Did you miss me?

Well I’m back, eventually. British rail and Virgin Trains did their best to keep me away from home for as long as possible. Having purchased tickets, in advance to take advantage of the cheaper prices, when we arrived in Carlisle much earlier than expected, we asked if we could go on an earlier train, foregoing our reserved seats, we were told “certainly, that’ll just be £32.50 each thank you”.
We looked at each other and decided straight away that if we were going to spend an extra £32.50 then there was a very nice shop, The Howard Arms, that was more deserving. So we went to wait for our train in the nice shop for five hours. We nearly went on a rugby tour with some of the locals, but realised in time that our nearest and dearest possibly wouldn’t see the funny side of that and Ian (the fireman) had to be back at work (or at least his place of employment) for Saturday night.
We went back to the station and caught the train which left on time. Once we were on our way, a disembodied voice announced that the train would arrive in Birmingham later than I’d been advised when I bought the tickets, and also when I phoned BR the week before we left. This meant that we would miss the connecting train.
A swift phone call to JG to explain the situation and asking her to phone BR to see if there was a later train that we could catch brought the welcome news that, yes there was a later train we could catch, the train we were on was on time and we could change stations with time to spare. It did mean that JG would have to pick us up later than we had hoped but everything would be Ok.
Oh how easily we were fooled! The train, that was on time, got into Birmingham 20 minutes later than we were told when we got onto the train, making it 1 hour later than I had been told when making the travel arrangements. This meant that instead of having plenty of time to change stations, we now had to put our backpacks on and yomp across Birmingham city centre at 23.20pm.
So there we are, four tired and sore middle aged men wearing shorts and loaded down with rucksacks, walking as fast as we could go to get to Snow Hill station, being jeered at by drunken youths, although for the most part it was in good humour. We were not best pleased that when we got to Snow Hill we found that the train would not in fact go to Leamington, but would terminate at Warwick Parkway, two stations earlier, and from there we would have to get a bus. Another phonecall to JG to say “don’t worry about collecting us, we’ll get a taxi”.
When the train got to Warwick Parkway, there were no taxis but there was a coach ready to take us all further on our way. Eventually we got to Leamington at 00.30am.
There were still quite a few people around and in some ways although the crowds were quieter than in Birmingham it felt more threatening. On seeing a taxi coming round the corner I stepped into the road, luckily he decided to stop, and we all piled in and were brought back to the village. I eventually got home at 1.00am, tired, sore, smelly but glad.
Now about the walk …

(…to be continued. Ned.)