We have enjoyed several trips in the UK and Europe by train and they seemed too good to keep to ourselves. These are all real reports of our own experiences and none is sponsored by any of the businesses mentioned in them; all views are my own. Do feel free to comment and ask questions! #flygskam #trainbragging
Lincoln Cathedral, one of the symbols of the cities served by LNER, appears on the cans of Hop On Board ale served on the trains!
By Train to Newcastle Upon Tyne,
in First Class with LNER
I needed to buy a new cassock, the long dress-like garment that Church of England clergy wear. I have always worn black and my old robes are wearing rather thin, but although I estimated that they might see out my active ministry, I had recently been appointed as a non-residentiary Canon of Lincoln Cathedral and the cathedral Canons traditionally wear a shade of blue, as do the Choir and the Vergers, so this was my opportunity to replace my old black cassock with a new blue one. It would be nice not to have holes in the pockets and fraying button-holes for the rest of my ministry!
The cathedral provides the fabric, and the new Canon pays for the cassock to be made, and although I could go to a number of clerical outfitters, there is one, J&M Sewing, which keeps a stock of the blue fabric in order to make the choir robes, so it is simpler to go there for clergy robes as well. The snag is that it is in Newcastle Upon Tyne, a great city but a long way from anywhere else! I needed to act fairly quickly as my installation at the cathedral was only a few weeks away and I knew it would take a while to have my cassock made, so I did not book train tickets ages in advance but went for the least expensive I could reasonably find on the next day when I had enough time to spare, having arranged to visit J&M Sewing at noon on the appointed day. It was a long time since I had been north by rail, and I decided to travel First Class in order to enjoy a leisurely meal on the train home rather than the rushed affair involved in travelling the short hop to and from London. Given Cross Country Trains' tendency still to cancel our local trains at a moment's notice, I decided on this occasion to drive to Peterborough and start the train journey there. Cold weather, and some snow, was anticipated so I knew there was some risk to timekeeping whether by rail or by road. Although the cost of parking at Peterborough station is many times more expensive than the rail fare from and to Stamford, it is still less than the taxi would have cost in the event of a train cancellation, and I wanted to avoid hanging around Peterborough station for an extended period in the cold.
My wife travelled with me (for company, but also to ensure that I ordered something sensible!), and we travelled north on the 09:48 departure from Peterborough, one of the services that stops only twice, at York and Darlington, on the way to Newcastle, taking just a touch over two hours so that we would arrive just neatly in time for my noon appointment - the premises of the company being a short walk from Newcastle Central station. We were served coffee on the train and I resumed my breakfast with one of LNER's delicious bacon rolls, and we each had a yogurt. These refreshments are all within the ticket price. Here and there on the way we saw traces of fallen snow, but the weather in Newcastle when we arrived there was sunny and, for early March, quite warm: the cold and snowy weather we had left behind at home, and it was at its coldest and wintriest in London and the south-east: one does not often go to the north-east for the warm, sunny weather, but we had done well that day.
After choosing the wool/terylene mix over the pure wool, and being measured and choosing my options and placing the order (14 weeks expected delivery, so I would not in any case have it for my installation), we walked into the shopping streets of the city centre to find some lunch and to buy some black jeans to replace my worn-out ones (not all my clothes are wearing out at once, just these two items!). We found both at John Lewis - although I could not help wondering if a large lunch was the thing before dinner on the train ...
Although we have stopped drinking alcohol on weekdays in Lent, we broke our Lenten fast this day because it was the feast day of Edward King, Bishop, a very important feast day in the diocese of Lincoln, and how appropriate it was that I had ordered my Lincoln blue cassock on such a great day! So it was wine with lunch: I'd have to go easy at dinner, feast or no feast, because I'd be driving home from Peterborough station.
We had a short walk around the city centre, gradually making our way back to Newcastle Central station, where we waited in the First Class lounge for the 16:26 train back to Peterborough. This train had been chosen for the affordability of its First Class Advance tickets rather than anything else, and was slower than the one on which we had come north, stopping at quite a few more stations on the way. One of the advantages of First Class which is not often considered is that there is a lot less disturbance at intermediate stations, for several reasons: there are fewer people in the carriage overall, and most people are travelling longer distances (since most of us will be happy with Standard Class on short trips); there is more space in which to move and wider aisles so it is easier to pass people. The catering staff in First Class are kept busy even so, keeping track of who has been served, though, as people get on and off!
In due course we were offered our meal, from the intermediate "Dish" menu, and I chose a vegetable curry which went well with a can of Hop On Board ale. This was plenty, given the early hour and the large Caesar Salad I'd had for lunch! The crisps and biscuits went home for later ... Taking the first opportunity to eat meant that the ale would be safe to drink, being well before I would have to drive.
The Hop On Board can carries pictograms of famous landmarks on LNER's routes, including Lincoln Cathedral, which was nice in the circumstances!
Arriving on time in Peterborough we encountered a wintry shower and met someone we knew from Stamford who was looking for a lift home because the next train, which had been late, had just been cancelled owing to a fault, so we squeezed him in our car (which had the grandchildren's child seats in it!) while I cleared the snow off the car ready to drive home, carefully, though the snow. We were glad that we had brought the car, much as I love walking home from the station across the meadows at Stamford, but the idea of waiting over an hour for a train at a cold and snowy Peterborough and then walking home through the snow did not have quite the normal appeal. The walk in the snow would have been OK if the scheduled train had been running, but it turned out that we were right not to trust them. We dropped our acquaintance at his home and drove home to ours. Job done. Now I wait for my new robe to arrive, and soon, a visit to Lincoln for my installation ceremony!
