BritRail to Sheerness-on-Sea

If I had been asked the question, where do you see yourself when you are 70, I would not have answered, “Using a Britrail pass, night and day, for 16 days.”

This is the first day we have stopped to look at the prices of the fares, since our pass is a flat fare rate of $685 for trains for 15 days plus a bonus day.

On doing the math while planning today’s trip, we discovered that from London to Shanklin and back would have been the equivalent of $300 for the day, had we not had our pass.

“Why we could never be afford to take trains like this, nor spend that much money on a trip for each day for 3 weeks. We can not even buy scarves using that kind of cash at the silk market,” I told Wyona.

The deal is that the pass has to be purchased by travellors coming to England to visit or ever Brit would have a pass like this.

To the question, where do you see yourself when you are 70, I would not have answered, “Picking up sea shells at Sheerness-on-Sea, tucking them into my purse, washing them as the last act of the day, getting up early to inspect their beauty and deciding where they will sit in my bedroom.”

Yesterday -- a cold day, miles of beautiful beach, hundreds of yards of stairs that could be used as benches to lay out on in the hot sun, should there have been sun.

There were all the markings of a summer amusement park written on buildings and bill boards: advertising for 10-pin bowling, fish and chips, ice cream, sausage rolls that could be ordered ahead and picked up when getting off of the train, but the parking lot was empty and the shops were closed.

“Which way do we go to the beach,” Wyona asked the conductor when we got to the farthest point in our journey.

“I don’t know. I have never gone there. I only bring people here,” he said.

It was wet and misty. A few couples walked the promenade. We were the ones down by the water, collecting beautiful rocks and carving out half circles with our shoes in the sand.

To the question, what would you be doing with your leisure time at 70, I would not have answered, “Putting myself on a gruelling schedule. Up at 5:30 am to catch a 6:15 train and coming home at 11 pm in time to plan the next day’s schedule.”

I do not know how to spell the word retirement.

“We are not going to waste one minute by not being on the train,” I say to Wyona. “Other people may want to go places, get off and look around, but I want to see the English countryside go by the window.”

The lambs beside their mothers, the color in the fields, the blossoms still on the Hawthorne trees, the Norman, Roman, and Gothic churches the dot the villages, the castles that we glimpse, the backyards of people who live near the rails, the sailboats that dot the bays – all so interesting.

Today I saw something new: beautiful graffiti on the rooves of the row housing – maybe a block of it, beside the railroad. It could only have been painted so beautifully there for us.

We have seven days of travel left, now carefully planned – all except the last day.

We have decided to do again the best trip of the 3 weeks, but we won’t know what that is until next Saturday night.

“What if I want to go one way, and you the other?”, Wyona asked,

“I am sure our train lines will cross then,” I answered.

Arta