Another Couple of Nights Away

A Short Break at Studland Bay by Train and Bus

As I mentioned in A Couple of Nights Away, we received a really good offer for a two-night stay at the Knoll House Hotel on Studland Bay in Dorset, quickly snapped up along with reduced-price rail tickets during the "Rail Sale". Last time we stayed there it was more of an adventure than we bargained-for when the heathland between the ferry and the hotel caught fire and our return from a day out took a lot longer than planned owing to a road closure to avoid the fire. This time we just had the adventure we had planned, and weather which was better than we had dared to hope.

The weather did not start well, with light drizzle as we packed our cases, and steady rain by the time we left for Stamford rail station. Umbrellas raised we arrived at the station and caught our 09:56 Cross Country train, a few minutes late this time, to Peterborough where we popped round to Waitrose to buy a packed lunch before catching the connecting LNER train to London at 10:50. We were travelling with First Class tickets to London and complimentary coffee and brunch were served on the way. From Kings Cross we took the Victoria Line to Oxford Circus and the Bakerloo Line thence to Waterloo - all using our through train tickets booked from Peterborough to Bournemouth: nothing extra to pay for the Underground. At Waterloo we browsed Foyles bookshop while awaiting our train - not a cheap option as we bought three books between us that we had known we needed until we happened to see them in the bookshop!

The train from Waterloo to Bournemouth was comfortable, smooth and quite fast but there is no longer any catering on board South Western Railway trains, which is why we had brought a packed lunch with us. By the time we had boarded the train at Waterloo it was lunchtime and so we set our table and enjoyed a lunch of prepared salad, fruit salad and chilled peach tea. Super, and probably much like we'd have bought on the train had there been a trolley or a buffet. First Class on Southwestern Railway is not like First Class on LNER, but it was comfortable and it got us to Bournemouth in time to get our bus onward to the hotel.

The bus ride to Studland on the number 50 "Purbeck Breezer" is what makes this journey an adventure: it is normally operated with open-top buses and although in summer these sometimes have just a windscreen at the front of the top deck, in winter they tend to use the versions with the first few rows of seats under cover, and we arrived at Bournemouth in nice time to stroll over and board one of these, taking our seats just a few rows back to get the best views while remaining remaining sheltered from the wind. By now the sun was beginning to break through and the rain had completely stopped. The bus wound its way through Bournemouth town centre and the western districts of the town and the leafy pine woods of Canford Cliffs then along the southern edge of Poole Harbour and the most expensive residential land in the UK at Sandbanks before waiting for the ferry across to Studland. We had to wait for a ship to leave the harbour before our ferry could arrive from the other side but were entertained by a Royal Navy Chinook helicopter practising with the Special Boat Service off The Foreland while we waited and the sun gradually showed more of itself through the thinning cloud cover. From the urban townscapes and arcadia of Bournemouth and Poole we were now into the carefully maintained (by the National Trust) semi-wilderness of Studland Heath and very soon we were stopping the bus outside the Knoll House Hotel.

The stunning view from our room, through the hotel grounds to Studland Bay

After checking in we unpacked the smarter clothes we had brought for evenings at the hotel so that the creases would drop out by dinner time, donned our walking boots and set off for a walk down to the beach and along it. The walk down through the hotel grounds and through the woods onto the beach was something we had many times - in summer! It was different this time and our progress was halted by water too deep to wade through in just walking gear, so we had to make a bit of a detour but got there just a few moments later. By now it was past tea time and the National Trust café and shop at Knoll Beach had just closed for the night and Trust staff were busy with their conservation work. We just walked along the beach in glorious sunshine and back again in drizzle! Shower, change and dinner. Dinner was included in our package but we did avail ourselves of the cocktail bar in preparation for dinner, and this was definitely not included. We found ourselves chatting to a local couple who were there simply having an after-work drink - what a lovely place for that! They recommended a whisky bar in Bath which we shall have to try next time we are there.

After a good night's sleep we awoke to a gorgeous sunny day and after breakfast set off for a day out, beginning with a bus to Swanage, too early for our senior citizens' concessionary passes so we had to pay our fares. We had a little stroll around Swanage for old times' sake and then boarded a bus to Wareham which we had only briefly visited, by car, in the past. There we explored, had coffee in a place once apparently frequented by Lawrence of Arabia, and discovered a really ancient St Martin's Church, the same dedication as our church at home in Stamford but very, very different. 