Thinking about the trip, it has occurred to me that starting earlier and finishing later it would be quite feasible to arrange a day trip to Newcastle to enjoy some of what the city has to offer. Keep a look out for it on my "Come with me" page as soon as travel becomes more reliable!
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!
Normally, visiting Westminster Abbey is a nightmare, with queues and little opportunity to appreciate the spiritual qualities of the place. I had only been there for services, choosing to avoid visiting it for the history and architecture, both of which are worth a look. But for the moment, in 2020, hardly anyone goes there and in any case the Abbey cannot manage many but desperately needs the income from visitors. So we decided to go while it was quiet, to see the place properly and to do our bit for its upkeep by buying tickets to visit, all pre-booked like virtually everything else in Britain at present. This was to be our first visit to London since all the cancellations in February and we decided to stay one night, have tea at Fortnum & Mason in Piccadilly (they were offering two for the price of one, so it was only expensive rather than extremely expensive) and just enjoy the West End without the crowds.
As a member of Hilton's loyalty scheme I booked a room at the Doubletree Westminster, a few minutes' walk from the Abbey, and First Class tickets with LNER to and from London Kings Cross to connect conveniently with the reduced-frequency trains between Stamford and Peterborough.All was set. Both Cross Country Trains and LNER insist on reservations for travel: with LNER we are given specific seats which we have to use; on Cross Country we can choose any empty seat far enough from other passengers but they will not sell tickets for a train which already has as many as it can take with social distancing. All our train tickets were electronic, held on my iPhone. I am beginning to get the hang of finding them quickly for operating barriers at stations.
The weather forecast was not wonderful: warm enough but wet at times. We took minimal luggage for just one night, one small case between us and walked together to Stamford station. Our train to Peterborough was just a couple of minutes late and our connection to London was easily made, although the temporary "one way" system at Peterborough station really does not work well for connecting passengers. Once the London train was under way I sent to collect our coffee and biscuits from the First Class host, probably not very different from what we would normally have had on such a short trip.
Arriving in London we walked to our hotel in Westminster. A long walk punctuated by a lunch break in a small park, and not quite the shortest route but a more scenic one which took us by the Savoy and along the Embankment. The hotel was having building work done and the main entrance was not in use, so it took us a while to find the way in: it turned out that it only reopened that day after the Covid-19 closure and that we were only the second group of guests to arrive. The restaurants were not open so we would have to have a packed breakfast either in our room or as a take-away; as we had nowhere to take it to we opted to have it in our room and specified a time. We went to our room, unpacked our few things and got ready to go out to tea. The room was looking really tidy and clean: Hilton had been to some effort to combat the virus by extensive cleaning of all rooms. It was looking a bit dated, though, with no device charging points by the bed, unlike our hotel in Edinburgh a few days which had double sockets with double USB points each side of the bed. We wondered if the refurbishment would address this sort of thing.
We set off through the drizzle, which came and went a bit, for the long walk to Piccadilly. By now, tea time, there was very heavy traffic in our street and here-and-there elsewhere, but our route was largely through quiet streets and pedestrian ways, and across St James's Park, all very pleasant. We arrived in plenty of time before our tea booking, and we walked through both Piccadilly and Burlington Arcades and then had a few minutes browsing the goods on offer at Fortnum & Mason before proceeding to the lounge for tea, which compared quite well with the afternoon tea we had enjoyed in Edinburgh less than a week before! As then we had two hours, which was more than enough, and as then we did not need any supper afterwards but rather a long walk ... we even declined the slice of cake which was an option to finish off the meal!
We took the long walk back to our hotel, through the occasional light shower, via Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square - it felt like the Monopoly board - then along Whitehall and across Westminster Bridge and back over Lambeth Bridge to our hotel off Horseferry Road.
In the morning our packed breakfast arrived and although it was not quite the standard we have come to expect of Doubletree hotels it was all good, and the coffee was excellent. we checked out and left our case at reception to walk the short distance to Westminster Abbey, clutching our printed-out on-line tickets and vouchers for the multimedia guided tour. The queue was minimal and after a quick security check and hand-sanitise we were in and in possession of the devices which would provide us with the guided tour. Photography was not allowed in the Abbey, so this part of the blog will have to go without illustration, but it suffices to say that this building is one of Europe's finest, so do see it if you can. Similarly the history here is amazing: a thousand years of the story of England and her church and monarchy, intertwined, is told here and is better described by others than by me. I recommend the electronic multimedia tour: each talk is short and to the point, it is easy to operate and copes with several languages and is good at reminding us throughout that this is still a working place of worship with a regular round of prayer and praise - although somewhat curtailed at present like all places of worship.
We visited the gift shop and then returned to collect our case from the hotel, bidding a farewell to the receptionist, who was the only other person we met there! She is from Italy which is where we had been going to go this autumn and have rebooked on a date next year.
We then revisited Fortnum & Mason, having noticed the day before that they were offering their knickerbocker glories at two for the price of one ... then we walked that off by going on foot through London to Kings Cross, up Regent Street and Great Portland Street then along Euston Road and taking the signposted walk from Euston to Kings Cross through the middle of St Pancras station. We had a few minutes in the reopened First Class lounge (no refreshments yet, but expected soon) before boarding our LNER train to Peterborough where we changed for Stamford as usual. By then the rain had started but was all right for walking home where hot chocolate made a fitting end to such a day. We had only left the day before but we had enjoyed tea and ice-cream and walked 17 km as well as our object of seeing Westminster Abbey without the crowds. Wonderful!
