their long conversations until they find somewhere quieter and more private? I guess it's me getting old, but it doesn't seem too difficult to me to keep phone calls to less public places. I mean, what did these folks do before the invention of the shouting machine? 

Dear Wife made another social comment. She said she liked getting away from the tourist-dominated parts of Central London and mingle with some of the people who live in the great Metropolis. West of Paddington you're into Ladbroke Grove, where the people are more likely to be residents. The ethnic mix of Londoners is wonderful to see, and to hear, and I don't care what the current obsession with right-wing politicians is about, diversity IS strength. 

In Portobello Road is a market. There's a different one every day, for six days a week. I'm not sure what Monday's theme was but the road was closed to traffic and it was lined on both sides by stalls selling all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff, including what's known these days as "Street Food", which smelled divine. The street is also home to masses of interesting little shops, cafes and restaurants, and I'd imagine that you could happily spend many hours there. Unfortunately for us, Charlie was tired and was hankering for a ride on the Underground, so we fairly whisked along through the market, to our destination which was a shop used as a filming location in the second Paddington Bear movie. Sadly, Charlie wasn't much interested in the shop, but we did get the photos before moving off to the Underground Station at Notting Hill Gate. There are a lot of terraced houses in that part of Town, gentrified for sure, very expensive to buy, but very nice to observe as we walked. Many were brightly painted, but the presence of so many Banham door locks and burglar alarms told us these were wealthy people's homes in what was once a poor part of London. There were some bulky, brick built, 1920s London County Council apartment blocks, but even those looked to have been sold off. Margaret Thatcher is responsible for a lot of bad stuff, I can tell you.

We were making for Waterloo Station and a rendezvous with family. Charlie enjoyed his Tube ride, and we enjoyed another loo break and a snack, while people watching in that other huge cavern of a railway station. Unfortunately there was a very loud busker giving it some welly close by, and that added to the general level of the noise.

Heading home from Waterloo, we rode the Tube again, straight to Paddington this time. As we approached Paddington, though, the train's guard came onto the PA system and said that there was no rail service westbound out of Paddington. What? I had visions of trying to get hotel rooms in London for the night because there is no real alternative to getting to Didcot and the car other than by train. As we came up into the mainline station, though, I was mightily relieved to see the departure boards all functioning as they should, and trains apparently running normally. The guard on the Tube train clearly had old information and, as our arch-researcher, DW, discovered, the cause of the rail disruption was in fact the "incident" that had occurred in the morning and was long resolved. Although not specifically labelled as such, it looked like someone had decided to end it all on the tracks at Hanwell Station. The language of the reports suggested suicide, and the reference to The Samaritans kind of sealed it. I can't imagine being moved to do such a thing, and while lots of people were delayed earlier in the day, that's as nothing compared to the poor person at Hanwell.

We ran to catch a fast train back to Didcot, which was packed, of course. I upset everyone when I said to a young woman that she shouldn't have her shopping bags on the train seat when it's so busy, and she gave up her shopping bags' seat, and her sitting seat, and left the car entirely! Maybe I shouldn't have said that bit out loud, but it pisses me off when people use seats for their bags, very clearly in the hope that no one will sit next to them. I saw it on the morning train, too, and some people are just so polite that they won't ask, nay demand, that people leave the seats for people, and not for bags. I guess years of commuting frustration got to me.

Despite all my grumbles, the public transport network actually functions really well in and around London, and the fact that just about every train we caught was packed full tends to speak of its success. I am not a fan of privatised trains and their labyrinthine ticketing, but with tighter Government control, things are getting better. TfL's Oyster Card is great, as is its control of public transport within the Capital. I'm not saying it's as cheap as chips to use TfL's services, but the cost of getting around in London these days is acceptable. Kids who are eleven and under travel free in London, too, although five and over have to have their own, free, Oyster Card. Isn't that great?

We're done travelling to London now, at least for this trip. I will be reporting on the fun and games in Andy Burnham's Greater Manchester travel systems next week. Watch this space.

Blighty 2025 - Up in the Smoke

Today was the first of our three planned trips to London, the Smoke.

