BritRail - Cumbria and the North West Coast

Tonight I asked Greg about two structures I keep seeing from the train windows. One is a large round flat cement wall that seems to be covered with the spokes of a wheel – the diameter of the area is about the size of a house. He told me what I am seeing is a city’s anaerobic water treatment plant. I need to have him along on our trips for such answers.

Then I see often see long, slender cement columns with concave sides, about as high as a grain elevator. He told me he thinks those might be nuclear generating plants. Wyona added that smoke seems to be belting out of them. “Perhaps, steam,” said Greg.

Northwest England, Cumbria and the Lakes. That is where we were going today. Wyona had a printout of the stopping pattern of the train from Lancaster to Barrow in Furnss: Lancaster, Carnforth, Silverdale, Arnside, Grange Ovr Sands, Kents Bank, Cark & Cartmel, Ulverston, Dalton Cumbria, Roose, Barow In Furnss, Askam, Kirkby In Furn, Foxfeld, Green Road, Miliom, Silecroft, Bottle (Cumbria), Ravenglass, Drigg, Seascale, Seilafield, St. Bees, Corkickle, Whitehaven,Barton, Harrington, Workington, Workington North, Flimby, Maryport, Aspatria, Wigton, Daiston Cumbria, and Carlisle.

The railroad followed the sea alongt the northwest coast and the train stopped every 3 to 6 minutes for people to alight or step down. That is why I had to write down the names of all of those towns. We actually stopped that many times in 3 hours.

“Where are you going?”, asked the conductor when he saw our open ended ticket.

“To Carlisle,” replied Wyona.

“You are on the wrong train. The train you just got off of will get you there in one hour.”

“We choose this route to see your beautiful, scenic, small towns along the coast,” Wyona replied.

“Just so you know,” said the conductor.

A few stops further down the line, when another family left and we took their four seater table to look at the seaside through their windows, the older gentleman said Wyona, “I have taken the trip you are going on. It is beautiful. You will enjoy it.”

Wyona spends her evenings trying to figure out which trains we can catch to maximize our time on the trains instead of on the station platforms.
She printed out a large coloured map in four different parts and then did a cut and paste on all of the pages until she has a large map of England that both covers a whole talbe and shows the rail lines on it.

I have been thinking about the itineraries she has printed out for the last 15 days, and then the back-up itineraries in case we miss this or that connection. I suggested she drive a staple through all of these papers, hole punched them, and call it her memoirs. “Yes, I am always trying to organize my environment,” said Wyona.

What I have learned from going 24 hours a day for 15 days with her is that it is better for one of us to do the high level organizing and the other (me) to be organized. Oh, I haven’t turned my brain off. On occasion I can still yell, “Wyona, platform 4”, and we leap on a train just in time.

We have never been left on the platform, seeing the train pull out without us. But it may be a usual occurrence for a conductor to see us running and call out, “The train is leaving in 30 seconds. Hop on at this door and find a seat in transit.”

Timing has to be just perfect on leaving a train when the journey is through. Too soon and I am paralyzed, caught in the river of other commuters, streaming to the exit doors.

Too late leaving the train and I get trapped by the cleaning staff going through the coaches -- like a whirl wind lifting debris and garbage from floors and chairs. Alternately, I get trapped in the coach by the new commuters pouring down the isles to find their seats if I am not quick enough getting to the departure doors.

I have developed at least a middle-skill level at picking up two carry-on’s and carting them up or down stairs to different train platforms. One in each hand gives me good balance on the stairs --so good, that I hardly get anyone offering to help me carry my bags anymore.

As well, I find that my left foot does an automatic kick on the suitcase to swing it down to a 45 degree angle so that I can run along with the other commuters and their baggage. I might even do the kick to a phantom suitcase should Wyona be in charge of the carry-on’s at that point.

I should concentrate on relaxing on this part of my trip, but there is a certain amount of tension involved in getting off trains at the right stops, or making sure that I am reading the departure and not the arrival screen in a train station.

Yesterday Wyona made an amazing save for a woman who had turned the corner of the escalator and was heading down for the underground. The woman made the corner, but her luggage did not, and got caught on its corner. She was a few steps down the escalator when she realized her luggage was weaving at the top, but not following her. The woman ran back up the stairs which continued to move downward and at the same time Wyona righted the suitcase and put it in her hands.

All in a day’s travel.

“I am going to miss my little lambs,” said Wyona as another field full of them passed by our view, today.