This year makes a special milestone in my marriage, and a year ago my wife and I planned a very special holiday to mark it. We booked short tour of the Scottish Highlands on the Belmond Royal Scotsman, a luxury "cruise" train, to visit the one line out of Inverness which was still on our "to do" list. The tour started in Edinburgh on the day after our anniversary, so we also booked two nights at The Balmoral hotel to ensure that the day itself would be special and that we would be sure to be there for the start of the tour with no last-minute rush. There was so much to look forward to in the Royal Scotsman tour that I had given very little thought to the weekend in Edinburgh that was to precede it, but all that was to change when I came to pay the balance of the fare to Belmond - and I shall come to that shortly. First I really must tell you about the booking of the hotel for the weekend!
The Balmoral is not just any old hotel. It was originally the railway hotel for the North British Railway, later part of the LNER and then British Rail, of course (see Update in footnote). The railway hotels were sold off in the 1980s and this one was bought and refurbished to an exceptionally high standard by Rocco Forte Hotels and is now a very high-end hotel and bookings are made though Grand Luxury Hotels who appoint a Guest Experience Manager to look after guests prior to arrival. Our weekend was to be special so we wanted a room overlooking the castle, and we wanted a good room, and ... the weekend was during the Edinburgh Festival, so, taking all this together, it was not cheap! They asked if a room was sufficient or if we'd prefer a suite: I opted for a room since we did not intend to live in it, just sleep. After my Guest Experience Manager had been appointed I received an email message asking what time my flight was due to arrive and which class of Mercedes I would prefer for my transfer from the airport ... and all this at a railway hotel! I might have known that odd things would happen when the person taking the booking pronounced the city's name "Eedinburrow": it was plain that she had never been there and had no idea how things worked in the UK. I wrote back explaining that the hotel was above one of Britain's most important rail stations and that it would probably take me longer to fly there from Stamford than to go by train. (And even if I had flown, I think the tram from the airport would have been fine by me!)
Everything was booked, then, about a year in advance, but then like everything else in 2020 it all started to unravel with the advent of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. Most of this year's outings in the spring and summer were cancelled and refunded early, but the August ones we hoped might happen. Unfortunately although the Royal Scotsman could run with only 20 passengers, just over half of its normal load, the other 18 still booked on it were American and could not get to Scotland, so that part of the holiday was cancelled. The Balmoral hotel, however, had just reopened and our booking still stood, so as soon as I could get train tickets the holiday, at one-third of its planned length, was still on, and it did cover the date of the wedding anniversary, which was great. Now the "supporting act" became the main attraction and we started to replan the trip around The Balmoral.
Booking the train tickets turned out to be a little more interesting than usual because the outbound ones, on a Saturday, were not released until a couple of weeks before departure, so I had to invest in the return part in the hope we could get there! Otherwise it would have had to be a long drive in the car and an application for refund for the return train trip. But it all came out all right in the end, although the reduced frequency of trains between Stamford and Peterborough meant that we started this luxury holiday on a bus to Peterborough. But Delaine's buses are very good and all worked well.
Just as with the Cross Country trains the previous weekend, the catering was minimal, so we took a packed lunch for the journey. we were supplied with coffee, biscuits, crisps and water with our First Class booking, but not the usual hot lunch that we had hoped to enjoy before the pandemic changed everyone's plans. This was by far our longest trip so far on LNER's "Azuma" Intercity Express Train and we thoroughly enjoyed the ride in spite of having to wear face-coverings and forego the usual standard of luncheon. We were required to sit in the seats reserved for us, chosen by LNER to ensure social distancing, although this had to be changed by our train manager because someone else had "stolen" our seats: she could check which ones were available and ensured we would not be disturbed again. This ride up the East Coast Main Line is one of my favourites, with a fast, comfortable train and some incomparable views, especially of the Northumberland coast but also including Durham, the Tyne at Newcastle, Berwick-upon-Tweed and some magnificent stations, too, at York and Newcastle.
We arrived at Edinburgh within a minute or two of the advertised time and made our way up to Princes Street to the hotel, at number 1 Princes Street. As we approached the front door with our cases, a concierge approached and asked if we were checking in - we must have looked like Balmoral guests ... we checked in and went to our room, the cases having been taken away to be brought up to us. We had booked one of the better rooms in the hotel but were given a free upgrade to a better one still. As I mentioned, this had been going to be Edinburgh Festival week but, of course, that was cancelled and so presumably the hotel had many spare rooms available. They knew we were there for a special anniversary because when I had called to book a table for dinner on the Sunday they had asked if it was for a special occasion, so it was very good of them to let us have an even better room. When we opened the door we were amazed by the room which was not only spacious and well-equipped but was right at the top of the building in one of the corner turrets with the most fantastic view long Princes Street as well as up the the castle. I could not have asked for a better room.
We unpacked and made our way down to the Palm Court where we had booked (everything has to be booked now) afternoon tea; just as we were leaving our room a basket of fruit was delivered by the house staff - all part of the service here! We had booked the tea as a substitute for dinner and went for a fairly late tie for tea, at 5pm. We were welcomed into the Palm Court and shown to a suitable table in the typically pleasant atmosphere of traditional palm court within the atrium of this hotel built on a square plan. Elsewhere in the hotel is a poster from inter-war days showing the Palm Court as it was then, and it is quite recognisable today. There was a choice of tea and an option to begin with a glass of Champagne,
which, naturally, we did. We each had our own choice of tea, poured from a great height into personal teapots so that it was cool enough to drink immediately, and a plate of savouries which included a haggis tart, the first of several haggis-based dishes we would have over these two days. Two hours was allowed for afternoon tea and we used most of that, consuming two pots of tea each in spite of also having Champagne and water. Although each item in the meal seemed to be small, there was plenty to eat and we were well-filled. We did not even need to start on the basket of fruit in our room before bed-time! At the end of the meal we were given a small tin of tea and a couple of chocolates each to take away. The chocolates survived until the train home on Monday, and we started the tea at our first tea-time at home on Tuesday - having run out of our St Pancras Blend tea it was good to have something special again.