It remained sunny all day with very little wind, and temperatures were good for February (up to around 10 degrees C), and in the sun it was quite warm when walking and we removed our coats and gloves very early on. When we caught the bus back to Swanage I also removed my jumper, for the top deck was like a greenhouse! From Swanage we travelled as far as Studland village and then went down to the beach there and walked along to Knoll Beach for a snack lunch at the National Trust café. Sitting there in the sun it was just like the summer (except for the number of people in coats) - indeed it was better weather than we had in the summer of 2020 when we came here with all our family.

We strolled along the beach in the direction of Poole Harbour - with no intention of going that far, of course - and along part of the naturist beach where, not surprisingly in February, I suppose, everyone seemed to be wearing clothes. A few horses, a few dogs (they're allowed here from 1st October to 1st March, and then forbidden for the sake of the wildlife for the rest of the year).

It was time to walk back now, time to rest and recover from what had been quite an energetic day for us. Bath and change (and a brief unintentional sleep!) and ready for dinner again. No cocktail this time but we did have Prosecco with our meal, and pudding. We were hungry after such a day, and we slept even better than the night before.

Our last day was a Friday and we packed and paid our bill and checked out straight after breakfast, leaving our luggage at the hotel to set of, suitably booted, to walk to the Old Harry Rocks. These rocks (see heading photograph), vertical chalk stacks at the end of a headland, are a constant sight and landmark along this section of the coast and have been a distant companion on many of our holidays and especially of our walks along the beaches but we have never before visited them and seen them at close quarters. It was a walk of about a mile and a half from Studland village and rather than walk along the road we took a route out of the back of the hotel grounds and over the heath - which took us through more mud than we really wanted to encounter - the last time we went this way was in summer and there had been some mud but not so much. We returned along the road from the village! The walk between the village and the rocks was all good off-road walking and all very easy. On the way back we had coffee at a beach café at Studland Middle Beach before returning to the hotel, recovering our luggage and taking the Breezer bus one last time back to Bournemouth. This time it was a closed-top bus, which is fine in winter, but we always travel on the top deck here for the views of Studland Heath, of the ferry crossing, of the trees of Canford Cliffs. In Bournemouth we had lunch at a town centre café  and then walked down to the seafront to "say goodbye" to the sea before taking the next bus to the railway station and await our train home. 

It had been a short break but I think we had made the most of every moment.

We boarded our train at Bournemouth and had a smooth and pleasant ride to London Waterloo, then easy interchange to Kings Cross via the Underground. At Kings Cross it all began to fall apart. Our train, on which we had reservations in Coach L, turned out only to have five coaches owing to trains being out of place following earlier disruption due to a fire somewhere else. It was jam-packed in Standard Class and overfull in First. We did not have seats until someone took pity on a couple of pensioners and gave us a seat; refreshments could not be brought through on the usual trolley but we could visit the galley and pick up our sandwiches and drinks. Then it unravelled even further when the train stopped at Stevenage owing to problems further along the line. It eventually transpired that it would be held for some time and our kind train manager suggested that those heading to Peterborough might like to get off and take the next train to Cambridge, which would soon stop at the adjacent platform, where we could get a connection to Peterborough. For us, of course, that would provide us with a connection home, albeit two hours late but we were already missing the planned connection and were by no means sure that we might make the next at Peterborough. So we baled out of the overcrowded train, beer cans in hand along with our luggage, and caught a Thameslink train to Cambridge. Once there we made our way across to the platform where a Cross Country unit was waiting to form the next departure for Birmingham which would take us home. To my surprise it was a newly-painted refurbished class 170 Turbostar. I think they only had one, possibly two, in the fleet at that time, so it was a bit of a silver lining to have the chance to travel on one. New seats with slightly more legroom and bigger seat-back table which comfortably took my large MacBook Pro (on which I am writing this article now).

The lovely day then unravelled further still when a very disruptive passenger boarded and racially abused a couple of other passengers, threatening one of them and generally causing mayhem. We could all have done without that and some of us texted British Transport Police as we are always being urged to "say it" when we "see it" so that it can be "sorted". He was leaving the train at Peterborough anyway and was taken care of by the BTP, but as time went on it became clear that he was ill rather than criminal and I think he was well known by the police as someone in need of support.

And so into Stamford and the usual walk home across the meadows and through the town, two hours later than planned but I understand from LNER that the train we had abandoned at Stevenage did not reach Peterborough until very much later. We await our Delay Repay compensation, but I have to say that none of this disruption really affected our enjoyment of a really great couple of days away. We had packed in so much and so many new things, and we were still home before our usual bedtime. The train staff coped brilliantly and the thinking-on-their-feet action of the LNER train manager who suggested the detour via Cambridge certainly saved the day for us - and for those left on the stranded train there were now more seats available, vacated by those like us who had taken the alternative.

