Lincoln: A New Start for Me

Azuma at Peterborough, where we changed for
Stamford on our way home

A Day Out by Train with Friends

I have not been to Lincoln for a couple of years, whereas before Covid and retirement I used to visit about monthly. In those days there were few trains and I had to drive as often as not, and the rail journey was often longer and more complex than a short trip to ones own county town ought to be. During the lockdowns and "stay at home" advice of the last couple of years some significant improvements to the rail services have taken place and there has also much much work done to the city centre at Lincoln, and to Lincoln Cathedral, too. When some friends were staying and we were looking for somewhere for a day out together Lincoln came to mind: it is a place where I had lived many years ago, and before that a place where I and one of the friends had spent a few days when we had not known each other for long, so there were some memories to be stirred. Tickets were booked using the LNER app, choosing trains that would take us out by one route and back by another and would give us plenty of time in Lincoln while allowing us back to Stamford in time for a restaurant dinner. All of us having Senior Railcards the total fare was just under £100 for Anytime Day Returns, although where possible we did have seats booked on our chosen trains. Had we become bored or the weather become rough we could return early (but not late if we wanted our booked dinner!).

(This was to be an easy-going, relaxed day out, so I did not take my camera with me and any illustrations you see here are from my earlier collection.)

We left Stamford on the 09:56 Cross Country train to Peterborough and although our reserved seats were not all adjacent (the Cross Country algorithm does seem to leave something to be desired) we did manage to find a table for 4 for this short leg of the trip. This service neatly connects with an East Midlands Railway departure from Peterborough to Lincoln, part of the improved offering from this company since I last travelled that way. Although there had long been a train at about this time, it had always been a short, single-coach train which might be able to take everyone at Peterborough but was always grossly overcrowded when it reached Lincoln. The service also used to start late in the morning and finish early in the afternoon, of little use to most potential passengers - and although that did not affect us on this trip it was the main reason for me having to use my car in the past. We were surprised to find that our train was not just a bit longer than before, but consisted of four coaches and although there are no seat reservations on this route it was easy to choose a table together with a window to open for anti-viral ventilation as well as a view of the countryside. We were blessed with gorgeous weather for the time of the year, late October, with lots of sunshine and no rain (although the forecast until that very morning had not been so optimistic).

The first part of the ride to Lincoln took us up the East Coast Main Line as far as Werrington Junction, retracing the steps of the last couple of miles of the trip from Stamford, and then we set off across the Lincolnshire fens on the route through Spalding and Stamford towards Lincoln. This section is marked by distant and not-so-distant spires and towers of town and village churches among the clumps of trees that mark those places, including Deeping St James where we also once lived and Crowland, the historic Abbey of St Guthlac. Soon the train approached Spalding where two of us had grown up, but apart from the area immediately around the station all now unrecognisable, so much has the town grown. There were enormous new houses being built well out of the town centre and we wondered where on earth the people to live in them would work and shop, there being little in Spalding itself these days.

Soon we were off across the fens again to Sleaford, with a slight hold-up on the approach to the station because of the constricted access since tracks there were reduced some years previously. More people joined the train here than left it, and the four coaches were beginning to look more of a necessity than a luxury. Many more joined us at Ruskington and at Metheringham, now well out of the fens into gently rolling hills, and the train was nicely full without being crowded when we arrived on time at Lincoln. A pleasant ride through sunny Lincolnshire, and now to explore the city. It was great to be back, and I was looking forward to seeing how the city centre improvements had progressed since I was last here.

We started "uphill" around the cathedral and castle and made our way down, so the first thing to do was to visit the bus station, opposite the rail station, and take a bus up to the cathedral. These run frequently are are not too expensive and do save the effort (and time) of climbing one of the steepest streets in England!

From the Cathedral bus stop we went to look at the foundations of the Roman east gate, preserved in front of The Lincoln Hotel - fresh from a holiday in Rome it was good to be reminded that we have quite a lot of Roman remains here in England, too, even if ours are several centuries younger than some of the Italian ones! Strolling around East Bight we followed the course of the Roman city wall and saw more fragments of it in private gardens and then arrived at the north gate which is still in use by modern traffic, although somewhat reduced in grandeur, most notably by lorries not quite small enough to pass through. As we walked down Bailgate we reminisced about how things used to be: much was the same, and the pub where I used to recover from philosophy lectures had not changed much. We visited the site of St Paul's church, supposedly founded by St Paulinus in the early years of English Christianity, and then went to the Castle. No tickets were left to visit the buildings, but actually that was OK: it would leave us with plenty of time to see the rest of the city, and entry to the grounds is free so we spent a little time there and then found some lunch in one of the cafés on Steep Hill (yes, that is the name of the street!) before moving on to the Cathedral. One snag with visiting on a Monday as we did is that some bars, restaurants etc are not open for lunch on Mondays and with a table for four required we did have to queue for a few minutes, but only a few.