We went for a long walk after tea, to the other end of Princes Street, back around the castle and along The Royal Mile to Holyrood and then back to the hotel.
On the Sunday we had originally had nothing planned, but before we left home had managed to book a visit to the Scottish National Gallery for the late morning, all attempts to get tickets for the National Museum of Scotland having failed. These venues were both free-of-charge but needed booking for space reasons during the pandemic. We started the day with a great breakfast at the hotel - again booked in advance by completing a form left in our room at turn-down - and then made our way via a shop or two to the art gallery just along Princes Street. It is a small gallery but with a wide selection of styles and artists, including the universally-known Monarch of the Glen by Sir Edwin Landseer which was amazing to see for oneself rather than printed on a biscuit tin!
The breakfast was intended to last all day until the special dinner booked for the evening, so after our time at the art gallery we went straight on to our next activity, booked the day before, a visit to the Royal Botanic Garden. It was drizzling all the way there, about a half-hour walk, but dried up as we arrived. There was an occasional shower during our visit but nothing to spoil it. We were there to enjoy the gardens rather than study botany, and of all the botanic gardens we have visited, this is the best for that, for the layout and landscaping is superb. Do visit here is you're in Edinburgh, but try to choose better weather than we had! It is hard to do it justice in a photograph: you have to be there.
The third course, Orkney Scallop
We returned to the hotel via Harvey Nichols, for there was something we needed that we had been unable to source anywhere else, and it is not every day that we are in a city with a branch of that particular emporium. Showering after the day's weather and dressing for dinner we made our way down to another of the hotel's restaurants, named "Number One" after the hotel's street address, for the seven-course table d'hôte tasting menu that we had booked before leaving home. This would be our special meal for our anniversary.
We had done these tasting menus before: lots of small courses which can be accompanied by matching wines, but we opted on this occasion simply to start with a single glass of Champagne and then have a bottle of a light red wine which would go reasonably well with the whole meal. A glass for each course has always left us feeling that we've had too much alcohol before we have finished the meal.
Before the seven courses started we were brought "something to nibble," an amuse-bouche, and some bread and butter (both bread and butter the chef's own recipe and made to order - nothing from a factory here) as well as a glass of water, and the bread and water were topped up as the meal went on.
Three fish courses and a single large ravioli brought us eventually to the beef which was served with three vegetables and potato, but these were unrecognisable as they were presented, each of them delicious and, amazingly, filling. The beef, Highland, of course, was superb.
We opted not to have the optional cheese course and went straight to the two desserts, again, small, delicious and plenty. Espresso coffee rounded off the meal nicely and we retired to our room well-satisfied.
On the final day we were not due to leave until the 16:00 train, so we arranged to check out at 15:00 and had a final attempt, unsuccessful, to obtain admission to the National Museum and decided to go on a bus tour of the city instead, having been plied with a leaflet by Bright Bus on our first evening. It has a stop opposite the museum and runs every fifteen minutes so we went to the stop and waited for just a few moments. With our senior discount the fare was just £9 each for hop-on, hop-off travel on the tour bus all day. The rain held off and the open-top bus took us round a lot of the city with an informative commentary, and it interesting to see from a higher vantage point some of the places we had walked on the first evening. We left the bus near the castle and walked down through Princes Street Gardens, which had been closed for the previous two days, always a great place to be, and then made our way back, checked out and walked round the corner to the station for our train home.
Again we had a great ride along the Northumberland Coast and were plied with coffee, tea, biscuits and crisps from the First Class host at the end of the train (no trolley services anywhere during the pandemic) and took our own salad dinner bought from Mark & Spencer earlier in the day. Things went slightly awry at Newcastle Central when some passengers had to be refused boarding because they refused to wear face coverings, currently a legal requirement, and we left there five minutes late. This was slightly troublesome because we had a very tight connection to our train home at Peterborough. Some of the time was clawed back, however, and although we were a touch late getting into Peterborough it was easy enough to get over to platform 7 and board our train home. Unbelievably some people near us on the train south of York all claimed to be exempt from the face covering rule and although the train manager had to give them the benefit of such doubt as there was, he did check their tickets and ordered them to leave as they were not in their booked seats - indeed they were travelling First Class on standard tickets.
All in all we had had a wonderful time. Not as wonderful as we had expected when we first booked it a year ago but wonderful anyway. It was just a weekend but it was a great weekend. It had been expensive but we had what we paid for and felt we'd had excellent value. The hotel and the art gallery had only been open a matter of days after closure because of the coronavirus pandemic and yet we were served brilliantly by capable and dedicated staff, and at the hotel in particular felt like valued customers - which we probably were, given the number who must have cancelled. No foreign guests, no Festival. We were fortunate that The Balmoral was still trading.
We shall try to take our Royal Scotsman trip next year, and we hope we can stay at The Balmoral again before we take that train.
Update:
I have now posted a brief description of our previous stay at the then North British Hotel in 1984: you can see it at Back in Time for a Break in Edinburgh! It was all very different then.
Travel finally got back under way this month, with my annual short break in Chichester by rail. I was quite nervous about booking it, with different Train Operating Companies applying varying rules to keep staff and passengers safe from Covid-19, as well as being out of practice with buying tickets - besides the issue of reduced services and short-notice changes to them.