I'd left booking the train tickets until the last minute because I wasn't sure the trip would go ahead, especially given the forecast rain, but we jigged around the things we'd planned to do and booked the tickets the night before. 

Since the privatisation of Britain's railways, fares have become labyrinthine. We were at least spared the problem of dealing with different rail companies, but long gone are the days when you could pitch up at the station and ask for a "Cheap Day Return". Dear Wife and I have a discount card that gives 33% off the price of train tickets if we travel together, so trying to work that into the equation when Emma doesn't have a discount card, and still get a good price, is tough. Then working around the restrictions on cheaper tickets adds another level of difficulty, as does the availability of some fares. However, in a moment of madness, I entered an option of three adult tickets, travelling after 0930hrs, without using our discount card, and the computer said yes. Travel as a group of three, and not only did they offer the Off-Peak tickets we wanted, but also a discount fare for everyone! A potential return fare of £48 was reduced to £19.80. Sure, the first return train from London that we could get was post-1900hrs, but we simply had to take a later train into London so that our day wasn't too long. I booked the "Groupsave" tickets, and opted to pick the physical tickets up at Didcot Station.

The rain was coming down in a very English manner as we drove out of Shipton-under-Wychwood, constant but not heavy. It was a slow cross-country drive to Abingdon, then down the A34 for a short way, then into Didcot. Having lived in that area for fifteen years, I know it fairly well, but I was quite taken aback at the housing development that's taken place. Didcot was expanding when I left in 2009, but it had expanded significantly more now. The station had grown a shiny new multi-storey car park, and because we were parking in the afternoon, the usual daily charge of £4.25 was reduced to £2.25, which pleased me greatly.

I had a wee bit of bother collecting the tickets from the machine in the station, though. It wanted my booking reference, so I went onto my phone only to find that the e-mail with the reference number hadn't loaded into the app. Naturally there was no phone signal on either of my phone's e-SIMs, so I had to sign up to the station's Wi-Fi. Not really a huge issue, except that they wanted more details about me than the Government does. However, I persevered, and as soon as the Wi-Fi connected, up came my e-mail. I made a note to ensure that my phone had loaded all my emails before leaving the cottage next time!

Tickets collected, we made our way to the platforms and awaited the trains. The Great Western Railway company has, with Government help invested in a lot of new rolling stock, including the nice Hitachi sets we'd travelled on at the weekend. National Rail, the people who look after the infrastructure, had installed overhead electric power lines, so these new Hitachis run on electricity from Didcot into London (I'm not sure how far west the electrification goes), but can also run as diesels when there is no electricity available, like from Charlbury to Oxford. I like that.

The train was busy, of course, and it always makes me wonder why five car sets are run when nine car sets are available. Accountants' thinking I suppose. We did get a seat each, albeit a few rows apart, although I had to warn Emma to point out to the ticket collector where we were sitting because on a Groupsave, we had to travel together. Actually, the ticket collector, or Revenue Collection Officer, Matty, was very thorough in his work. Given those labyrinthine ticket structures, discount cards and travel restrictions, he spent a lot of time explaining the rules, and collecting money, from people. Far from being officious, he was being helpful, and keeping everyone honest, which has been a problem on British railways in the past.

The trains in the UK , at least those running into London, are frequent and fast. It's fifty-seven miles from Didcot to Paddington, and in a car it would take you an hour and a half. On the train it was thirty-nine minutes, and that was with a stop at Reading. It's smooth, quiet and stress-free. Mind you, I might not say that if I had to travel every day into London like a lot of people do, indeed like I did in the 1980s.

At Paddington Station, Charlie was overawed. He's been watching the Paddington Bear films, so has seen the place on the big screen, but the noise and bustle of the place in real life quite surprised him. He'll often wear ear defenders when external noise gets too great, and he asked for them as soon as we alighted from the train. He went to see the Paddington Bear statue, and the Paddington Bear bench, and had photos taken of course. It's half-term week here in the UK, and there are a lot of kids out and about with parents. It's a bit disturbing to witness the brazen entitlement of some of those parents, though. Selfishness hasn't improved in the time I've been away.

