railway – Pete's Blog

I have been thinking about my Interrail adventure a lot recently. A year and a half ago I spent a month travelling around Europe on trains. I saw so many sights and had so much fun. I’d love to do it again one day but it did cost a lot of money and took me away from my family, so not for a while. Instead this week I spent one day on some of the most scenic railways in England.

From Preston to Carlisle, then on the famous Settle line to Leeds, before returning on the Bentham line to Lancaster and back to Preston. And all for £34.25.

The weather was not as good as in Sicily during my Interrail trip, but it was clear enough to see the amazing views across the Yorkshire Dales and the South Lakes.

There is something about train travelling that I love. I do not need to concentrate as I do when driving a car or a Narrowboat. I can simply gaze out of the window, listen to a podcast and watch the world go by. I can see great countryside, dream of what it would have been like in the days or steam, and even nosey into people’s back gardens.

And because I am retired I can do it all any time I want to.

So was it a great day out? You bet. And does it count as an adventure. Yeah why not.

I am going to try very hard this week not to complain about the heat. That is hard because it has dominated our thinking, as the tin can we travel in has warmed up like an oven. BUT. It has still been a lovely week, as we have come up the tidal Thames and joined the Grand Union canal, a long canal that will take us from London to Birmingham or Leicester. It feels great after weeks of rivers to be back on a proper canal, where we can moor up almost anywhere, and we don’t need to worry about currents and tides.

The Grand Union going under the M25 motorway

This week has mostly been finding our way through London, a wonderful busy city. Surprisingly, most of the time the canal lives in a world of its own, with trees and green spaces, hiding from the town. Then sometimes, such as in Hayes, we find ourselves right in the middle of multicultural vibrancy. It was Eid and there were many very happy muslims, eating during daylight at last. I got the best samosa from a Hyderabadi takeaway. And fruit & veg shops spilling out across the streets. Unfortunately there were also too many drunk Brits enjoying the sunshine on the towpath and making me nervous.

Now we have escaped London and are mostly in countryside, with a number of commuter towns. But the Grand Union runs right next to very busy motorways and train lines, so we can never quite forget “normal” life. We came up a few locks this week with a solo boater who had taken three weeks travelling on the canal through London from Tottenham to Watford. As we passed under the M25 motorway I noted that the journey by car would be about an hour.

So if it takes so long, what is the benefit of travelling by narrowboat? It is because the journey is the destination. This week we have seen parakeets flying above us. We have passed through shanty towns of houseboats. We have helped a geography lesson on how locks work to a class of teenage girls. We have passed under the main Heathrow flight path, with planes landing a few hundred feet above us. I discovered a fascinating pockmarked stone on the towpath, which turned out to be a flint formed by burrowing plankton, millions of years ago. It’s a great life.

It has been bl**dy hot though!

Tag: railway

Does a day out on the trains count as an adventure?

It’s faster by road, faster by rail, so why travel on a narrowboat?