Face coverings are compulsory on public transport in England
I booked using Cross Country’s train tickets iPhone app but was not offered an electronic ticket, presumably because Thameslink and Southern cannot cope with them, so I had to collect paper tickets at Stamford station. The hotel, the same as last year’s, had been booked for many months and I had called to check that all was well with that before I started buying tickets. I had feared I might have to drive and I had not been looking forward to competing for road space with everyone else taking holidays in England this summer, but the railways were beginning cautiously to welcome people back and we gave it a go.
I decided just to go to Chichester this year for the few days we had already booked at the Chichester Harbour Hotel and not take the originally-planned few days on the Isle of Wight first; when I was booking, the ferries to the island were still uncertain and I did not want to end up needing to drive in order to get to an operating ferry. The simpler, the better. All ready to go, packing for the first time in ages and struggling to remember what I normally take, I woke on the morning of the trip to discover that a problem on Thameslink’s line through central London was causing major problems and we may have to cross London between termini by Underground, whereas we’d booked through London by Thameslink to minimise changes and avoid the crowds. By the time we boarded our first train at Stamford, wearing our face coverings, the problem had been fixed and Thameslink trains were running through London again but many trains and many staff were out of position and so we were over an hour late leaving Peterborough, having had to wait for a driver.
Some of this time was clawed back by our train missing out some stops north of London and we made our connection fairly smoothly at East Croydon as advised when I booked the tickets, but an hour late. It did not really affect our plans, and we still had time to unpack and have a cup of tea in our hotel room before setting off to meet our friends, socially-distanced in a pub, our first visit to a pub since February. I was impressed by the lengths to which the landlord had gone to keep customers safe and keep vital transmission to a minimum, but I don’t know whether he’s making a living from the number of customers he is getting.
Dinner was at the hotel restaurant in the first week of the government-sponsored half-price eating-out offer. It was nice to have money off the bill, but service was a bit slow as the poor waitress struggled to keep up with all the people she had to serve with just one barman for help.
The following day we went by bus (again, our first for many months) to East Wittering to join friends on their beach holiday as we always do. The morning was warm and sunny, the afternoon, spent on the beach, less so, and windy, so shorts were exchanged for jeans, and jackets added! A Spitfire flew past a few times, and a Chinook helicopter seemed to be engaged in some sort of exercise on the Solent which was interesting to watch. After dinner we returned to Chichester and our second night at our hotel. Social distancing was not quite so easy that day, but we had exclusive use of a towel for washing, were outside as much as possible and touched no-one. Tough, but we are becoming used to it now.
A drafty afternoon on the beach!
Before we left home I had sent a message to my scattered family to tell them we’d be away in Chichester for these few days, and one son wrote beck to say that he his family were in Worthing and could we meet up. This fitted rather well because the theatre trip originally planned for the third evening had been cancelled and we had been contemplating a trip along the coast with Worthing the most likely destination! Some things were meant to be, so to Worthing (well, West Worthing, actually) we went, had coffee on the seafront and then joined family for lunch at their Air B&B, which was wonderful, and then we all went to the beach together, with no need to wrap up warm this time! I must admit I quite liked Worthing, and not really in spite of its "retirement home" image, either, but rather, now that I am retired myself, because of it! There is a lovely new block of retirement apartments near the beach with all the usual shops, a café and a pub nearby and on a bus route .... but I digress! We travelled to Worthing and back by Southern Railway and the trips went well both ways. There was just enough space on the trains for us to keep a decent distance from other travellers, and plenty of space on stations, but we needed, as the government advises, to stay alert.
Returning to Chichester we bought snacks in town to have in our room for supper, having eaten so well at the family barbecue at lunchtime.
On our final morning we made sure we had a substantial breakfast, with the intention of not taking lunch with us on the train but waiting until we arrived at home to eat. The journey is really quite quick, but there is no catering on Thameslink trains even in normal times and with no substantial break in the journey there is no opportunity to buy anything once we start. I do think Thameslink are missing an opportunity here with such a long route, although perhaps not at present. The train never really filled up even on the London section, and I was shocked at how few cars were in the station car park at Peterborough: we are a very long way from being back to normal yet.
All three of our trains were on time on the return journey and both changes went very slickly, at Crawley and at Peterborough. The weather was beginning to warm up, with temperatures well over thirty degrees forecast for the next couple of days, and as well as preparing dinner, watering the garden was a priority for the evening when we reached home!
We enjoyed our break but I am really looking forward to the day we can stop wearing face-coverings on buses and trains. And it was not improved by the phone call from Great Rail Journeys while we were on the beach informing us that our escorted tour of Italy in October has had to be cancelled as so many others had dropped out. That means that all of my trips managed by others have now been cancelled and the only ones still taking place are ones I have arranged myself. Interesting ... perhaps it is time to plan another group outing! And meanwhile I need to claim Delay Repay for compensation for the late arrival on the outward journey.
Well, over the last week or two I have bought train tickets for our August excursions. One of these trips I had almost decided would have to be done by road, and I really was not looking forward to that, and the other two have had to be cut short because of cancellations and other complications arising from the coronavirus pandemic. They are all long journeys and involve changes of train, and although I have been able to minimise the number of changes I am still concerned that if we miss a connection owing to late running we may not be able to board a subsequent train if it is deemed "full" by social-distancing regulations. I am also, I must admit, not overjoyed at the prospect of wearing a face-covering for a long journey, even though the journeys will be broken by mealtimes when we can temporarily remove them. It is also unclear at present what catering will be offered, if any, on the services we shall be using, so we shall take our own provisions.