Arrival at Stamford on the newly-refurbished Cross Country Turbostar, with brighter paintwork and much smarter interior. We love arriving at Stamford station on our way home and being welcomed by all the church towers as we cross The Meadows.

 

Tulips In Amsterdam

By Train to Amsterdam for the Tulips

Ever since Eurostar started their through service to Rotterdam and Amsterdam we had thought of making this trip. Yes, we could have travelled to Amsterdam any time we wanted by changing at Brussel Zuid, but the start of the direct service gave us the nudge to get on with it. A pandemic intervened, prevented travel for a while and made it difficult for a while longer, but eventually we were in a position to plan a visit to the Netherlands by train. As a native of south Lincolnshire, born in the former County of Holland, I was keen to visit Amsterdam in the spring, ideally the first week of May, at the likely height (depending on the weather) of the tulip season. Until recently the (now) District of South Holland in Lincolnshire had shared tulip production with the Netherlands and Spalding had been the centre of the industry with a show ground at Springfields and an annual parade of decorated floats. Spalding and South Holland now concentrate on food production and tulips are largely the preserve of the Netherlands, although daffodils are still grown in Lincolnshire. Missing the sight of tulip fields and regretting that Springfields is now little more than an "outlet centre," I wanted to see Amsterdam and the Keukenhof Gardens, so, threading my way between King's Day in the Netherlands and the Coronation of our own new King in England, I made the arrangements to spend two complete days in Amsterdam by rail. One day would be spent tripping out to the Keukenhof, the other would be unplanned so that we could do whatever felt right on the day.

I booked the trip with Planet Rail. I had never used them before but have seen them on social media and thought it would be worth a try. I had looked at booking direct with Eurostar, who also book hotels, but Planet Rail were somewhat less expensive and offered a hotel in a more suitable part of Amsterdam city centre. Planet Rail offer unescorted package holidays without specific dates: I just looked at their website for the package I wanted and telephoned to ask if any suitable dates were available and what the cost would be. It was all very satisfactory so I paid the deposit and waited for the dates to come round. This would be our first international rail adventure of 2023.

Although our chosen train to Amsterdam did not leave St Pancras International until 11:04, we decided to travel to London by LNER the day before and stay overnight in our usual pre-departure hotel, the Premier Inn, near the station, and spent the afternoon (and a great dinner!) with our family in west London before the good night's sleep that Premier Inn always affords us. The time before Eurostar check-in was not wasted: I had some personal banking to do (paying in a cheque - how quaint is that?) and that gave us enough exercise walking to a branch and back, just neatly taking us to the earliest check-in time.

Arriving soon after check-in opened, we had very little queueing and were soon scanning our printed-out tickets at the gates and having our luggage checked for security: as frequent travellers by this route we are now familiar with the process and sail through easily. There was modest queuing for the passport control as the French border police now have to stamp UK passports and we can no longer zoom through the EU lane ... but it was only a little queue and we were soon sitting in the Station Pantry café to have our breakfast - as soon as the preceding train to Paris had departed there was plenty of space. No sooner had we finished our breakfast than the train began boarding and we made our way up to the platform. There is no rush: everyone has a reserved seat and everyone (well, almost everyone!) is already either waiting or making their way through security and passport control.

Travelling Standard Premier, as we generally do, means that there is a bit more room to manoeuvre in the aisle and more luggage space per passenger, so boarding and taking our seats was a relatively relaxed affair: again, there is no rush as boarding begins at least twenty minutes before departure. Planet Rail had managed to book for me a pair of single seats facing across a table - club duo, I gather it is called - which is our preferred seating the travelling as a couple, and there were small luggage racks nearby that just took our cases nicely. Altogether the atmosphere in these coaches is very relaxing and pleasant and we soon felt at home. The first few miles were in tunnel under east London, with a brief flash of daylight as we passed through Stratford with its unused international platforms, then we were out into Essex as the light meal service began before plunging under the Thames and emerging once more in Kent. 

The train slowed for the Channel Tunnel and then soon stopped at its first calling point, Lille Europ. There were stops also at Brussels and Rotterdam before we arrived at Amsterdam Centraal. Beyond Brussels there was another drink and a snack; having had beer (a London craft ale) and coffee with the light lunch I opted for wine with the snack (which was only a very small bag of mixed nuts). When the stewards came to clear away my empty little wine bottle they left me a full one but I could not see myself finishing another couple of glasses of wine before Amsterdam and I kept it in my hand luggage for later in the tour ...

