Five Meet in Dorset

An old-fashioned family adventure by train, bus and ferry

If you want an adventure holiday and enjoyed Enid Blyton’s stories when you were young, The ideal place to stay is a hotel in a time warp in Dorset, a turn-of-the-century house which has been a hotel since the mid-twentieth century, where Enid Blyton used to stay during the period when she was writing many of her children’s books and when she conceived the Noddy stories. The Knoll House Hotel is in unique landscape on the Purbeck peninsula in Dorset, southern England, less than five minutes walk from Knoll Beach which, like much of the coastal landscape of the area, is owned and managed by the National Trust. It makes a great base for exploring on foot, by bicycle, bus or, if you must, by car.

We took our family there as part of the celebration of a significant wedding anniversary; we were eight adults and five young children, in three family suites and our own sea-view double room, coming from several different directions. We went, of course, by train and bus and on this occasion took one of the grandchildren with us on our adventure, the other four going with their respective parents by car. We’d had the hotel rooms booked well in advance but booking the travel and activities was greatly disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic of 2020. For a long time it appeared that we may well have had to drive and there would be little to do other than visit the beach and go for walks. Just in time the restrictions began to be eased and I was able to book train travel and then even book an exciting family outing for one of the days.

We left Stamford, with our four year-old granddaughter, on a Friday morning, the first dull day after several long, hot, sunny days ... such is the way things work out! We were travelling First Class on a CrossCountry train for Birmingham New Street. There were no bargain tickets to be had but at least we had our Senior Railcards and the little girl went free-of-charge; I wanted First Class to make sure of enough space around a table, and electric sockets, especially since I was following pandemic advice and using electronic tickets on my smartphone which needed to keep its charge for a long time while sharing our location with the rest of the family. It all went very well and we had the First Class section to ourselves.

Owing to the reduced timetable we had over an hour to spare at Birmingham New Street so we went into the Grand Central shopping centre to find a cup of coffee between trains, and I have to say I was shocked to see how deserted it was. The John Lewis store there is among those the company has decided not to reopen and some other shops were also not yet open; about half the cafés and restaurants were closed and yet the one we used, Giraffe, had only a handful of other customers. So little activity in the very heart of the Second City was a sobering reminder of the dreadful economic impact of the pandemic. We went back to the station and had our picnic lunch that we had brought with us and then made our way to the platform and boarded our train to Bournemouth. Travelwise this was the most exciting part of the trip for me, for I had long wanted to go this way, through the south midlands from Birmingham, through the New Forest and along the south coast to Bournemouth where we were to take a bus for the final stage of the journey. 

This train ride begins with the slow wander through the edge of Birmingham, Coventry and Leamington Spa in order to serve the airport and National Exhibition Centre at Birmingham International, and then heads down to Oxford and Reading where the train changes direction to take the line south through Basingstoke to Southampton and then Bournemouth. Although the train service is less frequent, the trains are longer and there is no difficulty keeping a decent distance from other passengers: Cross Country does not sell more tickets for a train that the train will be able to take safely. A limited amount of on-board catering has now been reintroduced and we were able to enjoy coffee and biscuits included in our ticket price. Further items were available for payment if we had wanted them, but currently only snacks. It all worked very well and both the trains to Birmingham and onward to Bournemouth were on time. We had a very pleasant journey.

Our little companion was excited to see the aircraft at Birmingham International Airport (plenty on the ground, none in the air at present), and I enjoyed the New Forest countryside, and the short run along the Great Western main line between Didcot and Reading. There is an enormous mix of landscape and cityscape, fast main lines and meandering single-track branches on this route, ending in the impressive station at Bournemouth. Many years ago, trainspotting at New Street in my student days, I used to hear the announcements for these trains which in those days went straight down to Leamington Spa without the detour via the then non-existent International station and went on beyond Bournemouth to Poole, and I always wanted to try this route for its variety and for the length of it. It was never fast but it was always a useful route, and I remember seeing whole carriages reserved for Saga Holidays, filled with people like I am now ...

The view from the open-top bus as we dock at Studland. A similar bus for
Bournemouth is waiting to board.

At Bournemouth we left the train and sought the adjacent bus station. First mistake was leaving via the wrong exit and not seeing the expected bus station head of us; second was crossing to the right exit via the stepped footbridge, not having noticed the ramped subway which would have been much easier with a child and wheeled luggage! Anyway, with only fifteen minutes to go until the departure of our bus (although there was another half and hour later, so it was not critical) we still had plenty of time to get to it, board and pay our fare. Fortunately the thunder and rain which had been forecast only a few days earlier had pushed back until much later and we were able to ride on the top deck of this open-top bus, the Purbeck Breezer, More Bus route 50. This route has a stop right outside the Knoll House Hotel and named after the hotel, so it was as good as a taxi: we boarded it and asked for the Knoll House Hotel and that is where it took us. It is a long ride and an interesting one, right past the popular Bournemouth beach, though the town centre and through the leafy and very expensive residential areas of Branksome and Canford Cliffs, descending right into Branksome Chine, then along the rim of Poole Harbour to Sandbanks (probably the most expensive residential land in the UK) where the bus boards the chain ferry for Studland, the last couple of miles of our journey being through the dunes and heather of Studland before reaching the Knoll House Hotel where the bus stops right opposite the entrance. We were delighted to be met by all the rest of our family who had arrived earlier (they all live nearer than we do) and had all come on this occasion by car (and for some, had endured quite a slog of a journey, although it was quite reasonable for those from London). We reckon we had had the best views of the sea, and especially the ferry crossing, though, from the top of our bus. And all were to enjoy an open-top bus ride the next day.

The three young families had family suites at the back of the hotel, with bedrooms for the adults and the children, with cots for the youngest; this hotel is very much set up for children's holidays and we think that in its early days the children and their nannies were sent here while parents went elsewhere! We had a double room at the front with a balcony overlooking the sea beyond the hotel's extensive grounds, and once we had checked in and unpacked all of us gathered for drinks and then dinner together. With four children under five and one only five there was not much time in any one meal when all thirteen of us were at the table at the same time, but nevertheless throughout the whole weekend of dinners and breakfasts we had a really great time together and I can thoroughly recommend this place for such a gathering: the hotel is used to doing it (there was one group of nineteen people) and the staff are brilliant at coping. After dinner the two over-sixties went for a stroll down to the beach and then retired to bed to be ready for the following day's adventure.

