Tag: train

Train thoughts

Posted on

Three hours (and four minutes) from Sheffield to London on board an East Midlands train would maim anyone through boredom. But with two kids in tow, it’s a killer. And the scenery isn’t exactly riveting through Leicestershire: power stations, wet fields and dirty horses. Then, to add insult to injury, you end up in Bedfordshire, which seems like some sort of post apocalyptic wasteland.
Suddenly, Leicestershire seems picturesque.
There’s a tip for the Leicestershire Tourist Board, right there. Compare yourself with Luton.

Still, as with many places in the UK, there’s free, fast wifi on  board, so the kids are kept amused watching NatGeo videos. Although, there are only so many NatGeo videos you can watch before you get tired of watching NatGeo videos.

There’s a French Bulldog just across the aisle from us. It’s off to a French Bulldog meet in London. It has its own Instagram account. It’s standing on the table that people need to eat their food off. Ugh.

Nearly there now. Just passing through St Albans. Also nicer than Luton. I’m going to go and help my daughter colour in Spiderman now, so I’ll be back later. Sorry for the rambling, but it was surely worth it for that Leicestershire tourism tip. Right?

Hurry home

Posted on

Sunday 15th July. It’s Scoop’s 4th birthday and she and the rest of the family are spending the day travelling. First, from Sheffield to London, then across the capital to Terminal 5 at Heathrow and then, overnight back home to Cape Town. Door to door should be about 21 hours. It’s functional, it’s necessary and it’s no fun for any of us, to be fair.

As I write, the flooded East Midlands are flying past, reminding me just how crappy the weather has been since we’ve been over. It’s not too bad out there at the moment, although apparently it’s raining in London. Fortunately, we don’t have to go outside once we get there.
Sadly, while we’ve enjoyed our stay immensely, this will always be remembered as the summer holiday that never really got very summery. We can count three sunny days on one hand, which, bearing in mind we’ve been in Europe for over three weeks, isn’t great.

It’s gone so quickly, but it still seems like forever since we arrived: the days in London and Paris are like a lifetime ago. It’s going to take a long evening with the photos to remember and relive the details.

But right now, gazing out at the fetid industrial heartland of… erm… Market Harborough, I’m going to try and amuse the kids for at least some of the remaining 90 minutes to St Pancras.

To St James by train

Posted on

One Sunday each November, the children of Alex’s playschool, together with their associated parents, grandparents, various hangers-on and their teacher Jayne, head off to Kenilworth Station to board the 08:54 train southbound to St James. St James is charming little place which has a road, a railway line and a row of colourful beach huts on the shore and not much else – but that’s fine, because the station is all of 50 metres from the beach.
Much like last year, the party of around 40 individuals – many of them small and loud – descended upon the Southern Suburbs line, much to the horror of the more regular users of the service.
I’ll never forget last year, when passengers getting on at Retreat stopped and stared, open-mouthed, as the doors opened and they were greeted by a carriageful of somewhat out-of-place, (almost) middle-aged whities and their kids. It was awesome. South Africa has a interesting relationship with the concept of race (for obvious reasons). It warms my heart when people go out of their comfort zone and try something they usually wouldn’t. Even more so when all involved can find some wry humour in the situation: as was the case last year.

    

It will come as no huge surprise to regular readers to learn that I took my camera along and managed to knock off well over 100 shots, which I have whittled down to 50 for the purposes of uploading to Flickr. Even that 170-odd MB took most of the afternoon to sort out. Gotta love SA internet and the ASDL hamsters enjoying a Sunday afternoon nap in their wheels in Bloemfontein.

The weather was much warmer than the forecast 19°C, much calmer than the 45kph SouthEaster we were promised (although that has since arrived with a vengeance) and (I believe) a good time was had by all.

Alex moves on from his two year residence at this school next year, but we have already secured our place on next year’s outing by popping out little K-pu. It should, however, be noted that although this is a great day out, we have ABSOLUTELY NO PLANS for any other back door invitations once our daughter has completed her time with Jayne. Believe it, because it’s true.