Coastway train approaching Chichester
These will be our first train journeys since February and the first long ones since last autumn, so I am looking forward to them immensely even with the foregoing concerns! The first will be our usual trip to Chichester where we shall meet our friends holidaying on the south coast at Bracklesham Bay. We are omitting the originally-planned few days on the Isle of Wight which were going to precede it because of the uncertainty of how we might have been able to get there: these trips require advance planning and there was no way of working out what would be operating and what would not, and if we could not cross the Solent we could not get there - and that was one trip for which I definitely did not want to take the car, too. We can manage that with just two changes, using a Thameslink service right through from Peterborough to East Croydon - slow but simple, and the trains are spacious. We'll do that in Standard Class as there is little to be gained from First.
The next is a family gathering on the Purbeck peninsula in Dorset, and we'll be travelling via Birmingham New Street to Bournemouth by Cross Country Trains and then open-top bus to the hotel. This is the journey we had always planned to do, although I might have chosen to go one way via London and the other via Birmingham, but although much longer the Birmingham route is so much simpler and involves just the one change of train - the reduced frequencies do mean a long layover in New Street but it is at lunch time so we can eat there.
Finally there is Edinburgh. This was to have been a couple of nights before a Royal Scotsman tour of the Highlands, but that had to be cancelled by Belmond, the provider, because although they could manage financially with only half a load, all the rest of the booked passengers were American and would be unable to get to Scotland. So we are just going to spend the weekend in Edinburgh and come home: the Royal Scotsman will have to wait for another year, if, indeed, Belmond is still in business another year. It is all very difficult to plan anything at present.
In the autumn, all being well, we are due to go to Italy with Great Rail Journeys, but who knows? we could be in the midst of a second wave of coronavirus by then, with international travel curtailed. Next year? Well, that is anyone's guess. We'd like to pick up the Scottish rail tour and to return to Le Locle, Switzerland, in the late spring when the lakes and rivers are full, and to visit the Isle of Wight again. The putative trip to the USA is pushed back further and if Amtrak does not survive it may never happen.
The Market Deeping Model Railway Club of which I am a member often exhibits a layout at exhibitions around the East Midlands and beyond, and I volunteered to help operate its "Canons Cross" 00 gauge layout at the Festival of British Railway Modelling this month at Doncaster Racecourse. The way it worked was that four members drove to the venue on Friday with the layout packed in two cars and stayed over the exhibition weekend in a local hotel, then two more members travelled to join them on each of the two open days of the exhibition. I opted to attend on the Saturday and booked train tickets with LNER from Peterborough to Doncaster (just £5.75 each way, Advance Standard Class with my Senior Railcard) and with Cross Country from my local station to Peterborough and back.
Some dreadful weather, Storm Ciara, was threatened for the Sunday but Saturday was expected to be OK (although a cold start), and I set off from home for the 07:19 East Midlands Railway train bound for Norwich which I left at Peterborough to meet another club member to travel together on the 07:53 Leeds train as far as Doncaster. We'd had a rather scary email message a couple of days earlier from LNER saying that our booked service would be operated by a 5-coach Azuma train instead of the planned 9-coach InterCity 225 so there would be no seat reservations and it may even be that we may not be able to board at all so our tickets would be valid on the following train (just 5 minutes later, but stopping several times whereas our planned train was non-stop between Peterborough and Doncaster). In the event our little train came in from London with a couple of dozen passengers on board and just another couple of dozen waiting at Peterborough, so we found ourselves sharing a coach with about two other people! As we boarded the buffet counter was right in front of us so we bought coffee and and pastries for breakfast and took our seats, talking club business, as you do, all the way to Doncaster. I had heard many comments about the hard seats in Standard Class on these trains but I was very happy with mine and would recommend them wholeheartedly. Even in Standard I was able to keep my smartphone charged with a socket by my seat and had plenty of space to myself.
The express arrives at platform 2 at
Canons Cross, Southern Region BR
At Doncaster we walked round the corner to the bus station and asked about buses to the racecourse. While there are many service buses that would take us close to the venue, there was a service numbered 101 which was direct to the racecourse for the event and which was about to leave, so we hopped on board and were taken, the only two passengers, straight to the front door. Visitors were already queuing for the opening, still half-an-hour away, but we went straight in and explained that we were exhibitors and needed to have our passes, which our colleagues who'd arrived the previous day had ready for us. and so began a thoroughly enjoyable day of operating model trains and chatting to visitors at one of the nation's larger model railway shows. I had never operated this particular layout before and was given plenty of instruction by my more-experienced colleagues and had a really great time. When you realise what an effort it is to remove a steam locomotive from an arriving train, take to be turned, coaled and watered and then returning it to its train, compared with driving an electric multiple unit in and then just driving it out again you soon see why the full-size railway has done away with steam traction!
We had many visitors watching us and as the day wore on the numbers thinned dramatically just before closing time and this was a good opportunity to have a look at other layouts and the trade stands before it was time to head back to the station for the train home. Having an Advance ticket meant that I had to await my booked train (you have to sacrifice something to get such a cheap ticket!) so I saw two other trains to Peterborough leave before my own ... a good reason to have a pint of real ale from the neat little Draughtsman Alehouse on platform 3, sitting outside and watching the trains go by. There were many services I expected to see, to Leeds, Sheffield, the north, north Lincolnshire and south Yorkshire, but some surprises, too. One train, from York, was going to London St Pancras International, which I had not expected to see: it was an East Midlands Railway service via Sheffield and Derby and although not a quick way to London provided some useful journey possibilities on the way; another was to Southampton Central - not a destination I expected to see at Doncaster: it just goes to show how far you can get with no or just one change of train.
