Arriving at Tilbury, and sleeping in Edinburgh!

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Wow! Early brekky today, just to be sure everything goes smoothly. We motored up the Thames as we ate, and the watched the docking procedures from our balcony. Tilbury is very significant for me, for I know that my grandparents (who I grew up with but now know are not my biological grandparents), my biological grandparents, and my great grandparents all boarded ships here at Tilbury in the 1920s to migrate to Australia. What a huge step that was for them to take.

As we dock I notice that the tide is out and the mudflats of the Thames are exposed (back in the old days scavengers had ”territories” in the mudflats, areas that were theirs to see what the tide had left behind to scavenge and raise money from). Other ports had hitech buffers attached to the wharves for ships to berth against, Tilbury has old tyres! The buildings don’t appear to have changed much since the 1920s. Well, not externally anyway.

We had elected to self disembark, as there were no organised transfers to St Pancras/Kings Cross. But first we had to have interviews with the migration officials down in the Indochine restaurant, where Silversea also returned our passports. After that it was a matter of collected our luggage and going ashore. This company does it very nicely - they had our wine and restaurant waiters shore side carrying our luggage for us! Then it was just a matter of trundling through the terminal to the taxi rank. But alas, no taxis! It was the first day back at school and taxis wouldn’t make it for at least an hour, we were told. Thank heavens the lady taxi controller decided that wasn’t good enough - she donned her fleuro vest and came down to the port to help out, and we were the first cab off the rank! She took us to Tilbury town station, where we caught an overland train to West Ham, where we changed platforms and caught the tube all the way to Kings Cross! We could’ve caught the train to Fenchurch Street and changed to the tube there, but this was more expeditious and with a lot less stress.

At Kings Cross we changed from the tube station to the large overland station (across the road) and went to the ticket counter to purchase our seniors passes. The nice South African at the desk suggested we get the two for one pass instead (because we were always travelling together) and it would be half price (£30 instead of £60), but we just had to go to a photo booth. So we trundled with all of our luggage across the forecourt at Kings Cross (with hundreds of people watching the boards), to the little booth around the corner of Starbucks. There we navigated, with great difficulty, the pitfalls of these photo booths. Eventually, with scary photos that look like they were taken for Halloween purposes, we returned to the nice South African, who proceeded to tell us about the terrible troubles in his home country whilst processing our application. The government over there is compulsorily resuming people’s farming land (if they find it has any sort of natural resource under it, like coal), and apparently Australia has agreed to take in 10,000 displaced farmers and their families (which is good, we need younger farmers, and these guys would do well in our conditions).

So, we got our pass and wandered along toward what we would call the “country platform”, coming across a queue house (full of foreigners, and dare I say, mostly Japanese) for the Harry Potter luggage trolley going through the platform 9 3/4! So we got in the line, and waited for over 30 minutes. The photographers were good, they had all the different scarves and all the different wands. I chose Gryffindor and Harry’s wand (its the same as the one I have at home). The assistant holds the scarf just out of shot, so it looks like it’s flying behind you! Tom took some pics on my phone and the photographer took some too. As we entered the Harry Potter shop the photos were presented to us, and yes, we bought one! And some souvenirs for our grandchildren (not t-shirts I’m afraid - they were $40 each!). We finally emerged from the overcrowded shop sometime later and made our way to the first class lounge at 11.30am, 2 hours before our journey. We were able to have refreshments and sit in comparative comfort until it was time to board our train.

The train was interesting. When we booked it was a Virgin train, but apparently Virgin have since found that running trains wa not as profitable as they’d expected, and relinquished their trains and the contract back to the government! The first class leather seats still retained their Vigin livery, but the free food and alcohol was definitely government issue, although that was still quite acceptable - Bells whisky which is a nice blend (with coke) - we’ve been to their distillery. No sparkling wine, just white or red. I commented that it was my birthday (hence the request for wine with my lunch) and then next time they did a station update on the PA they wished me a happy birthday!! (Young lady named Colleen in carriage M turning 25, maybe 26 but certainly not much more than that, cheeky devil).

So, our train journey from London (1.30pm) to Edinburgh (6.15pm) - amazing! I have a new app on my iPad which tells us our speed, whether on land (miles or kms/hr) or sea (knots), and it showed us usually hovering around 200kph! Wow! The scenery was stunning, especially when we were going through the land of my dad’s maternal Robinson ancestors, up in Northumberland, along the coast - we even spotted Holy Island in the grey gloomy distance. From London to York we had a nice couple travelling opposite us (facing the way we’d come, we’d booked facing forwards) and they were lovely to chat with, especially their views on Brexit.

By the time we reached Edinburgh it was drizzling. But first we relinquished our large suitcases to the Baggage storage people on the platform - we’ll collect them at the end of the tour we start the day after tomorrow. In the meantime we have a few days worth of clothes in our carryon bags. Our hotel was just a block up the road from the station so we checked in. It’s very unusual - we entered on street level but because of the slope at the other side of the hotel, we were actually on the fifth floor. Our room is on the 3rd floor, so we had to go DOWN to our room!

After unpacking and refreshing ourselves we wandered upstairs to the bistro for dinner! Lovely battered haddock. Nice glass of Lanson champagne. And then they presented me with a huge lovely warm chocolate brownie (sliced in half) with a scoop of ice cream on a plate with “Happy Birthday” written on it! Very nice! (But I didn’t have my phone with me to take a photo).

It is so nice to have reliable internet!

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