We made our way down drizzly Praed Street, past St Mary's Hospital (well known to me in a previous life), and onto a mercifully quiet branch of Greggs the Bakers. Greggs used to be a fairly small North London bakery chain, but in recent years it's gone national in a big way, selling a limited range of hot and cold ready-to-eat food, including their famous vegan sausage rolls. There are other vegan goodies, as well, which is why we were there. It was a very pleasant lunch break, and Charlie enjoyed his TWO ring doughnuts.

We walked on down to Edgware Road tube station with a view to getting to Covent Garden. I had wanted to go by bus, but Transport for London's rather excellent phone app showed we'd need a couple of bus route changes and some walking, so I thought the Tube would be easier. Circle Line to Kings Cross, then Piccadilly Line to Covent Garden. TfL uses something called an Oyster Card, a pre-paid card that you can carry physically, or have on your phone, to access trains, tubes and buses. The fares using Oyster are reasonable, and there's a daily cap so you can get to a point where your travel is essentially free. If you plan to travel by bus, then an Oyster card is a must as they don't take cash. That said, you can also use Apple or Google Pay, or any card in your Google Wallet through your phone instead of Oyster. I don't know if the discounts or caps apply if you do that, but either way, cash has all but disappeared. We'd bought some physical Tourist Oyster cards, pre-loaded with credit (although we could just as easily have obtained Oyster Cards from any Tube station), only Emma forgot to bring hers. Step up Mum, who'd brough one that we'd used a couple of years ago. We added some new credit though a machine at the tube station, and we were off. 

While I think about it, I have to give credit to both the rail companies and TfL where children's travel is concerned. Rail companies allow kids under five to travel free, and older kids to get at least 50% discount, and it can be up to 80% with a Travelcard. TfL allow all kids under 12 to travel free, although kids over five have to have a Kids' Oyster card, to allow school kids to travel on their own, and to be logged in and out through the barriers. It really gets kids into the public transport mindset, which can only be a good thing.

On the Tube, we did the trip to Covent Garden, which is one of the few stations in Central London that doesn't have escalators. You can walk up the 199 steps if you want, but most people opt to use one of the elevators. I only mention that because in recent times, Covent Garden has become one of the most visited tube stations on the network, and the elevators can cause big delays in busy times. Fortunately this day it wasn't bad at all.

You may know that the current "Covent Garden", the shopping, eating and entertainment hot spot, was once London's fruit, vegetable, and flower market. It closed in 1975 and moved to a more lorry-friendly spot at Nine Elms, south of the river. When I arrived in London in 1977 the market was all boarded up and the area was a ghost town. But, a few years and quite a bit of money later, it's one of London's premier spot for visitors. It is actually quite a good place to visit. It's noisy and bustling, with street entertainers and expensive shops, all mixed in with a pub, restaurants and plenty of smaller places to eat. Again, if I had to work around there, as I once did, I might not find it quite so agreeable as I did this afternoon.

Our reason for being at Covent Garden was to satisfy our wet-weather option of visiting the London Transport museum. It's been there for quite a while, but I'd never been, so I was quite looking forward to it. Dear wife and I had to pay £24 each, but that allows us to visit at any time, and as often as we like, for the next twelve months. Yes, I know, we won't be here for more than a couple of weeks, but the price was the same as a day ticket, so why not? We may go back, you never know. Charlie didn't have to pay because he is under five, but because he had his ear defenders on, the greeter assumed some disability on his part and allowed Emma free entry as well, as his carer. Charlie is autistic, and I guess the greeter recognised that with the ear defenders. How progressive of the museum!

The London Transport Museum was great. The exhibits were excellent, especially as the kids could get in or on quite a few of them. The interpretation material was good, and there were many, many helpful staff on duty. The place was heaving, of course, it being half-term, but it didn't detract from the experience. Was £24 a bit steep for entry? Probably, but that is an annual ticket. The gift shop was full of exciting things, quite expensive things, but heck, why not gouge the tourists? I bought a baseball cap, only to find that it doesn't fit. How can a baseball cap not fit?  Ho hum.