I used the Seatfrog app for the first time. This allows ticket-holders to bid in auction for First Class upgrades to their Standard Class tickets, and I won an upgrade for just £10. Given that the train was again lightly-loaded I am not sure I needed First Class, really, but I did once more share a coach with just a handful of other people and had very personal attention from the First Class host. This was one of the trains that stop at all the intermediate stops but never less I was soon in Peterborough where there was just a short wait for my Cross Country train to Stamford.
It had been a brilliant day in the company of some good friends and lots of appreciative strangers and I had had some great train rides as well.
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I do not travel to Lincoln as often as I used to do before I retired, but I have kept some interests there and occasionally have to attend meetings in the city. When I had to go this week I booked my tickets in advance so that I could use LNER’s new service between Peterborough and Lincoln, and I even managed to book First Class for the return leg, still saving money on the route I normally used to use via Spalding with East Midlands Railway. Not quite as quick, but I was hoping for rather more comfort than the single-car trains with insufficient legroom used on the other route.
On the way top Lincoln I was travelling Standard Class on one of LNER's legacy electric trains and I bought some lunch at Peterborough station while awaiting my connection. I had to change trains at Newark Northgate on this leg of the journey, so one more change that I used to have to make going the other way: through trains to and from Lincoln by LNER's route are only two-hourly, whereas the little East Midlands trains are slow but hourly. I was pleased at Newark to see that the connecting train to Lincoln, also provided by East Midlands Railway, now had two coaches and consequently was not overcrowded as they often used to be. As this train was going forward from Lincoln to provide the next service towards Peterborough via Spalding I could see that the shortage of coaches on that route was at last being addressed. I need no longer worry on that score if I chose in future to travel by that route.
My train arrived just a little early into Lincoln, as they often do, and I walked across to the bus station to ride up to the Cathedral and then walk round to my meeting, arriving nicely in time.
Early evening at Lincoln Central
When my meetings were over and it was time to come home I walked down the hill to the station, having plenty of time before my LNER through train to Peterborough. Lincoln station was very busy with people going home from work, college and shopping, with a variety of local and regional trains going to all sorts of places, and not a single-car train in sight! Nor a "Pacer" unit with four-wheeled coaches; every train had improved beyond what we used to see here just a few weeks ago, and then, to cap it all, in came my train to Peterborough, a London-bound LNER "Azuma".
This was a brand-new class 800 5-car set operating a route which has been beefed-up from just once a day to five times, and I had a First Class ticket this time! The train cruised smoothly away from Lincoln station and into the night and I began catching up on email etc which had not received attention during my meetings, and before I knew it the train was stopping at Newark. I had been able to choose my seat reservation when I booked, and I had a single seat with table towards the end of a coach, very peaceful and convenient for the entrance, the luggage rack (which on this trip I did not actually need) and the toilet.
At Newark the diesel engines were switched off as the train was transferring to electric power for the rest of its run to London. On leaving Newark the at-seat catering trolley made its way through first class and I was served sandwiches and white wine - I was to dine at home later so I did not need any more than that, but I do hope the cooked meal was available for those going all the way to London (and I have no reason to believe it was not).
Although Azumas are no faster than the older electric trains in terms of top speed (both are capable of 140mph and restricted to 125 mph by line speed limits), the acceleration is far superior and departures are always quite a thrill; further, any delays are normally made up with very little difficulty and early arrivals are common, until the entire fleet has been updated and the timetable is rewritten to take the better performance into account, that is!
It was a good run and well worth the effort of booking in advance to grab the First Class journey home for less money than I usually pay for Standard! With East Midlands Railway promising a better timetable for its Lincolnshire services from December 2020 and the possibility of one or two more LNER services to Lincoln as well, the county is finally getting something approaching a decent train service. There will still be scope for more improvements, of course, with better trains to Scunthorpe, Grimsby and Cleethorpes badly needed, but whether anything can be done about the east Lincolnshire coast and Boston is another matter.
As if the November trip to Canterbury for my daughter's doctoral graduation were not enough, the long-planned group day out to Canterbury finally became reality in December, so I was there twice within about three weeks. The weather was similar, showery and cold, although not too cold, and there were gaps between the showers. We had not particularly aimed for a winter outing but by the time we had agreed a convenient date that was when it would have to be, and so it was!
When I was a young child I went with my parents to Kent every summer. My mother was from Margate and the only way we could see that part of the family was to have our summer holiday with them, for in those days annual leave was just the one week plus bank holidays. It was fortunate that my mother's family lived at a seaside town, so it was a good holiday, too! I have smashing memories of the train ride from Spalding or Kings Lynn to London (through locomotive-hauled express trains) and mixed memories of the struggle across to Victoria (no Victoria Line then) for the Kent coast trains to Margate, mentally ticking off the stopping places on the way. How different it is today! Main line trains no longer venture into south Lincolnshire or north Norfolk (see my recent post on the East Lincs Main Line) but the other end is so much better: High Speed trains now operate from St Pancras to many Kentish destinations, giving a simple cross-street change of stations in London and then a fast service into Kent. It is still a long way, but it is now easily possible to have a day trip to almost anywhere in Kent from our current home in Stamford, Lincolnshire, or probably from almost anywhere in the midlands.
