Senior Travellers,Racegoers and Pub-Crawlers
As Free As Lark had been pulled out of the race at Great Yarmouth today, I was at a loss about what to do, as I’d quite fancied the trip on a train to the wilds of Norfolk.
So I went anyway!
I was dropped at Dullingham station a few minutes before ten, with the intention of catching the first of three trains, that would get me to my destination by just after twelve after changes at Stowmarket and Norwich. And all for a return ticket price of just £9.20 after my Senior Railcard discount.
At the next station, Newmarket, the train filled up considerably. There was a lot of chatter and I felt there were a couple of parties going like myself to Yarmouth, but to the races. It was all very civilised and friendly, and I suspected that many like me were travelling on Senior Railcards.
As I got off the train at Stowmarket, I was recognised by one of C’s morning swimming companions. He asked how I was doing and said that he was going to the races at Yarmouth. He also added that one of the parties on the train, were a group going for a pub crawl in Ipswich and Felixstowe.
But it all goes to show how train travel is changing. Many of the travellers, myself probably included, would never have used a train for these journeys a few years ago.
Another change was that the two changes at Stowmarket and Norwich took just a couple of minutes. The last time, I’d attempted something similar, I’d had to wait a lot longer. I think that the scheduling is better and this is helped by much better time-keeping. I can’t remember when one of the trains between Ipswich and Cambridge was seriously late.
I also found out that you can get a go-anywhere in East Anglia ticket called an Anglia Plus One Day Pass. It’s just a pity that Beeching removed some of the important links between the railways in East Anglia.
So how can we improve things further? Cambridge to Ipswich has one one-coach train and one two-coach one to operate the schedule. National Express East Anglia do their best, but they struggle to provide enough capacity on the line. I suspect it’s the same on other lines in East Anglia! We need more trains and perhaps a couple of three-coach ones too, to handle rush hours to and from Ipswich and Cambridge! An hourly service calling at all stations would be good and with promised station improvements at Ipswich and Cambridge, this might be possible. Perhaps the service could be extended at the Ipswich end to Harwich and/or Felixstowe!
With a new franchise up for grabs, we can only hope!
Free As A Lark Runs at Great Yarmouth Today
She’s in the 15:20. She may have a chance and if you have Sky, the race will be on At The Races (Channel 415)!
I’ll be going by train from Dullingham and I’m also hoping to look at Norfolk’s cut-off Eastern outpost.
No she doesn’t as the ground has got too soft! But I’m still going to the town to have lunch and a look round!
More R101 Pictures
They are small so I scanned them together.
The house is probably my in-laws’ house in Crescent Road, New Barnet.
A Message from a Jock in Exile in Kazakhstan
I have really upset a friend of mine who is currently working in Kazahkstan, by posting a picture of a bacon sandwich.
Here is what he said.
Here I am in the middle of now where and you show me one of the best things in life. You rotten little bugger !!! O’ps I forgot the HP just to round it off. I am so looking forward to getting home a week on Sunday as being a Jock I am having fish withdrawals as there is absolutely nothing here and I suppose I could not get any further from the open sea. There is Sturgeon but there is a ban on fishing it as they are trying to preserve the Caviar stocks after years of over fishing. So no fish, no scampi, no scallops, no lobster, no crabs in fact no anything which is nice.
Long live good old Blighty.
An Express Return to Suffolk
I must admit, I did leave a few minutes before the end of the match, but time was tight, if I was to make my taxi home, as he had a later booking to collect someone from Gatwick.
So by 17:14, I was on a London train out of Fratton station.
Waterloo to Liverpool Street is one of those journeys that isn’t the best on the Underground. You can change from Northern to Central at Tottenhsm Court Road, but because I had my case with me, I’d found out before that there was a direct bus; the 26, which stops just outside the back entrance to Waterloo and goes directly to Liverpool Street. It was a good choice, especially as it dropped me at the Bishopsgate entrance at Liverpool Street. I just had time to purchase a ticket from a machine that worked, unlike at Whittlesford, and then board the train.