I know Lincoln Cathedral very well, partly from living in its precincts for nearly three years and partly from having taken part in its services from time to time over the last forty years, but my friends do not know it half so well, so it was good to show them around, and we did not need to join the guided tour ... What I had not seen before was the new visitor centre and education facility which had been built, with grant funding, on the north side of the Cathedral, partly in buildings formerly part of the cathedral school. The centre was not completely finished but had been partially opened for the half-term holiday for children's activities, and the new café was also open for our afternoon cup of tea, replacing the tiny coffee shop that had opened by the chapter house four decades ago.

When we had seen everything we wanted to see at Lincoln Cathedral we began the walk down the hill, stopping on the way to see the places that had mattered to us many years ago, and popping into the model shop to buy just a few more HO scale figures for my Swiss model railway, then doing just a little more shopping before exploring the Sincil Street area. This is now known as the Cornhill Quarter and a good deal more pleasant an area it is, although with many of the good local shops still present, and a cinema added. The Cornhill Quarter is immediately adjacent to the bus station, rail station and multi-storey car park and forms a great entrance to the city centre. There is still some work to do, but it is now much further advanced than when I last saw it and already looking great.

It was now time to make our way to the station and await our train home. Checking the departures we were not surprised to see that we needed to cross the bridge to the far platform, but as we crossed we were pleasantly surprised to see that the train, this time a LNER "Azuma" inter-city set, was already on its way from the siding to the platform and within a few moments of arriving the doors were unlocked and we were able to board, easily finding our reserved seats around a table for four. Much more spacious than the train on which we had arrived at Lincoln, this one took us back to Peterborough via Newark and the East Coast Main Line. As soon as it left Lincoln I went to the café-bar and bought a round of white wine to round of the warm, sunny day we had enjoyed together - I bought the last of the white wine, so I hope no-one else wanted any! While I was at the bar, the rest were watching the University of Lincoln slide past the window, and then were amazed to find that the Cathedral was also visible from the left side of the train, having been on the right side when we were at the station! There is quite a loop to get from the former Central station to the Newark line which was served by a separate station until a new link was constructed late last century. By the time we stopped at Newark darkness had come and we watched the scenery no longer. LNER took us smoothly to Peterborough for our Cross Country connection to Stamford, all on time and just right for dinner at the Cosy Club!

It had been a simple day out and yet a really good one: the weather was better than one dared hope
in mind-October, all our trains were clean, punctual and spacious enough, we had good company (well, mine was good: I have to hope the others felt the same!) and enjoyed all that we saw and did.

The Best Laid Plans

Summer Sunday Trip to London 

With the gradual easing of lockdown restrictions we have been able to see many of our family whom we had not seen for several months, but our son and his household in London, with no garden, we had seen least, and so some arrangements were made for this summer and we set off yesterday, Sunday, the eve of "Freedom Day" when the remaining legal restrictions were due to be lifted, to visit them. But it did not quite work out as planned, even though the plans were only a few days old. Our daughter-in-law had a cough and was awaiting the result of a Covid test, so it was uncertain whether we could visit at all, but on the morning of the visit her negative result arrived. In the meantime, however, their younger child's nursery had told them that the little girl must isolate as a contact at nursery had tested positive ... so we only met our son and the older child for a picnic, not being able to go to the house.

This has been the problem with unlocking - is it actually saving the economy and bringing some certainty to business when infection levels are so high that random self-isolations are making it hard to plan anything at all, even as minor as Sunday lunch with Granny and Grandpa?