We walked over to Leicester Square to see the Lego Store, and the movie statues in the garden there. Leicester Square is the home of Britain's premier cinemas, and there seemed to be the makings of a film premier set up there outside one of the cinemas. It's all go, up in the Smoke.

As we had a bit of time to spare, we thought we'd take a bus from Charing Cross to Tower Hill, in order to see Tower Bridge. The number 15 bus runs along the Strand and the river all the way, so we dutifully joined the scrum of people waiting at the bus stop. A 15 went the other way, turned around and parked up just short of the bus stop, the driver on a break. The TfL app said the bus was due in four minutes, but with another three minutes behind it. But we waited fifteen minutes while the scrum grew bigger and that one bus didn't move. I suggested waking down to the Embankment to catch the tube, but Charlie wanted the bus. As a compromise, and knowing that when the 15 did move it would be packed, I suggested catching a number 9 to the Aldwych, only a few minutes ride, and that placated the boy. We rode the top deck right up to the Aldwych, then got off, for the bus terminated there, and walked around to Temple station to get on the Underground.

Tower Hill was a bit of a let down because the Tower of London was closing for the evening when we arrived, and they had closed off the walk along the river by Tower Bridge. The wind was whipping along the river, too, and there was a cruise ship parked up alongside HMS Belfast, so we didn't get the full Tower Hill experience. Time, though, was pressing on, and we were all knackered by this point. Charlie deserves some significant credit for hanging on in there, where many a four-year-old would have given up hours before.

We took a Circle Line train around to Paddington, then opted to catch the slow train back to Didcot rather than wait for the fast train. Because it was only the second slow train after the cheap ticket restriction time, it was packed and we were standing as the train left the station. A very nice woman gave up her seat for Emma and Charlie, and just as he was about to melt down, I was able to distract him with one of the railway-based gifts Emma had bought at the museum, which was fortunate. After Slough we managed to sit, and then the train really started to empty as we stopped at each station. The fast train passed us while we were stopped at Reading, and we finally rolled into Didcot at 9pm.

We still had a fifty minute drive back to Shipton, but I decided to take the faster roads back, avoiding the country roads in the dark, and we occupied Charlie by looking the coloured "Cat's Eyes" on the road, and all the trucks parked up in the laybys for the night. 

It was a long day, a tiring day, actually a very good day. That was the first of three, so I hope the next two are as good.

Plymouth (The Original One) 2024 - The Arriving

 Another trip eastwards and across the ocean for us, this time to DW's ancestral home Plymouth. Not the Plymouth of Massachusetts, but the one in Devon from whence the Mayflower sailed. We haven't brought the Airstream, obviously, but I thought I'd document the trip here, especially given that we might have been camping were we not in Merrie Olde England.

Travelling to England is always expensive, and always a chore. We'd booked the best price seats we could manage given that we wanted a full service airline, Premium Economy seats, and a direct flight (so not cheap), and placed our faith in British Airways from Toronto's Pearson Airport to London Heathrow. That of course meant a drive up the dreaded Highway 401. It's construction season on Canada's roads right now, and we knew that there were around six or seven different construction sites between home and the airport, and because we were travelling on a Friday afternoon we decided to allow ourselves plenty of time. It was a good job that we did.

We were about twenty-five minutes past our target leaving time, and immediately hit a snag when the train crossing lights started flashing on LaCroix Street in town, and we spent five minutes watching one of those never ending freight trains pass by, although the angst was slightly offset watching a couple of drivers ahead of us panic when then realised they'd stopped so close to the tracks that the barriers would likely hit their cars when they came down. I mean, there's half a dozen trains through there daily, so it's not like it's a rare event, but still they stop on the tracks. But I digress.

 

On the 401 it was busy. Wall-to-wall trucks, but at least it was moving. That lasted up until Colonel Talbot Road when we hit the first of many, many slow-downs. On a trip that should take just on three hours door-to-door, it took us over four hours. The Friday afternoon traffic likely made things worse, but that run up was the worst I'd experienced in my fifteen years in Canada. But in this case, we'd left so much slack in the schedule that we were not even mildly late for our flight.