Admittedly, it was a few minutes late into the station, but the taxi was there and I was watching the television by a quarter to nine. So it was about three and a half hours door-to-door!
Freight at Micheldever
Whilst waiting for my train to Fratton at Micheldever, a very long freight train came through. Network Rail have been doing a lot of work recently to make it possible for the larger W10 containers to get from Southampton to the West Coast Main Line for travel to Birmingham, the North and Scotland. I detailed this in Boxing Clever and it would appear that the strategy is being exploited. After all, every box moved by rail, doesn’t have to go on the road.
There were also some curious freight wagons in the sidings at the station.
Micheldever Station
My train for Fratton is just approaching and you can see the line of wagons begind it. They appeared to have end doors only.
A Pit-Stop at Micheldever
In Victorian times, rail journeys were often done in stages, as there was a need to change engines. For instance, the Great Western used to change engines at Swindon and everybody, including the King and Queen got off for refreshments in the station. Here’s a piece from the entry in Wikipedia for Swindon Station.
Swindon railway station opened in 1842 with construction of the Great Western Railway’s engineering works continuing. Until 1895 every train stopped here for at least 10 minutes to change locomotives. Swindon station hosted the first recorded railway refreshment rooms, divided according to class. Swindonians for a time were eminently proud that even the current King and Queen of the time had partaken of refreshments there.
I think I read in something like Rolt’s excellent biography of Brunel, that the tea was produced in an enormous urn and was virtually undrinkable. I also think that there was a contract which said that trains must all stop at Swindon.
On Saturday, I was intending to break my journey to the football at Portsmouth at a station called Micheldever, where I was going to have lunch with a friend and his family. After lunch, I intended to use the same ticket travel to Fratton.
It all worked well! The inpector on the leg to Micheldever from Waterloo, just looked at my ticket and made no mark on it. When I returned, there was no problems either, as I got on the train to complete the journey. I do worry that with these new barrier systems coming in, that this pit-stop ability may be lost. I did once a couple of years ago, want to break a journey at Reading and it took me a lot of persuation to achieve it. I also have the problem at Cambridge, when I want to use the Marks and Spencer’s in the station to get my supper, when I’m perhaps changing for Dullingham.
On Saturday, it certainly made for a better trip, as an exquisite Chinese meal home-cooked by my friend’s wife, was very much preferable to the food available in the region of Fratton Park. This was the first Chinese food, I’ve eaten since I had the stroke in Hong Kong.
I wonder how many people actually know of this split journey rule, which greatly improved my journey to Portsmouth. After all, many stations, Micheldever included, are very close to good pubs or restaurants, so are ideally placed to break a journey. For instance on the 25th of September, I’m going to see Ipswich play Scunthorpe and then I’m going on to York. Would it be easier to book an off-peak single to York from say Dullingham and break the trip at Doncaster, from where I’d get the train to Scunthorpe?
My Last Visit to Waterloo
Waterloo Station is not a place that I’ve visited much. Admittedly in the first few years after I started as a freelance programmer, I did use it quite a bit for short journeys to places like Epsom, Cobham and Guildford, but once we moved to Suffolk, I rarely needed to use the station. C and I did go to Paris on Eurostar, but even then we parked in the car park undearneath and sneaked in.
My last visit was in 2001, when I took a thousand Al Stewart CD’s from Bury St. Edmunds to his manager, who’d taken the train up from somewhere like Basingstoke. I was to collect a Banker’s Draft in return after our meeting at around twelve.
I had visited a client in Borough High Street and afterwards I was to see another in London’s Chinatown, just north of Leicester Square. I had actually driven, as there was no Congestion Charge and parking was no problem in any of the areas I was to visit, if you stayed less than an hour on a meter.