I am going to miss the scenery. I have been wondering if I have been hallucinating when I look at the fields, for the crops seem to be growing before my eyes as I travel.

Knowing today was our second last day of travel seemed to make the hours bitter-sweet.

It is not the Shrewsburry fruit and nut cookies, nor the orange and chocolate chip biscuits, nor the Walkers shortbread (with double cream) that we will be missing.

Nor is it the mistakes we are making that creates this nostalgia. The mistakes are natural ones. I can be sure that if I take along a winter coat and gloves for a trip to Mt. Snowden, that I will come home sunburned.

If Wyona and I pack a big lunch, that is the day that the train staff feed us breakfast, lunch, supper and 2 mid-day snacks.

If I drag my computer along on the trip, that is the day that the trains have no internet connections in their coaches. I won’t miss any of the surprises connected with the above events.

What I am already missing is the hours of scenery passing before me.

I am not as enamoured of the destinations of our trips, as I am of the hours of the exquisite beauty of England, Scotland and Wales passing before my eyes.

So ... Wyona saw a deal today – a weekend special.

“Hello, Greg,” she said on the cell phone. “I am in Carlisle.”

“In Scotland,” he confirmed.

“Is that where Carlise is?” she laughed. “I am booking your to come along with us tomorrow for our last day – 6 ½ hours out to Penzance and 6 ½ hours back. The bonus is having 3 hours in Penzance.”

“I am in,” said he.

On our travels, we have only left behind 2 pillows, one coat and one scarf, each of which we will probably buy ten times over if we can just squeeze in a market or two on our travels.

While Charise was here, I heard her ask Wyona numerous times to write her own memoirs so that Charise can read them. I thought, instead, Wyona should staple together her maps and her print-outs of where we have gone for the last 2 weeks and call those her memoirs.

Wyona does so much of the organizing.

At the same time, I am reading Great Britain, a guidebook to get a general picture of the country we will be seeing.

Today, I read that “the northwest was Britain’s industrial heartland...What is really impressive is that the industrial revolution was born here and raised here into the overwhelming force of capitalism; that the world’s first industrial city grew up around Manchester’s burgeoning mills; and that the endless possibilities of the Age of Reason, that unquestionable optimism that continues to spur contemporary society to greater heights of optimism and advancement, were put through their original paces here. Ancient Rome would have been impressed by the achievement.”

Those three sentences shaped what I was seeing today. The sky was grey. The light was dull. I knew I was not going to get good pictures with my camera. Instead, I kept my eyes glued to the window as I always do. By the end of the day, I had this overwhelming feeling that should I ever take History 200 again, I would have no trouble passing the exam, one that I failed when I was 19 and had to spend all summer studying for a re-write. Tonight, I felt as though I could have written the textbook for the course.

I didn’t reach for the camera until half way through the day.

For fun, I was studying the patterns of the sand in the tidal rivers, looking at the factories that still dot the land, watching the working class people who were boarding the trains with their families for a few hours in the sun and the wind of the beach before going back to their factories. A young father who truly loved his children sat with them on the train, playing with the baby and entertaining the curly red-headed 3 year old girl on his knee.

Wyona and I moved over to let a young mother with her 2 children join our table, for the train was crowded. She talked to her brother who was with her, and nursed the baby on and off at the same time as she was speaking to him. She plumped the baby in its plastic diaper down on top of the table to play among all of us.
There was an earthy warmness to the day. Because we ride with first class tickets, doesn’t mean that the trains we ride have quiet elegance of first class accommodation in any of the coaches.

Today, luggage lunch bags spilled over into the middle of the isles. Conversations between passengers with different English dialects went on. Some families were playing games and I could hear the clicking of die. The noise at the back end of the train was so loud I thought 8 or 10 middle school boys had got their gang together at that back train door. Kids were singing a rousing “taunting song” like one that might be heard at a rugby match.

“No,” said Wyona on investigating. “All of that noise is coming from just 2 rambunctious teen-age girls.”

On the same train a young man asked us if it would bother us if he practised his guitar, so he strummed and sang in the seat next to us.

“When did it change?”, I asked Wyona. “There was a time when you would have to beg a man to sing falsetto, and now kids this age think nothing of doing it in the middle of a train.”

“Lucky them. It gives them a range of 2 ½ octaves,” she said.

Wyona and I had Glen’s road atlas out at our table, the one he purchased for his road trip through England. We kept one finger on the railroad line, even tracking when we would go over an inlet on a bridge.

The tide had taken the water out to sea.