The need to book everything in advance as the nation eases out of the pandemic "lockdown" meant that the weekend could not be spontaneous, and so although I was able to leave Sunday unplanned for the beach or a day out by bus, for example, the programme for Saturday's outing to Corfe Castle had to be tightly planned, often with virtual crossed fingers, in order for it to stand any chance of working. I booked timed entry to Corfe Castle, a National Trust site, for all of us and then attempted to book a Swanage Railway steam train ride from Swanage to Corfe Castle and back but their tickets could not be released until the Wednesday before the planned weekend ... it was a bit-nailbiting but we managed it and I booked two compartments so that the family could travel together. All seats were allocated to individual passengers to ensure social distancing and waiting and boarding were carefully managed both at Swanage and at Corfe Castle to keep people apart as much as possible.

So we all (well, one toddler was asleep so some had to catch us up later, but that is another, boring, story!) gathered at the bus stop on Saturday morning and awaited the open-top bus to Swanage. This section of the route is quite a ride: there are many overhanging trees and some bends and hills and it is an exhilarating trip! At Swanage there is a good, though short, view of the beach before the bus turns towards the town centre and terminates right outside the preserved railway station building. Although I had booked in advance I had to take the email with my booking reference to the ticket office to collect the actual tickets which authorised the party to go onto the platform. The children were all given souvenir tickets by the gate staff which was rather sweet. We watched the train come in hauled by a Battle of Britain class pacific, a huge locomotive for a line and a train like this, then we watched the locomotive uncouple to run round to the other end of the train before we found our reserved compartments and settled ourselves onto the train.

We steamed to Corfe Castle station arriving at a good time for lunch. It was not the warm, sunny day that I had dreamed of while planning the trip but it was dry and not cold, and we followed the advice posted on lamp-posts through the village to picnic in a park off one of the streets, which really worked quite well. We had been to this place a few times before and never discovered the picnic site, but during the pandemic the local council is keen to prevent too many people congregating in the main square outside the castle entrance. We had packed lunches provided by the hotel and then all made our way to the castle itself. As with all National Trust poverties at present this was booked in advance and we simply had to give our names to be admitted (well, my name, as I had booked and paid). We all learnt a lot (well, the younger adults did, but I had a very thorough visit here a few years ago and to me it was a revision session!) and the children enjoyed clambering over the ruins and hearing about the dungeons and the medieval way of life. As usual, from the castle we saw trains coming and going on the preserved railway line below. The weather remained murky throughout, but not cold and with very little rain.

Tea and coffee were consumed before we left the castle, and some of us visited the National Trust shop on the village square and then we made our way in good time to the station, taking the opportunity to visit the little museum there while awaiting the steam train back to Swanage. A slight hitch occurred here when both our reserved compartments turned up occupied by couples who had boarded at the train's starting point at Norden and had not read the reservation information on their tickets: the train's guard turfed them out into their proper places and we took ours - considering that the reservations are part of the Covid-secure regulations on the line, these people were clearly not obeying the government's advice to stay alert.

At Swanage there was time to watch the train, the last steam train of the day, reversing out of the station to its overnight servicing. Two trains were operating that day, the other hauled by a class 33 vintage diesel service, which we saw passing Corfe Castle a couple of times and which will have been making its last run 40 minutes after ours, by which time we were ensconced on the top deck of the next Purbeck Breezer bus back to Knoll House Hotel.

Knoll House's restaurant served yet another great meal. We all agreed that the food at this hotel was excellent, far better than we had expected from the description "family hotel", and the sort of meal you would expect for a special-occasion restaurant meal. Drinks and other extras were charged-for, but the basic dinner was included in the room rate and it was altogether a very good deal indeed. We went for a stroll along the beach at sunset with one of our sons, by which time the view across the sea was a little clearer and the Isle of Wight was visible, along with three cruise ships resting at anchor, unable to operate because of the pandemic.

On the Sunday nothing had been planned and the weather forecast was fairly dire. However, we did agree to go down to the beach mid-morning and after delaying it for half an hour because of heavy rain we did venture out, encountering occasional light showers but remaining reasonably warm (although those who went into the sea were not as warm as those who didn't!). I spent much of the time shuttling off to the National Trust coffee bar watching the morning coffee for the three groups arriving at different times dictated by the sleep patterns of the youngest children ... I think all the adults got their coffee in the end. The first trip to the shop also included plastic buckets for building sandcastles, and one of these went back partly filled with shells from the beach. This really was a very traditional family beach holiday and it was great to enjoy it all together as one big family. At lunch time the younger generations enjoyed a bar meal together at the hotel while we made a snack lunch in our room out of what was left from our packed lunches of the previous two days! There was plenty for the two of us.

In the afternoon each household followed its own agenda, ours being a walk to Studland village across the fields from the hotel, following a signposted bridleway and footpath. From the village we walked down to the beach: this was South Beach, a small, fairly secluded beach for the village, but with a fair number of visitors even though the car park was closed. We walked northwards towards Middle Beach, which segues into Knoll Beach, by means of which we could return to the hotel. We set off encouraged by the sign that Middle Beach could not be reached at high tide, for the tide, although just beginning to come in, was still very low. However, getting to Middle Beach was not exactly a breeze even at low tide, involving scrambling over uneven and slippery rocks and chasing some very muddy sand and fairly stinky seaweed, too. But it was fun, if not easy! After all this effort, actually to land on the sand at Middle Beach still looked like defeating us when we encountered the works being done to repair erosion, but by sidling along a retaining wall we were able to gain the path up to a promenade behind the beach, coming across a handy tea room in the process where we stopped for tea before completing our walk back to Knoll Beach and the Knoll House Hotel, ready for the pre-booked family swim in the little indoor pool (there is a larger outdoor one, too, but this had not been open when the booking was made). Then we just had time to prepare for our last hotel dinner and a final stroll before bed.

Travel money seller in Bournemouth tries
desperately to draw attention to himself
at a time when no-one is going abroad.