Our little party gathered at our local station in time to catch the 08:00 Cross Country train to Peterborough. For some reason the reservation slips had not been put on our seats but as it happened most of them were unoccupied, and there were plenty of others nearby for those of us without our reserved seats. At Peterborough we had about half an hour before the scheduled departure of our connection to Kings Cross: I had arranged First Class tickets for that leg of the journey and a handful of the group took up the offer of free coffee and cake at the Great Northern Hotel that comes with First Class LNER tickets at Peterborough. We were soon on our way on one of LNER's remaining British Rail mk4 electric trains, a touch late but still in good time for our Southeastern Highspeed connection in London. Soon the coffee, fruit juice and croissants were brought round by the attentive First Class hosts. At Kings Cross we made our way through the concourse towards the main entrance to St Pancras, directly opposite, and via the escalators and lift to the Southeastern platforms. Our train, eventual destination Margate, was already waiting for us and the swifter-moving members of the party boarded quickly and "bagged" a couple of tables together while I made sure that those moving more slowly found their way to join them. I had to feel sorry for the unsuspecting member of the public who joined us and took up the eighth place at our tables ...
We left London exactly on time and accelerated out through the tunnelled High Speed One main line, emerging briefly for a stop at Stratford and then along the north Thames bank until tunnelling under the river at Dartford and emerging for the stop at Ebbsfleet. The final stop on HS1 was at Ashford where we waited a little longer while the train's pantograph was lowered and power pick-up transferred to the heritage third rail system for the rest of the trip to Canterbury (and beyond to Margate for the train, but not for us). Highlights of the trip (apart from the astonishing speed!) are the view of the Queen Elizabeth Bridge at Dartford, the crossing of the Medway estuary with views of the M2 motorway as well as the Medway towns, and the distinctive Kent countryside on the last stretch between Ashford and Canterbury.
The weather that greeted us in Canterbury was as expected: cold, but not too cold, and damp with intermittent drizzle, but no real rain (yet). I walked with the group into the heart of the city and we all went our separate ways. Most people had come with a list of places they wanted to see, obviously including the cathedral, but I had no real agenda myself, having been here many times and as recently as a couple of weeks earlier! I had thought of travelling by bus to Margate for old times' sake, but the weather was really not very conducive to enjoying a day at the seaside, so although I got as far as the bus station I decided against doing that. There were odd bits of Christmas shopping I wanted to do, and although Nason's department store was already closed and Debenham's was in the midst of its closing-down sale, Fenwick's was still going strong, as were many other shops. Canterbury is also one of those cities where it is a pleasure just to be there and walk the streets and enjoy the architecture. Somehow the day just went by!
I had my lunch at The Old Buttermarket pub opposite the Cathedral Gate hotel where I had stayed on my recent visit: the pub was closed for refurbishment then so it was good to try out now - I could small the fresh paint as I walked in through the doorway! Some excellent cooked meals with decent local ale were on offer and the temperature and the company of other customers were congenial ... and I was joined by some other members of the group, too. We use WhatsApp on these tours to keep track of each other and this was the first trip I had done where every member of the group was using it, and it was very effective. The three of us gathered at this pub decided to meet later at one nearer the station before catching the train back, and I messaged the whole group to suggest an informal rendezvous at The Bishop's Finger 45 minutes before departure, and even single one turned up (all of them before I did!).
When I remarked on her Unicorn ticket clipper, the nice train train manager kindly made these two special tickets for my senior (four years old!) granddaughters. How kind is that?
And so came the time to make our way to the station for the journey home. It was already dark, so there would be little to see. This time we took a local stopping train to Ashford where we changed for the Highspeed train to London. Ashford International is a convenient interchange station but it is not really an interesting or exciting place to wait for a train, and in the cold and drizzle all we wanted was a train! I did buy a hot chocolate from a buffet counter on the platform, which was warming and pleasant. Everyone was chatting excitedly about what they had done and seen on their day in Canterbury and I briefed them on the next stage of the journey: from Kings Cross we were to travel on one of LNER's new ten-coach Azuma trains, made of to five-car sets couple together, so it was vital to board the correct coach, or, at least, one nearby in the correct half of the train. Again we were travelling First Class and we had time to wait in the lounge at Kings Cross while the train was prepared. Slightly distressing, the escalator down to our platform was out of order, so we had to take two turns to get the whole group down via the lift. We did have reserved seats, which were reserved, so there was no hurry to get to them, but with some of the group having mobility issues I was a bit on edge until everyone was in the correct coach. I could have done without one couple announcing that they had lost their tickets and railcards at this stage ... later found in a hat, of all places, fortunately before they were required for inspection. This was by far the most complex of these day trips I had arranged and everyone had six ticket coupons plus separate compulsory reservation coupons for some legs of the journey, so it was very easy to get tickets confused. I may have to reconsider my policy of giving everyone all their tickets at the start of the day ...
The usual snack meal available to short-journey passengers was served on the way back to Peterborough and we arrived just slightly early there so that even with some mobility difficulties we all managed to catch the very tight East Midlands Railway connecting train to Stamford rather than having to wait half an hour for the usual Cross Country train. We made our way over the footbridge at Stamford and said our farewells - the walk home allowed me the chance to relax and thus soon to sleep after an exciting day out with half-a-dozen friends.
I have to say that we met some wonderful train staff and station staff throughout this day. I don't think I have ever enjoyed the company of so many cheerful and helpful railway employees in one day. All our trains were either on time or so nearly so that it made no difference to us, and all were clean and had enough space for us. Given the amount of time we spent on the railway, these aspects mattered to our enjoyment of the day, and they certainly contributed to it. Some members of the party do not often (or ever) travel First Class, so it was an introduction for them - I did emphasise that it is inexpensive because of boring three months in advance which cannot always be done. Whether it is affordable otherwise is a decision which each of us would have to make depending on our means and other calls on our funds.
Where to next? Well, it is probably time to organise another party in a brewery ... See my Come with me! page for details of how to join us.
