A Few More Days in England

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Saturday, our trip to Broadstairs from St. Ives was a bit troublesome. We had no trouble with the five-minute taxi ride to the station, nor with getting on the train to London. However, at Reading the conductor announced that there would be a serious delay. We were already about 20 minutes late. After a while he said no trains were entering London, which made us think of terrorism or fire. I started wondering about B&Bs in Reading. After about 40 minutes, he said that the train on the adjacent platform would be going to Waterloofor anyone who wanted to take that train.

So our whole train full of passengers invaded the Waterloo train, which became very crowded. Deirdre and I were fortunate to get two facing seats, and the young woman already there was very tolerant of our luggage in the foot space. Turned out she was freshman student at Oxford, returning home to London for the first time to visit family and to attend her best friend’s birthday “clubbing” night. She also was sick and may be the source of a cold I am now resisting. She talked virtually all of the way to London requiring few words from us. Kindly, she answered my questions about the “Oyster Card”, a London underground fare option – not good for tourists really. And when the train announced that the Clapham Junction stop would allow us to change and get to Victoria Station by train rather than tube, she confirmed that this would be the best option. Our Brit Rail passes were valid for the whole day, and the Tube would have cost us £4.00 each. Plus we avoided having to change Tube lines.

Unfortunately in spite of rushing, we missed by 2 or 3 minutes the 4:00 train to Broadstairs, which would have made us arrive only two hours late. We found a pay phone and let Graham know about our 17:00 departure and 18:45 ETA. Then we gratefully bought cups of tea within sight of the board showing all the trains. When I couldn’t see Broadstairs on the stops list for the 17:02 train, I left Deirdre with the luggage to find out about the next train. After a few false trails, I discovered the timetable boards and discovered that there was a train in less than ten minutes at 16:33. I half ran back to Deirdre. We grabbed our luggage and our tea, went through the staffed gate (because of our passes), and were assured of the correct platform. We were told to go to the front of the train, but I misunderstood the set up, which was critical because the train divided at Faversham. In time we asked enough questions and bumbled our luggage down the corridor to the right car. On arriving in Broadstairs station thirty minutes “early”, we decided just to wait for Rosemary to pick us up and not rush her any further.

Sunday we did a little tourism. The rain was heavy and steady, so we opted for a drive around Thanet (the district) seeing the white chalk cliffs. At the Margate harbour, I got out to take a couple of shots of the high, hard-breaking waves. Suddenly Deidre and Rosemary were also out to take our photos in the storm. Rosemary couldn’t time both the camera and the waves, but she did get a shot of us grinning.

As it was cold and rainy most of the time at Rosemary’s, we mostly played Wii. Saturday evening we learned bowling, played by holding the remote device down like a bowling ball to “throw” the on-screen ball. Just at the end of the evening we tried golf. Sunday evening we played a nine-hole round of golf with Jessie. Then I tried out some of the other games, and liked boxing the best – a real upper body workout! Monday late morning we played another round of golf before leaving to catch the train to London.



View a map of our journey across England.

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Photos

Judith and Deirdre
Windblown and wet in Margate!

Margate
Not a day for a seaside walk

Comments

[Isabel Gibson]

Aren't you glad you speak English?
Imaging making that trip in a language you don't read or speak! You might still be on a train or platform somewhere. This is the sort of story that encourages us to do especially our international travelling earlier than later, when we have both the physical stamina and mental agility (or vice versa?) to accommodate life as it happens.

[beentouring]

Aren't you glad you speak English?
That's why I take tours in countries that are strange to me. Let the experts solve the problems.