On our last morning we all had breakfast together and said our farewells, some of the children reluctant to leave! With one granddaughter we waited for the 09:35 Breezer bus back to Bournemouth via the Sandbanks ferry. The rest of the family was leaving at about the same time by their different ways and we all kept in touch on the way home. None of the children seemed to want to go home, apart from the very youngest who had spent the whole weekend being carried or strapped into one sort of seat or another. We took a bus rather earlier than we needed to catch our train at Bournemouth and had a coffee break before the train, but with the coffee shop on the station being closed we found ourselves in the McDonald's opposite, the already cheap drinks being reduced by the government's "Eat Out to Help Out" subsidy - not that we were looking for a bargain. The train journey home was much as the one out, with our packed lunch supplied by the hotel, having been ordered the evening before, and a rather shorter wait at New Street. It seemed no time at all before we were collecting our luggage and donning our rainwear for the walk home through the darkening weather, with the distant rumble of thunder, arriving just in time before the rain began. It had been a great weekend and the whole family seems determined to do something like it again. For us it was a demonstration that rail and bus adventures can still be done, although the feel is very different without the usual catering, with less frequent trains and with the need to book absolutely everything in advance.

There'll Be Bluebirds Over the White Cliffs of Dover

"Sailors" buying tickets for an "essential journey" on the
Severn Valley Railway at a forties weekend

I write in my fourth week of confinement to my home, save for the essential daily exercise (which is in fact rather less than daily because we have found plenty to do at home and don't always drag ourselves out!) and the essential occasional delivery of groceries etc to a relative in his nineties who is not going out at all. As the so-called coronavirus "lockdown" continues I am really missing the freedom to travel, even if only to the next town! By now three trips to London for various purposes have not happened, a wedding next month will not be happening, and Easter in Canterbury did not happen, and nor will the planned group outing to the brewery at Wainfleet All Saints.

Worst of all is not knowing whether our special tours planned for later in the summer to mark our fortieth wedding anniversary will happen: nothing has been cancelled yet and all bookings still stand for the time being, but no-one knows whether that will continue to be the case. meanwhile I have no idea when I shall be able to book Advance rail tickets and no inclination to make firm plans for any further trips. There is still a booking for a tour of Italy in the autumn and I hope that is far enough in the future to go ahead, but who knows? If there is a second wave of the Covid-19 outbreak then perhaps autumn tours will also be at risk. Ironically, that tour was supposed to be happening right now but had already been postponed for other reasons!

So I am stuck at home, neither travelling nor enjoying my time planning any travel except in the vaguest sense of thinking about where to go and when "when all this is over," as people keep saying, reminiscent, so I understand, of wartime! Our mental list, which I really must get round to writing down, will have to be ticked off a bit faster once we are able to leave home again, and I fear that the railway service will not be quite the same - how sad that so much investment will leave travel companies, like every other business, with little or no income for so long. What will train travel be like "when all this is over"?

One thing I have been doing, and much quicker than I imagined possible, is constructing my new model railway layout which is a reminder of holidays in Switzerland and based upon the RhätischeBahn in Graubunden canton. I hope to write separate series of posts about that in due course. Meanwhile, I thought I would write a piece now on the (vague) plans for where to go when this is all over - bearing in mind that it could be any time of any year and that the UK and other nations will not necessarily open up together and that "Brexit" may yet complicate things. I have just applied to renew my passport because although it does not expire until next March I may need to have six-months' validity beyond a travel date after September ...

United Kingdom Vague Plans

Whatever else we do, there must be a holiday in Britain some time, surely? The current plans for the summer stand for now, with hotels booked in Edinburgh and Chichester and on the Purbeck peninsula in Dorset, and a Royal Scotsman tour of the Scottish highlands. No other train tickets have been bought but I would now be thinking about it, and whether I should also book a hotel on the Isle of Wight, as we have done the last few years, to precede Chichester. Indeed I am thinking about whether I should book that hotel - provided that I can cancel it again if necessary. And should we drive to Dorset in case the trains are not back to something like normal? Meanwhile, though, we can begin to plan next year!

A priority next year will be to book again anything we have not been able to do of our Ruby Wedding celebration tours, that is the Royal Scotsman and the country hotel in Dorset with all the family, but we do not yet know if we shall need to do that! Otherwise, we have yet to visit the English Lakes, easy with a change of train at Birmingham New Street for us, and we'd like to go to Liverpool, for which I had already begun basic gathering of information. I am also beginning to miss Cornwall, so it is time to go there once more, perhaps trying the refreshed Night Riviera service, assuming it resumes after all this is over ... And local trips to East Anglia and Lincolnshire will be back on the impulse-travel list!

Europe Vague Plans

Assuming that the Italy trip in the autumn is OK, we can plan other trips to the continent, but if that is cancelled we shall rely on Great Rail Journeys to come up with something similar for next spring, again, assuming the business is still operating then.

We were also intending to return to Le Locle in late spring to enjoy the lake at Les Brenets when it still has plenty of water in it from the Jura meltwater and to do a little more ancestor research. So that would be the trips "hung over" from this year. Otherwise we should like to return to the French Riviera and I think that would be a fitting celebratory tour when this is all over, an emphatic return to normal - but it remains to be seen, of course, whether there is enough demand for travel for all that still to be available.

I do hope that the railways will be able to bounce back. Less commuting, maybe, as people learn to work from home when they can, but if people can also learn to enjoy the world as it is with fewer cars on the road and fewer aeroplanes in the sky, then just perhaps the railways and buses can come into their own, once we have the confidence to sit near strangers again. A world of just five weeks ago seems almost as remote now as the 1940s ...

Yarmouth (no, the other one ...) and Chichester

Ready to go!

Summer holiday by rail on the south coast of England

I recently had an interesting conversation with an Australian lady at Yarmouth bus station on the Isle of Wight, off the coast of Hampshire, England. When we arrived to wait the few minutes for our bus she was engaged in a telephone call and when she had finished she told us that she had booked a hire car but it was on the other side of England in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk! The car-hire company had misunderstood her desire for a car in Yarmouth, and being a visitor to the UK it had not occurred to her to say, "Yarmouth, Isle of Wight," when making her booking; she had probably never heard of Norfolk. It really was the duty of the firm's call handler to enquire which Yarmouth she meant, surely, rather than assume it must be the big one - especially as that one is, strictly, Great Yarmouth. Woe betide anyone asking for a car in Newport, for that could end up anywhere.

