A Touch Of Luxury
I’m making sure that I don’t just have clean socks every day, but fresh new ones.
A New Pair Of Socks Every Day
How decadent!
All Adventures Start At Stanfords
Stanfords is one of my favourite shops as it stocks my pornography; maps.
Stanfords Travel Bookshop
So I went there last night to get a county map for Lancashire, as this county seems to contain a lot of the difficult teams.
A Silly Suggestion
Someone has just written on my JustGiving page, that I should eat a pie at each ground. For someone, whose father was a medical doctor, it is not good advice, as I’m a coeliac and the pies would do me untold damage.
Thanks to all those who’ve contributed so far!
Getting To Newcastle Urgently on the Cheap
In my trip around the country, I will have a lot of problems, because I often won’t know, which train, I can catch.
I was in Kings Cross this morning and looked up how much it would cost me to go today, if I bought a ticket. A Super Off Peak Single with a Senior Railcard would have cost me £72.40. But suppose I want to go tomorrow, how much will that self-same ticket cost on the web? I’ve just looked and if I want to travel tomorrow, it’ll cost me £36.20. Or half price.
So just by booking the day before, you get half price on the web. And I can travel on any train after 9:30.
Incidentally, there are no cheaper tickets.
So when I have to return after a busy day, I’ll have one in my wallet, as I can use it on most late trains home.
East Coast Tickets Are Not Exchangeable For A Sensible Fee
For my Day 1 trip from Accrington to London, I booked an advance ticket on the 10:05 from Leeds to London, that arrived at 12:30. The ticket cost me £26.45.
But at the time I booked, I hadn’t thought that I could fit in the Aston Villa part of the trip.
So I found that if I took an earlier train from Leeds, it would give me more time. But no matter, it said that I could exchange the ticket for a fee.
So I looked it up on the web this morning and found that there were tickets for earlier trains still available, albeit at a higher price. There were also Super Off Peak tickets available at £28.90, which is probably what I should have bought in the first place.
So I went to Kings Cross and found out that to exchange the ticket for a named train would cost me a fee of forty-one pounds or so. I’ve changed advance tickets in the past and I think I got charged five or ten pounds or so. That would have been reasonable, but not ideal, as in fact, I’m not sure which train I want to take. As it’s a Saturday, I have a feeling that a Super Off Peak ticket allows me to travel on most, if not all trains.
So I left, after realising I had a nice story for my blog and of course, I still had a valid ticket on the 10:05, even if it is a bit tight to get to Aston Villa.
At home, I found that the £28.90 ticket was still there, so to see if I could get it cheaper, I tried the TrainLine. But that wanted £40.90. I don’t pay booking fees to anybody, so they can go and find some other mugs.
So I went back to East Coast and eventually bought the ticket at £28.90.
It’ll be interesting to see what price, I could pay for a walk-up ticket at Leeds on Saturday.
To return to the title of this page. I don’t consider, a forty pound plus fee acceptable, when I can buy a fully flexible ticket for about two-thirds of the sum.
This trip is starting to get interesting. Perhaps I should follow Tony Hawks lead and travel with a fridge. The problem is that I’ve had enough medical problems in the past few years, I don’t want another caused by humping a fridge.
Kings Cross to Waterloo and Back
Waterloo is south of the river, so it doesn’t connect well to civilisation using the Underground.
On my trip between Accrington and Aldershot, I’ll need to travel from Kings Cross to Waterloo. I’ll also have to come back to get to the Arsenal. I did do a recce earlier, but today I checked out using the Bakerloo and then the Piccadilly or Vict0oria lines.
Going south, it’s just a Victoria line to Oxford Circus and then a cross platform transfer to the Bakerloo line for Waterloo.
Going north, you walk to the left on coming off a train at Waterloo and take the escalator down marked Bakerloo. At the bottom, you go through the gates and take another escalator. Then you can actually turn immediately left and take a shirtcut throgh to the northbound Bakerloo, where I found it was better to get in about the middle of the train. This means at Piccadilly Circus, you just walk to the back of the train to take the subway to the Piccadilly line. Get in towards the back of the train and you’ll be well placed to go straight up the escalators at Kings Cross. But as on Day 1, I’m going to Arsenal, I’ll get in towards the middle.
Hopefully, I’ll save a minute or so.
Slow West Trains
I wanted to get my ticket from Waterloo to Aldershot today for next Saturday.
As I wanted to get a ticket from the Zone 6 Boundary, and I have a Freedom Pass, I had to queue up at Waterloo.
I waited about twenty minutes, as they just didn’t have enough staff and I was not buying a ticket for today.
The good thing was that the ticket cost me just £6.20 return with a Senior Railcard and the Freedom Pass.
I Was on talkSPORT Last Night
I was interviewed on talkSPORT by Jason Cundy late last night.
I don’t think I made too much of a fool of myself.
My Place in The Sun
I was in The Sun yesterday, just under Pippa Middleton at the bottom of page 29. Under the headine, He Choos He Scores, it said the following.
Londoner James Miller, 64, will use trains and buses to visit 92 Football League grounds in alphabetical order in 29 days.
Not strictly true, as I’m allowing myself the 31 days of October, but they obviously didn’t have any more space.
C once appeared on page 3 in The Sun. A case involving a saucy farmer, where she was defending the two women, who attacked him, was published many years ago.
The Anonymous Widower 