Toronto's Pearson airport isn't the best place to be on a Friday evening, but then it's not the worst, either. The check-in area in Terminal 3 isn't really big enough to accommodate the number of people that use it, but then again, neither is the same space in Terminal 1. We dumped our bags in fairly short order and made our way through security screening without too much of a fuss. Airside, things have changed a little from when I first started travelling regularly through the airport. Firstly you're forced to walk through a big duty-free perfume selling store (which was new), and the long departure gate arm now has many more retail outlets than it used to have. It certainly gives the place a livelier feel, but they are all, without exception, hugely over-priced. London's Heathrow airport has long been known as "Thief-row" thanks to the high prices levied on airside clients, and Pearson Airport is catching up. We were in Terminal 3 last November but things had changed even since then, with most of the regular seating removed and replaced by tables, with a central restaurant and bar in the centre. In T1 there are I-Pads on the tables through which you can order your over-priced food and drink to be delivered to your table. Now it's just a QR code etched on a metal plate on the table and you can order the same over-priced food and drink from your cell phone. I don't think I'd mind too much if the tabled area formed only part of the departures seating, but it doesn't, it's all encompassing. You don't have to make an order when you're sat at the tables, but it's kind of implied. It's not as if any of this is essential for the travelling public because pretty much every flight out of there gives you a meal within an hour of takeoff anyway. My cynical mind tells me it's all about profit, and I'm never in the mood to voluntarily help the GTAA (Greater Toronto Airport Authority) get rich. We, being the ever economical souls that we are, brought home made sandwiches. I did spoil things by going to buy an over-priced cup of coffee from Starbucks, but walked away from the line waiting when the three people serving seemed that talking among themselves was more important than moving the line and actually selling coffee. In my annoyance I bought a bottle of water and KitKat for the eye-watering sum of $9.38, which was three times what I'd have spent at Starbucks. But hey, principles are principles.

Our aircraft for the flight was an Airbus A350, wide-bodied mediocrity and indistinguishable from any other in its class. The Premium Economy cabin is over the wing so my two windows, one slightly behind me and one slightly in front, were not going to be of much use. The two overhead storage bins above us were marked "Crew Only", so I heaved our bags into one on the other side of the aisle, much to the consternation of the people sitting below it. Being English, the woman made a quiet comment about not using "their bins", but made her feelings truly known with the fixed stare she gave me.

Our seats were not the most comfortable I've ever sat in, but were so far from the seat in front that the tray table was mounted in the arm rest of our seats and not on the back of the seats in front. The seats also reclined with a leg support coming up from below. I like to sit up so didn't use that function, and nor did the woman sitting in front of me, which was fortunate. As is normal though, the person sitting in front of DW did recline, fully, so she was forced to recline as well, although as she was intended on a goodly nap, that was OK. Me climbing over DW while the seats were reclined was pure comedy, but when you have to go, you have to go.

The meal served about an hour into the flight was, well, not my thing. The choices were Cod with Polenta, or Curry. I have a feeling it was the same choice on the flight we took to London last year. When it was served, the fish was OK, but the Polenta was horrible and the little bowl of ricey stuff that was on the side looked and smelled like the sort of thing I would pay not to eat. I don't know why British Airways insist on serving food that they think might look a "a bit jazzy", and pretty much always contain a curry option. Air Transat did the same for a while, but reverted to more standard fare when people like me moaned about it. The best meal on a 'plane I ever had was on a charter flight from Kephalonia to London, and it was a beef stew. If the charter people can do it, surely the major airlines can. The "hot snack" served before landing was a "hot mess", and again I ask why? Trying too hard to be too fancy really doesn't work.

I couldn't get comfortable during the flight, even when resorting to the old standard sleep aid of watching Bridget Jones' Diary for the umpteenth time, and as a consequence didn't sleep much. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield had suggested some good Northern Lights viewing that night, but nothing. Curse that Astronaut. It was thick cloud cover as the day dawned and we flew over my other ancestral home, Ireland, and it stayed cloudy pretty much until we popped out of the clouds a few miles from Heathrow. All in all, it was a bit of a manky flight. That said, it left Toronto bang on time, and arrived in London ahead of schedule, so well done BA.