I was in Yarmouth at the start of the latest of my south coast summer holidays. We always include a few days in Chichester in order to visit friends who regularly stay a week at nearby East Wittering, in Bracklesham Bay, and we precede and sometimes follow those few days with a visit or two to other places in the area on the way. In the last two summers we have stayed a few nights in Shanklin on the east coast of the Isle of Wight, and this year we decided to stay at the other end of the island, which involved a little research into both travel and accommodation, since I had only ever been there once before, which was by car (two cars, actually, for there were many of us) and in a self-catering holiday flat. I knew that there was a ferry from Lymington but that was about all I knew until I turned to the internet and looked at maps, hotel information and rail/ferry timetables.

Our planning chart for this year's south coast
summer holiday

The Lymington ferry by Wightlink goes across the Solent to Yarmouth every half-hour and connects this side with shuttle trains to and from Brockenhurst where neat connections are made with fast trains to and from London. There is no railway at the west end of the Isle of Wight and so although it is quite possible to complete a journey by bus I decided to start the search for a suitable hotel or bed-and-breakfast in Yarmouth. I soon came up with the George Hotel, just a few steps from the ferry terminal and with great reviews - and it had vacancies for the dates we needed. I snapped up three nights bed and breakfast at the George Hotel and then set to work to book a stay in Chichester. Our usual lodgings at 4 Canon Lane could not have us for the days we wanted, so I looked further and booked four nights at the Chichester Harbour Spa Hotel, nowhere near the harbour and not as near to the railway station as we have been before, but perfectly acceptable. I then waited a few months until the Advance rail tickets became available so that I could try to get good prices on First Class train travel and booked those: through to Yarmouth from London Waterloo, Peterborough to and from London Kings Cross, and Stamford to and from Peterborough; then there was Ryde to Chichester and Chichester to London Victoria. Everything else would be done by Oyster in London and contactless bus fare (and my senior citizens' concession pass) on the Isle of Wight.

Planning done and tickets bought we waited for the day of departure and set off with our cases to our local station to await our first train, the short hop to Peterborough for our LNER fast train to London. We did this section in standard class as usual and had our seats reserved near the luggage rack to make things easy for this quick trip. We had a little while to wait at Peterborough, but our First Class tickets from there to London include coffee and cake in the coffee bar of the Great Northern Hotel in Peterborough and that was where we awaited our connection, which, like all the other trains on this trip, was on time. The train to London was one of the old diesel High Speed Trains, now over forty years old but still providing excellent front-line service: would this be our last ride on one of these on this line, now that they are being replaced gradually by the new "Azuma" trains? We were served the usual drink and biscuits on the way to Kings Cross.

In London we made our way by Underground to Waterloo station. It was now after noon and I had allowed time for lunch before our booked departure for Yarmouth, so we had lunch at Auberge, a French restaurant right opposite the exit from the Underground at Waterloo, and then strolled along the Thames for a few minutes before going back to catch our train. We do like to enjoy the journey as part of the holiday, and how well this compared with the frantic search for a roadside restaurant, or, worse, the current type of fast-food motorway services!

The ferry Wight Sun docked beside Yarmouth Castle. We
had arrived a little earlier on Wight Sky. Our hotel, the
George, is on the left of the castle. Taken from the pier.

We travelled First Class to the ferry at Lymington: our fast train from London called at Brockenhurst in the New Forest where we changed into a connecting branch line train to Lymington Pier where our ferry was waiting. We had through tickets from London to Yarmouth so there was no fuss and with every train on time everything went smoothly - and we were comfortable in the knowledge that had something gone wrong there were half-hourly ferry crossings long after our intended one was due to sail. The First Class fare Waterloo to Yarmouth was just £19.60 each, including ferry! The ferry was a pleasant crossing with a buffet from which we enjoyed a cup of tea - no food necessary after a good lunch.

Once ashore, it was a very short walk around the corner to The George where we were shown to our very comfortable room, described as "cosy" by the receptionist, but nevertheless quite spacious and well-equipped. After unpacking we set off to explore Yarmouth, which is a very small town with a population of around 800 people but which receives a lot of visitors, many of them in their own boats. We visited the pier, which was built for the London South Western Railway as the terminal for passenger ferries before the service was upgraded to take vehicles as well. Now it is there for fun and for heritage and has recently been restored. The story of its restoration is interesting in itself and the toll of 50p well worth paying. The views of the town from the pier are good, too.

We walked along the shore and then along the disused railway line, now a bridleway and cycle track, as far as the former station which is now a café-restaurant with a strong railway theme. We promised ourselves we would return one day - it does not stay open for dinner and was closed when we went by. For now we returned to the town centre and had a great dinner at Jireh House, the former town hall now a restaurant and B&B.

And so to bed. Was this really only the end of the first day?! By the end of the next day it felt like we'd been there for a week ...

Freshwater Bay

The next day, Friday, was forecast to have by far the best weather of our time away so we decided that it would be the best day for exploring the west of the island and in particular for our visit to The Needles. The whole of the Needles headland is owned and cared-for by the National Trust and has an amazing amount of history in such a tiny area. It is quite a walk up to the Old and New Batteries (of which more shortly) and the view of the pointed rocky outcrops called The Needles with their lighthouse protecting shipping from them, but for its members the National Trust subsidises the bus fare on the Needles Breezer open-top tour bus, and this bus is the only one which goes right to the top, the ordinary services terminating at the "visitor attraction," which is also as far as you can get by car.
We took the Needles Breezer from Yarmouth bus station with our National Trust half-price Rover tickets and broke our journey for half an hour at Freshwater Bay where we had a brief walk along the beach before boarding the next Breezer on which we stayed up to its turning point at the Old Battery. There (after a cup of coffee in the 1940s-themed tea room) we climbed down to the tunnel to the searchlight position from which a brilliant view of The Needles and their lighthouse was to be had, and then explored the changing history of the Old Battery right up to its time as the "eyes" of the New Battery in twentieth-century conflicts.