Motor boats and sail boats looked marooned there – inside of what appeared to be a house foundation to me. Does anyone know what this is that I have taken a picture of?

The railroad coach jostled its passengers along the perimeter of England’s west coast and they got off with their nap sacks on their backs, pushing their children in strollers to the sea, the sun on their faces and the wind blowing the tails of their shirts far behind them.

This week has been spring break. All of the students are out of school and at home. In every city we have seen so many families out enjoying each other on the streets, balloons in their hands, amusement parks operating on the beaches, and we even saw one town getting ready to have a parade of some kind today.

I was too slow with my camera to get a picture of today’s sighting of fishermen. Men were sitting on the sides of a bank or on plastic white chairs, evenly spaced out along a body of water, as though they had rented a trailer space, but they were each holding fishing rods in their hands. The body of water (2 long ditches, really) was so narrow that they could easily have had a conversation with another fisherman on the other side of the pond, without even raising their voice.

“I don’t think that body of water is any wider than the Elbow River,” Wyona said to me.

Tonight we tried to follow the train manager’s suggestion to everyone.

“Be sure to take your personal belongings with you, and ... mind the gap as you leave the train.”

Arta

Britrail - To the Summit with Snowdon Moutain Railroad

Today’s plan was to be in Chester by 9 am, in Bangor, Wales by 10 and in Mount Snowdonia National Park in the afternoon.

Wyona and I have lightened the luggage.

I can lift the carry-on luggage with one finger now.

For the last three days we have been packing 2 carry-on’s, 2 bags, 2 purses and one camera case.

Each day we bring along a couple of 2 litre bottles of ginger ale in case I get sick – which is better than bringing along a whole medicine kit, but dragging that around all day in our luggage as a preventative measure is only increasing the muscle strength of the person who is dragging the suitcase.

Don’t follow us when it comes to moving through our train itinerary.

We took the Virgin Train Line today, an early morning ride.

We have been travelling the Britrail choices now for 14 days and today we discovered this line serves a beautiful warm breakfast and salad and sandwiches for lunch. I told Wyona that clinches it. Our final day will be all Virgin Railroad trips – I don’t care where the train is going now. I only care that we go in style all day.

“You won’t get there any faster than by going with me.”

That is what the bus driver of the Red Rover told Wyona when she asked for directions on how to get to the railroad.

For the price of £4.80 to him, the two of us could go from the train station in Bangor to Llanoberis, home of the Snowdon Mountain Railroad line.

He was comfortable driving at break-neck speeds around tight corners and comfortable with putting his feet on the gas and on the brake with equal speed, though it was hard to tell how the rhythm of that punctuation between fast and slow would be created.

Wyona was moving the luggage into a secure place in front of our seats when he hit the brakes, and she shot down the isle, one hand remaining on the bar of the cage she was moving the luggage to, but the rest of her body jolting in the isle.

She stabilized herself with one arm and when she quit swinging I said to her, “One more place on your body that hurts.”

“My only solution is to take more pain killers,” she said.

At the Llanberis ticket office was a sign rolling along their electronic marquee: “All trains sold for the day.”

“All trains fully booked” was the text written on the sandwich board beside the ticket wicket as well.

“Any possible chance of a ticket for today,” said Wyona.

“No,” was the reply.

“Then how about tomorrow,” she said. “We have come from Canada to go on this railroad and we have two more possible days. “

“I can give you tomorrow at 12:30 pm,” the ticket master said.

“Fine,” she said. “We can make it back here from London at that time. We did it today. See, it is 12:27, so we can make it."

He picked up the phone and spoke with someone using his Welsh dialect. “Here,” he continued to her. “How many tickets to you need. I can give you two for today at 2:30 pm.

“Are they good seats?” she said.

“The very best. Guard seats.”

So we sat in the front cab with the man who checks that the timing of the train is just right, that it is on the right track and his third job is to keep the loud speaker going that gives the description of what is happening around every corner.

My favourite line?

“You are going to see five kingdoms when you get to the top of the mountain: the Kingdom of Wales, the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of Scotland, the Kingdom of Ireland and the fifth? The Kingdom of Heaven.”

The train slowed down to a stop when a new lamb whose mother was at its side, only hustled down the track, instead of hustling off of the track.

"They get shorn in July," said that guard who was with us.

The gulls swooped and soared at the top of the mountain.

The gorges were deep, the cliffs high, the valley’s miles, beneath us

One hundred and fifty thousand people take this train ride every year.

“I walked it one year,” said the female conductor.