About four hours after departure from St Pancras, but five hours on the clock because of the change of time zone, we arrived at Amsterdam Centraal and had most of the length of the train to walk to the exit. Unlike St Pancras and Paris Nord we needed to have our tickets handy to leave by the normal barriers at the exit from the platforms and we were soon out, through some building work (yes, they're improving the stations here, too!) and on to the streets of another of the world's great cities. It was a kilometre or so to our hotel, easily navigated using Apple maps on our iPhones, but everyone else seemed to be walking the other way - perhaps arriving at office closing time was not so smart a move ... 

It was sunny and warm now as we plotted our way through the tramlines in Dam Square and across to the street called Singel ("canal," I understand) alongside the oldest canal in Amsterdam where or hotel, the Hotel Estheréa, was located. We checked in and were taken to our room by a porter who also took our luggage and showed us the room. The room was compact (and the toilet and shower were particularly compact!) but well-appointed with plenty of power sockets, coffee machine - which we never used - free bottled water, lots of lights, air conditioning and lots of storage.

We went downstairs where complimentary tea (and other hot drinks) and biscuits were available and then we set off looking around the local area for somewhere for a fairly light but preferably Dutch dinner. We finished up, after a couple of false starts at places either closed or no longer doing food, at a brilliant Proeflokal ("local trial") bar on the next canalside: here we were able to try local food and local beer and had a great time, surrounded by lots of people from many countries all conversing in English because that's the language everyone knows. 

Dinner on the first night

Line of shuttle buses at Europaplein

Wednesday, the first full day, was the day set aside for the visit to Keukenhof. Everything was booked in advance by purchasing online a pair of "Tulip Festival Cards," which were not cards at all, really, but a set of online documents and apps which provided all that we needed for a two-day tulip festival visit: a day ticket for the Keukenhof Garden at a specified time (I specified 11:00 to give us time to get there), a two-day public transport pass and guided tours of the gardens and of Amsterdam for download to our iPhones. The public transport passes had to be collected by scanning the codes on my iPhone at the office, or a machine, at Centraal station before we started, so we allowed a few minutes for that and then caught the Metro to Europaplein where a dedicated bus service was provided to shuttle visitors to Keukenhof: it all ran very smoothly and exactly as described on Keukenhof's helpful website.

At the Keukenhof entrance we simply showed the two tickets on my iPhone for the barcodes to be scanned and we were straight in, greeted on arrival by a magnificent display of tulips. We had timed the visit just right: the first week on May can go either way with respect to the weather, but usually is somewhere within the "window" for tulip blooms whether the season is late or early. As it happened, for 2023 is was just right, a little after the midpoint and with sunny weather, pleasant but not too hot.

We saw varieties of tulip that we have never seen before, some resembling carnations, some roses. Some short, some tall, and all sorts of colours, along with daffodils and narcissi (which are known by the same word in Dutch) and hyacinths, another Dutch speciality. The gardens are laid out on a huge scale and act as a showcase for the bulb industry, just as Springfields used to do in Spalding.

"Lunch" consisted of a big piece of Dutch apple tart at one of the many refreshment facilities around the gardens and by lunch time it was warm and sunny enough to sit outside, whereas our morning coffee had been taken indoors. We visited some of the indoor displays as well as covering all the outdoor ones, and standing by the boundary of the garden we looked out over the colourful fields where tulips were growing, once a familiar sight back in Lincolnshire, too, but no longer.

Following the purchase of gifts at one of the souvenir shops we made our way back to the bus terminal outside the entrance building to queue, briefly, for the next bus back to Europaplein. Buses were there waiting their turn to load and as one filled up the next took its place and the orderly queue moved along all the time. At Europaplein we went to the Metro and used the same pass to board the next train back to central Amsterdam. We had supper in the hotel bar that evening (there is no restaurant but the bard snacks are pretty substantial!), boosted by a salad in our room from the nearby supermarket and the wine I had been given on the train the day before.

That man Gormley gets everywhere

Thursday was the day for which we had no definite plan before we came to Amsterdam and we decided on Wednesday evening that we would visit Lelystad in the Flevoland polder. I had been there on my field course to the Netherlands for my Town Planning degree fifty years earlier when it was very new, and Alison had studied the polders for her A Level Geography, so we both had an interest. Our passes covered the train ride out from Amsterdam (every half hour) but we discovered that we had to pay - using contactless, just like at home, for buses within Lelystad. We tripped out to the coast and looked around at an outlet centre - we were trying to track down a tulip vase as our souvenir - and then strolled along the waterfront and saw the replica ship Batavia. In the distance a river cruise ship was making it way towards Amsterdam, past a vast Anthony Gormley sculpture.