The Recording Room at the rocket research facility

At what was once the New Battery we discovered the beginning and untimely end of the British contribution to space exploration. It was here at two gantries that British rockets were test-fired before being launched at Woomera in Australia. There was just one British satellite launched by a British rocket (built at Cowes on the Isle of Wight), before HM Government pulled the funding and British participation in space exploration came crashing down from its leading place to a cameo rôle. (Perhaps there is a lesson here for those who like to blame Johnny Foreigner for our nation's woes: how about having enough confidence in our own place in the world to put our money behind it?)

We walked down to the Needles Landmark Attraction, as the visitor site at the neck of the headland is called, with a stunning view of the Alum Bay multi-coloured cliffs and sands on the way. There we caught the Needles Breezer bus back to Yarmouth and made our way to Off The Rails, the railway-themed restaurant, for a very late lunch, just before their 4pm closing time! The food and drink matched the superb quality of their railway-retro décor and style, and the service was very good, and friendly. The former railway line was busy with cyclists and it was clear that this is a popular meal stop for cyclists, many customers having cycling helmets with them, and some serious people were clad in Lycra!

Back into town we took the Needles Breezer one last time and stayed on it through Freshwater Bay and the Needles headland, getting off in Totland for a walk along the beach. There we saw that Totland Pier is being restored (much work needed!) and on our way north towards Colwell Bay we came across a landslip from several years ago where the footpath has only recently been reopened, by-passing the damaged section. We walked back up to the main road at Colwell Common and took a service bus back to our hotel for the night. It had been a brilliant day: great weather, much walking in the fresh air, a lot of new things learned, superb views from the top of the bus, and an excellent lunch in entertaining surroundings.

The Master Gunner's dining room at the castle

We had done in one day almost everything planned for two! After a leisurely breakfast on the Saturday we went to explore Yarmouth Castle. Looked after by English Heritage, Yarmouth Castle has a long history as a coastal defence battery along with Hurst Castle opposite on the English mainland and a number of other blockhouses and batteries along the Isle of Wight northern coast. They are often considered follies as they never fired a shot in defence of the realm, but when you look at the formidable firepower available they probably did an excellent job for centuries simply by being there: the real folly would have been on the part of any enemy captain who tried to get past them! These defences were erected after a French invasion of the island, and there was never another. Yarmouth Castle was designed to defend against a land attack also, in case an enemy landed from another direction with a view to establishing a base on the island and disabling the sea defences. It is fascinating to visit, and its history is intimately tied in with the one-time governor of the island whose home there is now The George hotel in which we were staying. We looked down from the castle walls on our breakfast table, and what was once the front entrance to the castle, with the Tudor arms over it, now faces into the hotel garden. We were there two hours altogether, including some time looking over the harbour (when the ferry was not obstructing the view!) and learning about local shipwrecks in a display in one of the rooms in the castle.

The castle's coffee shop is no longer open but we made a final visit to Off The Rails for coffee and cake to keep us going and then took a trip on the Island Coaster, another tour bus service by Southern Vectis, which lasted most of the rest of the day! This took us back down the west of the island to The Needles (but not onto the actual headland as the Needles Breezer had done) and then along the dramatic south coast of the island all the way to Ventnor and then back up though Shanklin and Bembridge, terminating at Ryde. It was not fast; it was not meant to be. This was a ride for the scenery and it was well worth it. We saw both coast and countryside that we had never visited before. After a very good fish and chip dinner at a restaurant on the seafront at Ryde we travelled back to Yarmouth on ordinary service buses with a change of bus at Newport. Southern Vectis provide an excellent service throughout the island with a range of helpful tickets which make getting about both simple and inexpensive. I now have a senior citizen's concessionary bus pass, but still have to pay for my wife's travel, and the Vectis 24-hour Rover ticket meant that after the afternoon's travelling there was still enough validity to get her to Ryde the following morning for the next stage of our holiday. (I did have to pay a fare for myself for the Island Coaster - reduced for a senior citizen - because as a leisure service it is not covered by the pass.)

And so after checking out of The George after breakfast on Sunday we set off by bus with our luggage, changing in Newport again, for Ryde. As it happened we boarded a bus to Ryde immediately after arriving from Yarmouth, and were well ahead of schedule. I had allowed time for lunch in Ryde but we did not need any after a good breakfast, and we had had our fish and chips the previous evening, so we went straight to the pier head on foot and boarded the catamaran that was just docking as we got there. It was a lovely sunny day so for the first time ever we travelled on the "sun deck" of the boat and arrived in Portsmouth two hours ahead of schedule. A Southern train was about to depart calling at Chichester so we hurried to board that and probably broke the record for travelling from Yarmouth to Chichester, if such a record exists, all by sheer chance!

Chichester is a wonderful little city (similar to our home town of Stamford, but rather bigger), and we very much enjoy spending time there. After checking in to the Chichester Harbour Spa Hotel we met our friends for an early-evening drink and then went for our evening meal at the Côte brasserie where we have eaten at least once every time we have been here (why? well, for no other reason than that it was the first restaurant we visited when we first came here five years earlier and we rather liked it!).

The following day, Monday, was our day to join our friends at the coast at Bracklesham Bay after the usual good hotel breakfast. A four-per-hour bus service operates there from Chichester and we had a great day with them both on the beach and walking on the edge of Chichester Harbour.

The view from our hotel room in Chichester,
across the rooftops to the Festival Theatre amid the trees.

On Tuesday we went our separate ways for the morning and early afternoon, although we met for coffee at noon. I explored the western edge of the city where on the map I had seen some evidence of a disused railway line; as a former planner I do like to explore these bits of urban history. Although a footpath/cycleway followed a course which looked like it might have been a railway line, that was only clinched when I found a line of disused telegraph poles. It didn't merit any celebration but it was good to feel right!

Tuesday evening was booked for a musical at Chichester Festival Theatre, the third year we have done this with our friends, and was the usual stunning performance we have come to expect. We are already thinking of 2020.