I was a little early for my meeting at Waterloo, so I parked the car on an empty meter and decided to fill the time by making a few phone calls. For some reason, the radio in the car had been switched off and as the phone was not hands-free, I couldn’t put it on anyway and use the phone. I needed to phone C about something, but try as I might, I couldn’t remember her mobile number. Even now, after the stroke, I can still remember, every phone number, I’ve ever used regularly. I tried other numbers and even they were blank. I just thought I was having some sort of brain problem, but as all my other functions were correct, I felt it was just a function of getting old.
On time, I arrived at the station and swapped the CD’s dor the draft. Al’s manager had to get back, so quickly and surprisingly for me in a silent car, I set off across the river for my next meeting. I parked in the underground car park in Chinatown and walked to the office to have my meeting.
Only then, when I entered the office and saw everyone clustered in earnest fashion around the television sets did I realise that the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York had happened.
You can argue what you like about this, but once I knew of the ghastly attacks, all of the numbers returned to by mind. Rupert Sheldrake and others have argued that a knowledge field exists. Perhaps, it does!
Saturday, when I ook the train to Portsmouth and like that fateful day in 2001, it was September 11th. Nothing happened in the station, but I did read Robert Fisk’s excellent article in The Independent about our woeful, vile and vengeful reaction to the attack. When someone or something hurts you, you have to fight back in a constructive manner, so that it doesn’t happen again. Loose your rag and be vindictive and you loose your one weapon, your sense of thought, reason and intelligence. As an example,my biggest protection against another stroke, is to change things, so that I reduce the risks and also to question everything I do, to make sure it is right.
Blair and Bush failed to do that! This was profoundly stupid, as they had the sympathy of the whole world after the attacks. But what did they do, they attacked Saddam Husein, who a few years before had been their friend.
And what did a crazy American pastor want to do on Saturday? Burn the Koran! As I’ve said many times, you don’t burn books, you read them! And when you’ve read them as many times as you can, you pass them on to someone who might enjoy them or learn something! Failing that, you may recycle them to make more things to read!
London Buses
In the two and a half days or so, that I spent in London, I used the buses a lot. They worked well, especially, as the information at stops, generally allows you to choose the right bus for your journey with ease. There is one thing, that I’d like to see and that is some form of route map actually on the buses, so that if you are unfamiliar with the route, you can make the right decision about which stops to use. I think this is often brought about, by the fact that I’m unable to recognise where I am from the lower deck of a bus.
But I can still use the top deck, as this picture of the inside of a Routemaster on Route 15 shows.
Top Deck of a Routemaster
Stranglely as a child, I didn’t travel on these iconic buses very often, as they weren’t introduced into the suburbs, like Cockfosters where I lived, until after I left. The first place I saw them was at Wood Green, where they replaced the trolley buses.
But when C and our young family lived in St. John’s Wood, we used them extensively to get around London. It may surprise people to read that we could manage three small children and a large double pushchair with ease on these buses. But then in those days, it was either use the bus or walk! Or in C’s case push!
I should say that on my trip from Trafalgar Square to St. Pauls on the Routemaster, I had no difficulties with the stairs. So that was another victory against the Devil!
Exchange at Whitechapel
On Friday morning, I walked from the Raj Hotel in the Essex Road through de Beauvoir Town to Dalston Junction Station to catch the East London Line. It was a pleasant walk through one of the most unusual and pleasant parts of London and I was using the train to go to the Museum of London after a change at Whitechapel to the Hammersmith and City Line for Barbican.
The simple change took me longer than it should, as in the first place, signage from the East London line to the Hammersmith and City wasn’t good, a train indicator board was broken and then I had to wait some time for a train. I did talk to someone on the platform and he was helpful and acknowledged the problem. I hope it improves, as it will become an important link between the Overground and the Underground.
I should say that I’ve used Whitechapel for years and it really isn’t any worse than it was when my granddaughter was born in the London Hospital. I suspect there’s a lot of problems because the interchange is where it is, with pavements and a street market outside and limited space inside.
I would also suspect that as Whitechapel Station is going to be a major interchange on CrossRail, that the problems I encountered will be designed out in the years to come.
The Anonymous Widower 