Returning to Amsterdam we looked for a canal cruise and saw a boat just loading near Centraal station with room for us at a decent price, and took our seats. There are numerous operators and routes and they all seem to cost about the same, and this, Rederij Kooij, was the first one we saw, with a boat about to depart, so we did not do any "comparison shopping" but just went for it and were very happy with our one-hour tour with its commentary in four languages.

We visited a Delft Blau shop and bought the tulip vase we'd been promising ourselves! (See picture at the heading.)

We had booked dinner at the only time we could get (17:00 - very early indeed for us) at a recommended restaurant serving typical Dutch food, so we were soon back at our room getting ready to do out. I had hod no lunch and needed the tea and biscuits at the hotel to keep me going ... and then off by tram to Moeders (Mothers) for our early dinner. This was an enormous meal. How come the Dutch keep so slim? It must be all that walking and cycling, I suppose, and we did a fair bit of walking after this meal.

First we took a tram to the other side of the city centre and had a look around the Jewish quarter. This was not a former ghetto like that Jewish area in, say, Rome, and neither was it the location of Ann Frank's house. But it was an attractive part of the city and pleasant for an evening stroll. We walked back to our hotel, dodging events taking place in Dam Square and then had a good night's sleep ready for the trip home tomorrow.

We left on Friday, but not until after noon, and before our 11:00 check out we went on another walk, this time around the Museum Quarter, although we did not have time to visit any museums, and all were very busy in any case.

Catching Eurostar at Amsterdam is much like taking any other train: you scan your ticket at the same ticket gates as everyone else and go to platform 15, a platform used by other trains as well as ours. The only difference is that there is a dedicated waiting room equipped with security scanners and the passport controls for both the Netherlands (on behalf of the European Union) and the United Kingdom. Once through those checks we were able to wait in the departure lounge, which did not really seem quite big enough for the number of passengers waiting ... perhaps this service is more popular than the company anticipated? In due course the train arrived at the platform and we all poured out of the waiting area to join it. Again we were travelling in Standard Premier and there was no rush. Although it also made calls at Rotterdam, Brussels and Lille we were never disturbed: I think seats must be allocated in blocks for each boarding point, which must also make it easier for staff. In this direction the light meal is not served until after Brussels, which is rather late for lunch, and I wished I'd bought something to tide me over. There was a cup of coffee and a small bar of chocolate, very nice but not very filling, soon after leaving Amsterdam. Lunch was most welcome when it did arrive!

This time, as an afternoon meal, a specially-decorated cake was included to celebrate the coronation of King Charles III of England, which was to take place on the following day - a rather nice touch.

There was a track fault somewhere on the high speed line to Brussels and so we were diverted onto ordinary tracks and lost over twenty minutes, some of which was made up by reducing as far as possible the stop at Brussels Zuid, requiring the crew change to happen very quickly. A little more was made up elsewhere but we were still late into London. This did not affect our plans for the onward journey, though, as I had allowed plenty of time.

There was some further delay on arriving at St Pancras because a travelator from the platform to the exit was closed for maintenance and everyone was having to use one escalator; being late, our train was swiftly followed into the station by another from Paris whose passengers also needed the same way out. It took a while it was safe and simple enough with everyone being patient. (We have been known to be off the train first and out to the exit before anyone else was off the platform, but we were in no hurry this time and had been travelling right at the rear end of the train, again!

We had left Amsterdam in gorgeous sunshine, as it had been for most of our time there, but on the way back rain began quite early and continued, on and off, for most of the way. In England there was only intermittent drizzle in London as we waited in the First Class Lounge for our LNER train back to Peterborough. We were taking the same evening service as a few days earlier on our way back from a visit to our friends in Croydon, the 19:06 bound for Lincoln. We know this makes a good connection for Stamford at Peterborough. Again, a light meal on the train and we were soon at Stamford where, although it was not now raining, we took a taxi home from the station: with our luggage this felt like a good way to end the trip.

It had been a highly successful trip: we had seen the tulip fields and the gardens and we had started exploring Amsterdam. We had tried out the through service and found it excellent, but I shall remember to take a snack on board for the return trip next time - and there will be a next time because we really have to explore Amsterdam properly now that we have found out how easy it is to get there and back. Next time we need not go at the height of the tulip festival and will visit some of those museums, booked in advance like the Keukenhof was this time.