Wednesday was an empty day in the schedule. I had toyed with the idea of a visit to Goodwood House but this was complicated to book and with much walking involved it depended on good weather, which was far from assured. So that was put aside and we visited the wonderful open-air Amberley Museum, a collection celebrating and remembering Sussex life through industrial and other artefacts and set in a disused limestone quarry. It includes historic buses, a narrow-gauge railway, workshops, a garage, a museum of electrical devices, another collection of TV and radio equipment, a print shop and lots of other exhibits including the limekilns once the centre of activity of the site. The entrance was right opposite the station and so the place was easy to reach and easy to find. We stayed there for most of the day and I took dozens and dozens of photographs.

A mine entrance at Amberley Quarry, as used in the James
Bond film A View To A Kill as Zorin's Mainstrike Mine

For the third time this year we came upon a James Bond connection, as much of the action of the film A View to a Kill was filmed at a mine entrance on the museum site, and there are still two tipper wagons carrying the livery and logo of Zorin Industries. After a visit to a local pub and a stroll along the riverside at Amberley we took the train back to Chichester for our last night.




We were not scheduled to leave until mid-afternoon on Thursday and in the morning after checking out we left our luggage at the hotel and walked the couple of miles to Fishbourne to revisit the site of the Roman Palace which we had seen several years ago on a previous visit. Knowing what to expect we learnt rather more this time and also enjoyed our walk in the sun. We returned to Chichester by bus in the afternoon (no lunch needed after hotel breakfast!), collected our cases and made our way to the station for the journey home.

The trip home from Chichester should have been a simple one: through train to London Victoria, cross London at our leisure (I had allowed two hours) then LNER First Class to Peterborough and a change for Stamford - with enough time during the change to pop into Waitrose for milk. It finished OK but it was not a good start when our first train was several minutes late and was then terminated early at Horsham so we had to travel on the following train. Nevertheless we had time in London to travel from Victoria to Kings Cross by bus (never quick, always interesting!) and still had refreshments in the First Class Lounge before getting our on-time LNER train with complimentary light supper. We took a taxi home from Stamford station at the end of a long day and unpacked rapidly ready for the next exciting instalment of our travelling lives, to follow soon! (And I have applied for delay repay for the Southern Railway section of the trip, which amounted to a half-hour late arrival at Victoria.)

An Exciting Few Months

Planned and spontaneous trips by train

To come soon is our usual few days on the south coast of England, this year beginning with the west end of the Isle of Wight, and there are already two further firm dates in the diary for next couple of months. 

One is to the Engadin in Graubunden (Grisons) Canton in Switzerland to research for my proposed model railway based on the Rhatische Bahn in that area, including a visit to the Albula Railway Museum at Bergen. 

The other arose from a marketing email from the Royal Hotel in Bath, England. We have stayed there a few times and have joined their loyalty scheme and mailing list, and every now and then they write to me with a great special offer: I have never been in a position to take them up on any of these before, but now that we are both retired we are free enough to fit in a trip when the bargains are available. So in October we are off to Bath again and will take the opportunity to have a session at the Thermae Bath Spa: having telephoned the hotel within minutes of reading the email I then went to the Cross Country Trains website and booked Advance First Class tickets to Bath Spa via Birmingham and Bristol at a reasonable price. It should be a great break, with dinner with wine included in the hotel special offer - we have never dined there before in all the times we have stayed there.

That, then, takes us towards the end of the year. But first, Isle of Wight, Chichester and the English seaside holiday!

Looking forward to 2019

Rail Adventures Planned for the new year

2019 will be a new experience for me, whatever unexpected surprises may come along, for at the end of January I retire from the "day job" and, theoretically, will have more time for travel, and for writing. There may well be, then, a bit more activity on the blog, but as I've never lived this sort of life before I find it hard to predict how things will be. Whether the UK's impending departure from the European Union will make any difference I also find it hard to predict. Not only might this make travel into Europe more complicated and expensive, it may make everything more expensive and therefore reduce what we can do. We are looking forward both to visiting new places and to travelling on "interesting" trains or routes.

I already have some trips in the diary but hope to add a few more, notably to Cornwall at some point. Already planned is a weekend tour of the West Highlands of Scotland in April, a day out in May in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham, and the best part of two weeks in summer with Great Rail Journeys in Switzerland. The Scottish and Swiss trips are booked and committed and the Birmingham one advertised as a "Come with me" trip so is virtually committed. We shall also have to arrange to be on the Sussex coast again in August to visit our friends on holiday at Bracklesham Bay.



For the first time since 1980 I shall be free for Holy Week and Easter and we are thinking of visiting a cathedral city and attending the principal worship at the cathedral with exploration and leisure in between the services. Looking at the English cathedrals' websites, York looks the most likely to provide what we are looking for, and would be the first time for ages that we have ventured north on the East Coast Main Line with LNER's excellent catering.

There will also, I hope, be several days out and short breaks once the pattern of life becomes
established, for we have little idea yet of how it will be to live in our new home, the first time in our 38-year marriage that we'll have a home of our own, private, chosen and fitted out by us. We are having as much done as possible before moving in so that I do not have to spend weeks of my life on DIY! But I do have the Swiss model railway to build when I'm not travelling! An annual trip to the Thermae Spa in Bath is one aspiration, and this can often be fitted into a trip to the south or west of England. We have been given for Christmas a voucher for an afternoon tea in London, so that is another trip to come!

Southern Summer Sunshine; Solent and Sussex

A rail tour of the south coast of England

As usual this summer we planned to spend a day at the seaside with our friends who habitually stay at East Wittering. We have normally stayed about a week and visited other places in the south of England, including a few days at Chichester which is our base for the day trip to East Wittering. Last year we preceded Chichester with two nights on the Isle of Wight and this year we decided to make that three nights, with one day given to visiting Carisbrooke Castle and one to visiting Osborne House, both English Heritage royal palaces. We used Tesco Clubcard vouchers to pay for a year's membership of English Heritage which gave us free access to these places, and we began to plan an itinerary and book hotels and travel.

Preparatory research for the holiday involved finding the opening days of the two Isle of Wight places we wanted to visit (easy from the English Heritage website), determining when our friends would be at East Wittering and then booking the accommodation. A couple of years before we had returned via a day in Brighton and I decided to book a night there as well this time and see a bit more of this "seaside city," as it calls itself. I booked the same hotel in Shanklin as last year as it was so welcoming and comfortable, the usual  B&B in the cathedral precincts in Chichester and a seafront hotel in Brighton then waited for the Advance First Class train tickets to become available.

