And so to 2020

And so to 2020. I'd had a bit of a rough few months in the autumn term and needed something to get myself out of a bit of a rut. I'd also travelled on no trains at all other than those to get home from uni in December and back in January. The first two weeks of the spring term are exams at my University and it was on the first day of the exam period, having received my student loan (the bit that covers living costs, anyway) on that cold Monday morning, that I decided I needed to treat myself. I'd planned a trip for the Friday-Saturday at the end of the exam period (so just under 2 weeks away) to Manchester to attend a careers event, although had decided that, as advance fares weren't really available for the Nottingham-Manchester (well, Liverpool in reality) trains, I'd buy my ticket on the day. Well, there were a few advance fares, but in some cases they were more expensive than the cost of an off-peak return ticket. Plus, I really didn't know what time I'd have finished at the careers event.

It was with this in mind that I thought about one of my other loves: theatre. I'm quite a musical fan, and in particular like the newer musicals that have been released over the last few years. A show had opened in London called & Juliet in autumn 2019, for its premiere production (well, if you exclude the couple of weeks they spend in Manchester with exactly the same cast, essentially as a try out for London). I'd been interested in it for a while and, having received the soundtrack album for my birthday in December, had been really keen in going. My other musical love is Six, which I'd booked tickets for the touring production of (unfortunately the performance got rescheduled due to the current coronavirus pandemic). I therefore decided to amend my itinerary for the weekend trip I was due to make to Manchester, to include a London theatre trip on the Thursday night, 10 days after I booked, to go and see & Juliet. I managed to get a hotel room in central London for a reasonable price (as in less than £100 for the Covent Garden Travelodge, which was literally 30 seconds on foot from the theatre for & Juliet). I know this is a rail blog and not a theatre one but there is relevance to this I promise. Genuinely though, if you like musicals and pop songs, you need to go and see it. I went to see the show with a friend from home, who returned home after the show.

In terms of travel, I booked an advance ticket from Nottingham to London for the Thursday and one from Euston to Manchester on the Friday to tie in with my existing hotel booking in the city. As a treat, I decided to travel first class between London and Manchester, as this would also save me from having to find lunch as well as giving me lounge access at Euston station. This was beneficial as I'd opted out of the travelodge breakfast and gone to McDonalds so appreciated the presence of cake in the lounge (the chocolate brownies as THE BEST), plus the chocolate biscuit things served after the main hot food are also amazing. My train into London arrived at around 1pm, and I decided to make use of the approximately 4 hours between me arriving and my friend arriving by going for an explore. I took the tube to Liverpool Street, where I used TFL rail to go out to Romford. I debated going to Shenfield but decided against it as I'd bought a travelcard and would have had to buy an additional ticket to do this.

At Romford, I unfortunately missed the train to Upminster by literally 40 seconds, so had a half hour wait before I could continue my journey.

From here, I travelled through the Least Used Overground station, Emerson Park, and onto Upminster, where I boarded a train to London Fenchurch Street. From here, I found a bus heading towards my hotel. Unfortunately this bus terminated short - my phone said I was less than 5 minutes on foot from the hotel so I decided to walk and got a bit lost, but I eventually found my hotel before going and finding dinner. Dinner, in this case, being Mcdonalds. I ate a lot of fast food on that trip. I have since discovered that there is a five guys burgers within a 10 minute walk of this hotel and theatre and am planning on going there next time I'm in the area (which should be October and November depending on the pandemic situation rather than the beginning of April as planned).

Anyway, back at the hotel my friend came to join me in the room for dinner and we got ready to go to the theatre. I had quite a nice view from the room, straight out onto Holborn with Drury lane off to the left. The theatre I had tickets to for that night was 30 seconds walk to the right down the same side of the road.

The show was brilliant and, after going to stage door to get our programmes signed, my friend headed home and I went back to the hotel to bed. I walked to the bus stop with my friend, who got the bus back to the mainline station she needed rather than having to change on the tube, and was amazed with how pretty the sign on the theatre looked, something which I'd not noticed earlier due to us arriving at the theatre on the same side of the road as the theatre. I'd also approached the hotel from the east and the theatre was to the west so hadn't walked past it at a distance until then.

The next day, I woke up and fetched breakfast from McDonalds before getting lost on my way to Euston due to bus issues (thankfully I'd allowed close to 2.5 hours to make the journey and arrived with over an hour to spare). I opted not to use the tube as I'm not a huge lift fan and had a suitcase which I didn't fancy taking on an escalator. Whilst the subsurface lines were okay between St Pancras and Liverpool Street, I didn't fancy using the deep level lines from Tottenham Court Road to Euston. After a drink and cake in the first class lounge at Euston, I boarded my pendolino up to Manchester.

On arrival, I headed to the tram to go to my hotel for the night before heading to my careers event in the morning. My journey to and from the event passed through Piccadilly on the tram, where I picked up a burger from Burger King for a very late lunch on my way back to the hotel, where I collected my luggage from their storage and headed back to the station to head home to Nottingham. I'd also managed to miss dinner in my accommodation on the Saturday night so stopped at Five Guys in the city centre to pick up some food. All in all, a good trip even if I'd eaten a lot of fast food.


Stations visited: Barking, Chadwell Heath, Emerson Park, Euston, Fenchurch Street, Forest Gate, Goodmayes, Ilford, Limehouse, Manchester Piccadilly, Manor Park, Market Harborough, Maryland, Romford, Seven Kings, St Pancras, Stratford, Upminster, Watford Junction and West Ham.

Station count: 226

That's all I've currently travelled so I'll leave it here for now, but over the next few posts I'll be discussing plans I've got for travel once the current pandemic restrictions are over.