“I couldn’t walk for one week afterward,” she continued.

I walked it also, said a man – in the winter and we took along a guide dog to help preserve our lives.

Wyona and I had read our guidebooks, the ones that told us to dress for the cold weather. So we had seaters, scarves, gloves, our black all weather jackets and our umbrellas. All of that was a mistake. The weather was lovely and warm.

We peeled off the layering of clothing.

I got a sunburn.

We call the seats we had in the carriage, the royal seating for our view was the view from the cab.

How lucky was that.

Love,

Arta

BritRail - Hadrian's Wall

Lurene, Wyona and I were travelling from the west to the east coast of northern England and I was remembering the last thing that Catherine Jarvis said to me. “If you get to see Hadrian’s Wall, you will be living Eric’s dream. He has never been able to make it there.”

We were in the right place at the right time.

All we had to do was get off of the train and take the local bus that the guide book suggests and in one hour we could ride Hadrian’s wall, for the mere price of £3.

“I will not stop and let you take picture. This is a local bus.”

The driver said that to Wyona three times. She assured him that we only wanted the ride – no special stops, no picture taking. And so Lurene and I glued our noses to the window of the bus.

About fifteen minutes into the ride the driver called back to us, “If you want to see Hadrian’s wall, it is coming up and you will have to be looking out of the other window.”

We switched sides, but couldn’t tell Hadrian’s wall from the stone fences in all of the fields.

“You have been riding right on top of Hadrian’s wall for the last 3 miles,” called out the driver. “The pavement is right on top of the wall which has not been excavated.”

In a few more miles his voice was clear again – now you can see the wall.

Indeed we could. And we could see a man in a full kilt giving a lecture to a group who were sitting on the wall.

The bus stopped to let people off at the best fortification on the wall. The parking lot teemed with tourists getting in and out of their cars, and with lines of people going up the paths to the wall.

We had to decide in a split second, whether we wanted to join the other tourists, or keep to the bus, where we had our own tour guide.

We choose the latter, since we were the only three on the bus. He pointed out the tree in which a small boy sat in the Robin Hood film. He drove by a rock that is purportedly on the centre of England. He showed us the bluffs, the ones that show how complete the wall really was as a fortification against the invading Scots.

All of this in one hour – a chance we took to live Eric’s dream.

Love to him for the idea,

The wall was stunning.
Arta

BritRail - Glasgow

On the Inverness trip, we had 30 minutes in Glasgow.

That is not a lot of time to get the flavor of the city.

Charise did ask on the telephone tonight, if we saw anyone in a kilt.

The answer is yes and I even had time to snap a picture.

This is not the best example, Charise, but by the time I get my camera out, the image I wanted to capture is gone and I have to look for another. This fellow was in a square, helping to get ready for a band that was to play at an afternoon event.


As well, when I walked the square that is right outside of the train station, on one corner of the square is the police station.

They ride green motorcycles, which you can see here, lined up right by the station.

How could I not have stopped to take a picture? There was a whole block of motorcycles lined up before me.

When there was just 10 minutes of time left before we were to board the train again, Wyona told me to take a store to the south, for she thought she saw another square down there.

I took that walk which was down to the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art.

When I saw this statue of Wellington outside of the museum, the statue with a construction cone on Wellington's head, I thought Wyona had been putting me on, had seen it, and then was sending me down there as a joke.

All I could wonder is, is this the new Glaswegian modern art?

She denied even having walked that far.

She said she had just spotted a building down there that she thought was interesting.

I was searching everywhere, to see what it was that her eye was really on.

That is when I saw a beautiful metal frieze on the Wellington statue.

There was a sculpture of a boy bidding his parents farewell, and when I got closer with my camera, I saw that as another addition, a modern art addition to the freeze, someone had added their cigarette butt.

I removed it, in the interest of not having art quite that modern, and then we hopped on the train for another adventure.

Love,

Arta

Britrail - Inverness

Our plans were to stay in Edinburgh for one day, during which we were going to ride the hop-on, hop-off bus, look at the castle and do the Royal Mile.

But we thought about our BritRail pass going to waste for the whole day, and the weather turned around for us.

Better, we thought, to take a train ride up the coast to Dundee, look at the coves along the sea and take a look at Inverness, touted to be charming for the way it treats is visitors since it has very little in the way of the touristy kind of attractions to offer.

After Inverness, we came back through the middle of Scotland -- all in all, the ride taking 13 hours.

Just beautiful.