It was not a promising spring in 2018: daily rain, often heavy and prolonged, following a cold and snowy winter, but when summer came we had many long, hot, sunny days and a holiday at the coast was just what we needed. Packing was like packing for the Mediterranean this year: no waterproofs, no jumpers, no long sleeves, lots of shirts and underwear to allow for frequent changes, not many socks because I'd be in sandals most of the time.

It was on a hot, sunny Friday morning that we walked down to Stamford station with our roll-along suitcases to catch the 11:00 train to Peterborough, grateful for the air-conditioning on the train. At Peterborough we changed into a LNER train for London Kings Cross which was on time leaving but slowed down at Hitchin and never really caught up again, being almost ten minutes late into Kings Cross. I had allowed just an hour to cross to Waterloo for our train to Portsmouth Harbour, and while the fifty minutes we had were sufficient we could not afford to relax too much: it was not necessary to run, but we did have to keep moving. I have learnt the lesson here: in future we shall allow 90 minutes, not 60, and we'll look into ways of making the crossing which involve less inter-platform walking at Underground stations! The next mistake was to use the First Class section in the front half of the train to Portsmouth: yes, it is nearer the exit to the Isle of Wight catamaran at the other end of the line, but it is further from the refreshment trolley's starting point and by the time the caterer had reached us he had sold out of sandwiches, so lunch was nibbles (and some fruit we had brought with us) and Pinot Noir - could have been worse. This was not such a comfortable train as the one we had used last year, although it was more than OK, and the toilets were not in a good state, which was not OK: one near us flooded and the other without water. Doubtless there were others in the train somewhere but we did not seek them out for that could have been a long walk to find nothing better.

At Portsmouth Harbour we had a slight wait for the catamaran which was a little late - so many passengers, I think, that it was taking so long to unload and load and gradually becoming later as the day wore on.  We met a German couple in the queue and were fascinated to learn that they were not on a tour of England but were simply coming for a week's holiday on the Isle of Wight: it is a resort to which people from continental Europe come for holidays just as we do.

It was a quick crossing, but the connection with the Island Line train to Shanklin was tight and they do not like to run late. Again, we did not have to run and we had adequate time provided that we simply kept moving. The guard was blowing his whistle to hasten straggling passengers just as we were taking our seats. Last year when we had done this trip the weather was damp and murky and rain was just beginning; this year it was hot and sunny - and here on the Island the temperature was fresher than on the mainland, "only" 24 degrees, and there was a slight breeze. The 1938 tube train which now serves the Island Line rattled its way to Shanklin and then we walked down to the Channel View Hotel and checked in. This year I had specified a sea view room and we were not disappointed. We had a splendid room with windows on two sides, both with a sea view.

We strolled into the town centre the first evening and then through to the Old Village to dine at Keats Cottage - which we enjoyed so much we returned on the second evening as well! Returning via a circuitous route to the beach and back along the seafront we had an early night and good night's sleep after all our travels, and then the great hotel breakfast, served at reserved tables, so no hunting for a space and queuing at the buffet.

Our first full day, Saturday, was allocated to the visit to Carisbrooke Castle, and we began with a walk to the bus station. Boarding the bus to Newport we bought 48-hour rover tickets which would cover all our travel on the island for our whole stay without having to think about the cost - searching for change is not an issue these days anyway as most buses, including those on the Isle of Wight, now take contactless payment. To get to the castle from Newport bus station there is a variety of bus routes, and it so happened that there was a bus to Carisbrooke almost ready to leave as we got off ours from Shanklin, so we boarded that and were on our way: from the stop at Carisbrooke there was a short walk up the hill to the castle. There is much history to explore at Carisbrooke Castle, going back to the Norman conquest, including the famous donkey treadmill-worked well (which was not working because of the very hot weather), but we were most interested in the era when it was the home of Princess Beatrice who founded there a museum of the Isle of Wight, apparently the only museum founded by a member of the Royal family (although her father Prince Albert must have had quite an influence on the South Kensington museums).

Our visit to the castle included a light lunch at the cafeteria and then we made our way by a different route down the hill into the centre of Carisbrooke village where we caught the next bus back to Newport and a connection to Shanklin; this time we took the bus that goes the longer way round via Ventnor in order to see the place in which we had spent our last morning on the island last summer.

On the Sunday we visited Osborne House and decided to take a train as far as Ryde rather than the bus, just to make the trip a bit quicker. We bought day return tickets to Ryde Esplanade station (which is beside the bus station in Ryde): for a few extra pence this gave us the option of returning by train if we wished, but in the event we went back by bus to see a road we had not before travelled. From Ryde to Osborne the bus frequency is only hourly so the day's trip needed more planning than the previous day's when there were frequent buses between Newport and Carisbooke. We had been to Osborne before but it certainly repaid a return visit, especially since the Swiss Cottage display has been refreshed. We did not see everything all over again but quickly revisited the house and garden, and then after a good lunch at the Terrace Restaurant used the courtesy minibus service to the Swiss Cottage, walking down from there to the beach. We spent some time sitting on the beach in the sunshine, watching the boats, and had a cup of tea there from the tea-room. We had to wait a little while for the courtesy bus back up to the house and towards the exit before taking the service bus back to Ryde and then home to Shanklin. Having had lunch out we did not need a restaurant that evening but bought a takeaway salad from the Co-op and "dined" in our room at the hotel.

The Channel View Hotel has a small swimming pool on the ground floor and we made use of that on one evening, very welcome in the hot weather.

Fisherman's Cottage, Shanklin Beach

Monday was our day for moving on and after breakfast and checking out we left our baggage at the hotel and went for a stroll into Shanklin town centre via the seafront, including coffee at the Fisherman's Cottage (a bar-restaurant on the beach) and the cliff lift (recently refurbished and very smart) and then returned and asked for a taxi to the station; the taxi was there by the time we picked up our cases and had us at the station in time to catch an earlier train than we had planned! The booking office was closed and we had to buy our tickets on the train, two singles to Chichester.