As far as travel was concerned,  getting out of Stamford on a Sunday morning always means driving because the rail service starts very late on Sundays. This particular weekend was when the line between Stamford and Peterborough was closed while engineers built the new junction at Werrington to connect the new "dive under" to the Stamford Line tracks, so there was no rail service at all on our local line. So we drove to Peterborough, a trip short enough for our plug-in hybrid car not to need any petrol, being within range of the battery. We also got to play with the new (to us) car park payment system at Peterborough station! At the barrier on the way in we did not have to do anything but pause while the Automatic Number Plate Recognition system read our car number plate then opened the barrier. Parking on a Sunday morning in the pandemic was a piece of cake, and then I made sure I read the notices about payment so that I knew what to do when we came back later on! There were several options, but it seemed to me that the simplest in our circumstances was to use my credit card contactless on the way out. There was no ticket to lose, no faff at ticket machines. no need to remember our own number plate (and having bought the car at the start of the first lockdown we are not really familiar with it yet!), and, most important to me, no need to use a smartphone app - although the LNER app is one option for those who prefer it. If you think buying a train ticket is complicated, to me as a very occasional driver and parker of cars paying for parking these days seems far more complex than paying for train tickets. The app you need varies from car park to car park and the ticket machines are complicated and do not often use the same English that I do. And if you think that is complicated, you should try electric car charging ... but that is another story.

We had allowed bags of time to get to Peterborough because you never know what sort of hold-ups there might be (none in this case) and how much time might be soaked up parking the car and fighting the ticket machine (minimal and zero respectively, see above), so we had some time to wait for our booked LNER train, time we occupied with our usual Sunday routine of the Sunday Times General Knowledge Crossword puzzle. We were booked on a specific train in order to take advantage of low-price Advance First Class tickets in each direction. Our trains both ways were LNER's "Azuma" class inter-city express trains and on the morning trip to London we were treated to coffee and the weekend breakfast menu, although having already had breakfast I just topped up with a pain au chocolat with my coffee and a bottle of water for the sweltering day which lay ahead. Our booked seats turned out to be the pair with no window, but there was no-one in the table seats immediately in front of them and no further station calls for this train, so we consulted the First Class host and moved into those seats, still well-enough distanced from other passengers, and we were all wearing face-coverings, of course.

We knew in advance that from Kings Cross the Hammersmith & City Line was not operating, and that several other lines were suffering from sudden closures because of unexpected self-isolating staff, so we took a bus to our chosen rendezvous point, which was Kensington High Street. Buses are not quick, although perhaps they are not so slow on Sundays, but we do get to see a lot. We actually travelled by bus only as far as Hyde Park Corner and then walked along the South Carriage Ride of Hyde Park and along the souther edge of Kensington Gardens to reach our destination. This part of London is just a joy to visit on a summer day and there were lots of people, walking, sitting and cycling. We met our son and senior grandchild and then bought the components of a picnic from the Whole Foods Market in what had formerly been Barkers department store, opposite St Mary Abbots church, and returned to Kensington Gardens together for our picnic, followed by coffee in a side street café where the crowds were much thinner. Altogether it was fairly easy to keep a safe distance from others, with just a little care, and we were very happy throughout.

We accompanied the others back to their front door but could not enter, of course, and then spotted that although the Hammersmith & City Line was not operating, the Circle Line apparently was, because we saw trains passing and the local station open. that would do: we went to the station  and took the next train to Kings Cross St Pancras. There was plenty of space to start with and although mask wearing (still compulsory) was patchy we were OK for a while. Someone sat opposite us and kept taking his mask off and on but there was nowhere else to move where everyone was masked so we were reliant on our vaccinations and our own masks. Gradually the train filled up and our neighbour left his mask on, as did most others - interesting. Transport for London will be requiring face coverings even after the legal requirement is lifted because London's transport does get crowded and there are parts of London where vaccination take-up has been poor (not where we had just been, though).

We now had an hour to spare at Kings Cross and we spent it in the First Class lounge and enjoyed a salad we had bought at the Waitrose beneath it, before making our way to the train when it was ready to board, using the bridge over the platforms once more - this had been closed on our recent trips. Again we had our socially-distance reserved seats but this time a pair facing each other across a small table, our favourite arrangement. The complimentary refreshments on offer included wine (which I have never known at a weekend before, but I remembered that I would have to drive home so I declined that and accepted the cheese and pickle sandwich and another bottle of water.

The car park at Peterborough worked beautifully: I did ensure that I had my credit card to hand and at the barrier simply "showed" it to the card reader and drove out. We took a scenic route back to Stamford and arrived home to plug the car in ready for duty the following morning having used no petrol and emitted no exhaust.

It was a good day out. In spite of the difficulties a summer day in west London is never going to be bad, and neither is day with children and grandchildren, even in reduced numbers, and, I have to say, a trip in First Class with LNER is almost a guaranteed joy as well! Just as well, as we have quite a few more coming up, including Edinburgh in a few weeks' time when I am hoping that the catering will be better still. It is already so much better than last summer when we all lived in fear of getting near other people and touching anything that someone else may have touched. Looking forward to next month's trips, and just hoping that plans do not have to change too much!