Tonight Wyona did her research for we are wanting to take that trip again, this time with Greg on the weekend.

A first-class, anytime fare rate for him for that trip would be 495 pounds, more than the price we paid for our first-class anytime rate for 16 days when buying the pass back in Canada.

Now it makes sense to us, why we are madly riding the trains.

Arta

BritRail - Malag and Oban

Hard to believe that as an added bonus on the trip between Malag and Oban, we rode over this bridge, one that is familiar to Harry Potter fans. Remember when he missed the train and had to fly to catch up to it, riding between the pillars of this bridge that you see Wyona taking a picture of, in this instance.

This is the smallest place I have ever stayed. That was what Wyona told me after we checked into the Crianlarch Hotel. She was not talking about the size of the hotel, but the size of the town: two blocks – 10 houses; a police station; a youth hostel; a bed and breakfast; the hotel; the convenience store that was also the post office and bank machine; a church with services run twice monthly.

We took a walk in the evening, up a small trail, down which hikers were coming from the close of the day.

“Are you locals?,” one asked.

Even though I said no, he proceeded with his next question. “Do you know where the chippy is?”

“I don’t know what a chippy is,” I replied.

He pantomimed for me something the size of a shoe box and then began to pick imaginary French fries out of it.

Wyona and I were taking a stroll before bedding down at the end of a trip that Tonia suggested as not to be missed.

Someone on the train told us that the ride was voted the best steam engine trip in the world, two years running.

There was a reason that I would stand at the window for long stretches of the trip, so long at the window that other passengers joined me there, to see what it was that was so interesting.

That day we had gone from London to Edinburgh, over to Glasgow, then along the West Highland Railroad Line to Oban and then Malag before ending our trip at a point where we could start the next day’s trip to Scotland.

On the way to Oban, people dressed for hiking would leave the train and join others whom we saw all along the way on hiking paths.

The train company has published a short book that tells the name of the stops and what is important to watch for between stops.

For example, here is a set of locks that brings small boats down one of the rivers and lets them into the sea.

Here you can see the symmetry of the design as well as love its function.

Malag was a short one hour stop.

I took pictures of the Atlantic Ocean and the islands just off of the main coast.

Wyona sat at the railroad station and that is where she pointed out to me that herring gulls were nesting right on the tracks.

I was flat on my stomach, hanging over the railroad platform, trying to capture this image.

Other gulls were shrieking at me from over head, swooping down, probably the mate of the bird.

Is this a trip we would recommend?

We have an extra day at the end of the pass – a day we are saving to redo the best of the day trips we have been making.

Hard to think that any other trip could beat one that was voted the best steam engine trip in the world.

Arta

BritRail - York

The place I wanted to go was York for the guide books promised that York drips with history and heritage. Free tours from Exhibition Square, just in front of the Art Gallery run, two a day, 10:15 am and 2:15 pm, a volunteer service done for over 60 years.

The tour was to be two hours.

Three hours later, the tour was still going on. The group picked up interested passers-by and those who were on tight schedules left as they needed to. The guide was a retired archaeology professor and the more interested people became, the longer he walked.

I loved the sweep of his arm as he would point to other tour groups and say – those are the groups who have to pay. We are free.

The four-hectare city-centre of the Museum Garden was an oasis. Assorted ruins and buildings dot the area: a 19th century working observatory, and the multangular tower of a Roman garrison’s defensive wall where there are smaller Roman stones at the bottom, and then built up with 13th century additions.

The most fascinating part of the mulangular tower is the red line that runs close to the foundation. (That line just barely shows in the bottom 1/4 of this picture.)

“Romans put that line there as a warning to other invaders. Don’t mess with us. We are the Romans,” is how the guide described that feature.

I especially loved the ruins of the cathedral the monks had built outside of the city wall.

In August mystery plays are done here, with the face of God sometimes being seen from one of these old windows.

I walked the 13th century walls via the steps at Bootham Bar and followed them clockwise to Monk Bar, a walk that shows a beautiful view of the Minister.

The largest Gothic stained glass window in the world is having the stones that surround it worked on.

And so if you go inside to see the window, all you get is a computer-generated image of the window, in its place. I passed on that, but took picture outside, since if you can only see one cathedral in England, this is the one to see

The Walmate Bar is England’s only city gate with an intact barbican, the extended gateway to ward off univited guests.

York has five major land marks: the wall enclosing the small city centre, the Minster, the Clifford Gate, and the River Oose.

How lucky was I, to have seen it all on one tour.

Arta