Our earlier train got us to an earlier catamaran sailing (with less of a wait for its departure) and then we were fortunate enough to catch a fast train to Chichester just before it left Portsmouth Harbour! I had anticipated waiting at Shanklin, at Ryde and at Portsmouth and so we arrived in  Chichester an our or more before I had expected, having had an easy journey. We checked in once more at 4 Canon Lane where we have stayed a couple of times before, in the Cathedral grounds. My wife wandered off around the shops and I stayed in the room, writing this blog post and filing my photographs of the Isle of Wight part of the holiday. We went to dinner at Côte Brasserie, which we have done on our first evening in Chichester every year since we first came (I think this was our sixth year) so it probably counts as a tradition now.

The agenda for the second day was to meet our friends for the theatre in the evening, preceded by a pre-theatre supper at The Bell Inn, right opposite the Chichester Festival Theatre and set up for getting meals served in time for clients to get to the theatre. We saw an hilarious production of Me and My Girl and retired for the night. Did I mention that there was rain that afternoon and evening? Forecast on and off and not really spoiling things - we did not use a taxi to get to the theatre this year as we had last, the rain being showery and allowing us to walk, taking shelter from time to time.

Summer returned the following morning, and we were off on the bus to spend the day at the coast with our friends at their rented holiday cottage at Bracklesham Bay. Bus services are very good at filling in the bits that the trains don't quite reach and although we are open to using taxis and self-drive hire we seldom resort to taxis and have never had to hire a car yet. There was a fair bit of cloud and a little wind and out on the beach I managed to pick up more of a tan than any other day of the summer (which is quite something in 2018), and indeed slight burn here and there - which was a surprise. And so back to our last night in our super room at 4 Canon Lane, a room we'd had the first time we stayed there, spacious and very pleasant.

On the final morning in Chichester we had a cooked course at breakfast - usually we have the lighter buffet option here but we were intending not to stop for lunch this day. After packing and checking out we trailed our cases off into town and had coffee at Boston Tea Party's new branch in the city: one of our friends is a waitress there, and we had enjoyed the branch in Bath so we knew we would like it. We like the ethos and attitude of the company as well as the coffee! And so to the rail station to await and board a Coastway train to Brighton for the next stage in the holiday. Although the railway follows the coast reasonably closely you do not see a great deal of the sea from the trains except around Shoreham-by-Sea, and then it is mostly docks and warehouses. But soon we arrived in the splendour of Brighton's glorious terminal station. Brighton is built on such a hillside that the approach is deeply below ground, with a huge cutting towering over the trains, but the concourse of the station is above street level, for the ground falls away the equivalent of several storeys in the length of the station; furthermore it continues to fall away and presumably the station is a long way from the seafront because it would be impractical to extend the line any further with a station on top of an enormous viaduct!

We walked down to the seafront and turning right were soon at the Hilton Brighton Metropole where I had booked a sea view room for one night to round off the holiday. We checked in and went to our room which certainly lived up to the Hilton description: large, with bath and shower, and with a great view over the sea (and the ruin of the west pier), and a fantastically comfortable king-size bed. I began to think it was a shame we were only staying one night. We unpacked what we needed to and had a cup of tea and then wandered off around the city, exploring the famous Lanes, and booked supper at an Italian restaurant, Al Duomo, at which we had had a snack on our previous visit, to which we then returned after further exploration.

As we prepared for bed we looked out of the window and noticed a side of morris men making their way along the seafront on foot and by cycle: they stopped right opposite our window on the recently-improved paved public open space and performed some folk dances. Not normally my thing, although I have friends in that world, but it was a lovely end to the day.

The following morning we checked out and asked the concierge to look after our cases while we went to hunt down some breakfast, finally settling on Lucky Beach, a much better place than its name sounds! An ethically sound, healthy place with an ideal breakfast menu for those of us who are hungry but trying to keep down our fat intake: thoroughly recommended! While we were there the rain started and we moved under cover ... then we strolled along the front to the Volks Electric Railway which I had long wanted to try. We rode out eastwards on the next train - they are more like trams - which were operating a quarter-hourly service. We got off at the far end at Black Rock which is near Brighton Marina, which is much less good than its name sounds. And it was raining, and the wind was blowing very fiercely. We got very wet, then we discovered that owing to a faulty train (well, it is the world's oldest electric railway!) the service was now only half-hourly and so we decided to walk to the halfway station rather than wait here with nothing to see for another 20 minutes. Some of the walk was under trees so we got less wet, then out again to be water-cannoned by nature, but by the time we reached the station the rain had stopped (just as well: there was no shelter on the station!)  but the (warm) wind blew just as strongly and we travelled on the open platform at the end of one coach so that by the time we reached the city centre (Aquarium station, opposite the Sea Life Centre) we were as dry as if we had been tumble-dried!

We went back to our hotel to collect our cases, getting soaked again in the process as the rain came down once more, but again drying out by the time we reached the hotel. As it was uphill all the way to the station we asked for a taxi - we were told that the waiting time was half an hour but by good fortune a taxi happened to arrive bringing someone from the station which was available to take someone back, so we took that and were taken no more quickly but a good deal more easily up to the station. We had open tickets so did not need any particular train and were not intending to leave just yet, for under the arches at the front of the station (remember the rapidly-falling ground level) was a toy and model museum which I just had to visit. Well worth a look, and as with all these places we spent a lot of time, along with all other visitors, saying things like, "I had one of those," "Do you remember these," and "My Mum had that!" We'll have to go back, there was so much to see.

And so to the station and the train back. We had First Class day singles for the Gatwick Express, the fastest trains between Brighton and London, which are half-hourly; but ours was slightly delayed by a trespass incident. Then it was a bit more delayed and a bit more. Fine: we had bought salads from Marks and Spencer on the station and so ate them on the station rather than aboard the train. It finally came in over 25 minutes late and left at the time of the next departure (which arrived on another platform as we were boarding ours!). Indeed, although the driver had encouraged everyone to claim Delay Repay the ticket inspector reckoned the train was on time: as far as he was concerned it was the next train! We were in no hurry and on arrival at London Victoria swiftly met our son for a drink at the Grosvenor Hotel before going on to Kings Cross (by bus; we were in no hurry and the ride is great) to await our train to Peterborough and then home to Stamford. The weather had brightened up and it was lovely evening to travel.