Sunday, January 24, 2021

The ones that got away....

2020 wasn't a great year, was it? So today, I thought I'd reminisce about the trips that never happened, and when I hope to be able to do them instead. Obviously now I'm working it isn't quite as easy! All of these got cancelled due to covid.

1. The end of the spring term.
I don't think it's a huge secret that I struggled to settle at uni in my final year. It was a couple of weeks into the spring term when I first went to see & Juliet, and it instantly became one of my happy places. And it was with this, and a timetable that left me with no lectures or anything after Tuesday of the final week of the spring term. All I had to do was hand a dissertation in that was due on the Thursday at 3pm. I had a weekend event with a uni society in Sheffield, starting at around 7pm on the Friday, and immediately spotted an opportunity. Now hold on, I know what you're thinking: Charlotte, this is a rail blog, what does a theatre show and uni society event have to do with trains? Well, I managed to fit some trains into the itinerary for this trip. The plan was to get the train to London, check into the hotel and then head out, with my aim being to tick off all of the London Overground stops on the line out of Liverpool Street, before I grabbed dinner and got ready to go and see & Juliet. On the Friday, I was going to head up to Sheffield, where I had a few hours to explore before my friends arrived, in which I was going to get out and do some of the surrounding areas to Sheffield - I hadn't got as far as planning the trip before it was cancelled. 

2.  Various day trips, plus a few days away
I hadn't planned these for certain yet, but they'd have included Matlock, Skegness and visiting Elton and Orston, the least used station in Nottinghamshire. I was also hoping to do a few days somewhere after my final exams, but again hadn't planned it before it became apparent that it wasn't happening. 

3. North Downs line, Reading and the chiltern main line. This was in part a theatre trip, but I was planning on ticking off some trains. I'd have headed to Reading via the North Downs line, before staying over night, and then ticking off the western side of TFL rail on Saturday morning, plus hopefully a few other stations and then heading to the theatre in the evening. On the Sunday I was going to head out of Marylebone to Birmingham before heading over to Nottingham. I'd have done something train related on the Monday before a theatre show in the evening.

4. November. This trip kept changing. The theatre shows got cancelled, so I then decided to do the Liverpool Street Overground services after having done one final extra trip to the Isle of Wight before the 1938 stock went. I'd done a final trip in the summer, but when the opportunity arose for 1 extra trip I took it, but alas it never happened due to lockdown 2. 

Here's all for today, but starting next week I'll be going over some of my final trips of last year, starting in September just before I started my job....

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