Trepid Journey

Some of you may have noticed that I’m often somewhere I wasn’t the day before. Unfortunately getting about the country can be a bit pricey unless you put a bit of forward planning into the equation and book journeys weeks in advance. It seems this January that the weather has other ideas about travelling and the authorities are trying to tell us that we shouldn’t  be going anywhere unless we have to, but since they didn’t phone me and offer to buy me replacement tickets for next week I went anyway.

No 1 son, who is learning to drive, wanted me to join him for a drive to Inveraray. I was a little concerned about what the condition the road would be like but was assured that they were fine. They were as it happens and John seems to have driving a car worked out and returned me back to Dunoon without terrifying me although the weather did produce a flurry of snow or two when we were at the far end just to worry me.

I was a bit concerned my night bus to London wouldn’t happen, making it difficult to say, “where’s my train” when it didn’t arrive in Paddington the next day but both services ran fine, all be it a smite late. In fact the only hiccup in the transport system wasn’t weather related at all – a gas explosion near Bristol meant that I had to get off the train in Swindon rather than Chippenham. Fortunately the No 55 bus was running well and I still arrived in Calne before Kes got back from work. Well done British transportation system, you’re not all bad all the time.

I didn’t spend as much of my intertravel hours wandering around as usual as I am no more impervious to the cold than anyone else. In Glasgow I finished off my book with a gallon or two of McDonalds tea and a visit to the pictures to see Nowhere Boy – a rather excellent film about John Lennon’s early years  – much recommended if you’re suffering from Christmas blockbuster special effect overload syndrome. In London, after noting the frozen state of the fountains and lake in St James Park, I took shelter in the national portrait gallery for the final hour before I had to catch my train – particularly fascinating was the Tudor section where 3 of the more famous portraits of Elizabeth the 1^st are in the same room – it’s easy to see that it is the same woman getting older so I think we can be fairly confident that we know how she looked. Only managed one floor of it in the time I had so a return is in order for 19^th and 20^th century pictures.

I see from the weather forecast that there is no end in site for the current cold snap so I wouldn’t be surprised if in another week and a half, when my return is due, that I set out on another trepid journey.