Terminal 5 at Heathrow is a wondrous place, but when you get dropped at a gate far from the terminal you have a choice of a long walk, or get crammed onto and all too infrequent shuttle train that runs to the terminal. Every time we've been presented with the shuttle option it's been overcrowded beyond belief, so we decided on the walk this fine morning. There were a few of those moving sidewalk things, but still a fair bit of walking, although having been sat still for six hours or so, it was not a bad thing.

 

The bags came out quite quickly at the luggage reclaim, and we made our way down to the Heathrow Express train, which was no mean feat with me hauling two big cases. The Heathrow Express is one of three rail-based options to get into London from the airport, is the fastest by far, and the most expensive. The Elizabeth Line is a new rail line across London and would take us into Paddington railway station directly, if a little more slowly. The Underground's Piccadilly Line would get us to Paddington with a change of trains at Gloucester Road, but is a seriously slow way of travelling given that there are many, many stops on the line. While the Express may have been expensive, I bought the tickets online, ahead of time, and with our rail discount card, the price was only around £6 each for the single fare, as opposed to the regular £25 if you buy on the day without a discount card. When the train starts its run into Paddington, you soon realise why it's called the Express, because that thing really flies. It takes fifteen minutes from Terminal 1 & 2 to Paddington, compared to over an hour on the Underground, which is quite impressive.

At Paddington, we had a wait before picking up our train to Plymouth. About a three hour wait. To get a well priced ticket on British trains, you have to plump for a specific train, and book seats. Doing that, and using the discount card, we were able to afford First Class tickets, which in this case worked very well for us as we were able to use the First Class Lounge at Paddington Station. The lounge is three rooms, two with sofas and the like, and one with tables and chairs. Snacks and drinks, non-alcoholic of course, are complimentary, so we hunkered down for the duration, just happy to shake off the rigours of the journey so far. It being Saturday, the station was busy with non-commuters, many heading to football matches. I took a quick walk up onto Praed Street, just outside the station, and surveyed the very familiar scene. A student nurse of my acquaintance worked at St. Mary's Hospital just next door to the station, and while she didn't merit a Blue Plaque on the wall, Sir Alexander Fleming did his groundbreaking work on Penicillin there and has a Blue Plaque, and the royal princes William and Harry were born there. Like so many other streets in London, notable things have happened there. While up on the street, I came across a heap of London Black Cabs, all purring along using electric motors rather than the old chug-chug diesel engines of the past. It turns out that the cabs are hybrids and do have their internal combustion engines, but a lot of the time run noiselessly and smokelessly on battery power. What with the hybrid buses as well, London's air is getting so much more breathable.

 

When it was time to board our train (they notify you of the appropriate platform only minutes before departure), we looked in vain for Coach K, where our booked seats were located. A quick question to one of the train's crew revealed that they were short of a few coaches and there definitely wasn't a Coach K. All seat bookings had been cancelled as a result, so it was sit anywhere. Fortunately the train wasn't terribly full, so we found a couple of seats and settled in for the run down to the Westcountry. Like the aircraft we'd flown in, the seats here were not the most comfortable, but there was plenty of room. And, like the lounge at the station, snacks and drinks were complementary. Similar to the Heathrow Express, this train took off like a scalded rabbit and we were quickly pelting through west London at a serious clip and heading to Reading. The weather was OK and the scenery getting greener as we crossed and recrossed the River Thames. Reading, Taunton, Tiverton, Exeter, Newton Abbot, Totnes and finally Plymouth, took us a little over three hours. The weather closed in, the sea was battering the sea wall at Dawlish, and by the time we reached Plymouth, the rain was coming down, but then this is the Westcountry in October, so nothing unusual about that.

 

A short taxi ride from the station and we were on Plymouth's famous Barbican, and opening up Number One, Stokes Lane, our home for the next two weeks. We were both shattered, but did manage to get out to the Co-Op for some essential supplies, dodge the many young people out in the wet streets, and buy some proper English fish and chip shop chips, which is surely the best way to end what was a long and uncomfortable trip.

I'll write a little about our accommodation in the next instalment, and about the purpose of the trip, but for now, I'll round off this very long post by saying it was very nice to be back in Devon.