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....

Bucket List

It's been a while, hasn't it?

I last posted on this blog in September, so over 4 months ago now. So, what happened?

I got a job, that's what. I'm now working in a local secondary school, as a cover supervisor. This basically means I deliver pre-prepared work to classes when the teacher isn't available to teach them. As you can imagine, it was a really steep learning curve. We actually had a few cases of COVID-19 in the school at the end of the week immediately before I started, so I was very much thrown in at the deep end. Now I've found my feet, and the current arrangements at my school with the lockdown means that I have slightly more time to breathe. So, here's the plan. Today is a special post to celebrate me reaching 350 Twitter followers (thank you!), and then we will have weekly posts on Saturday at 10am every week. I have a couple of months worth of posts from trips I did in September and October, before lockdown 2 happened, and if I still can't travel at the end of March, when these run out I'll try and figure something out. I'll also be continuing with my girl on a hike series, following my prep for the London Marathon Walk in September of this year. I'll be slotting these in on Saturdays for now but, provided the walk looks like it will be going ahead I'll be starting my proper training in a few months, at which point I'll probably make these into a second post each week. This of course depends on whether I've been allowed to get a train for fun or whether girl on a hike is all I have left to write about. 

Enough of this for now though, it's time for today's special post, which is my railway bucket list.

I've been looking at the trips that, at some point, I really want to do. Obviously I'll be stopping at every station to tick it off, so a lot of these are longer train journeys that skip stations. So, here we go:

1. The sleepers. 

This has 2 parts to it: the night Riviera between London Paddington and Penzance, and the Caledonian Sleeper, which departs London Euston and heads up to a number of Scottish stations. I'd particularly like to use the Caledonian Sleeper portion that heads up to/from Fort William....

2. Stay at Corrour.

Railways and hiking, something I am going to have to learn to love this year. Need I say any more?!

3. The Gerald dining train in Wales

Because trains and food sound like fun. I've been on a boat on the Thames and had lunch, and the idea of dinner on a train sounds like something I'd enjoy.

4. Aberdeen to Penzance 

The longest train service in Britain. It's currently not running because of covid, but I'm hopeful that it will be reinstated.

5. Named trains. 

The ones I'm familiar with include the Flying Scotsman from Edinburgh to Kings Cross, and the Highland Chieftain connecting Inverness with Kings Cross. I'm sure there are plenty more for me to check out though.

6. Least Used Stations. Obviously I have to go through every Least Used station in order to achieve my aim of ticking off every station, but I'd like to be able to get off and explore some of these quieter stations. 

7. Scenic lines

I'm not going to name them all individually, but you know the ones I mean: Heart of Wales and West Highland along with a lot of the other railways in the Scottish Highlands.

8. Visit a station on the opening day

I debated doing this for Warrington West and Worcestershire Parkway when they opened,  but life got in the way. I'll make it happen one day though. 

9. The new Isle of Wight trains 

The class 484s are due to come into service in a few months, once the current upgrade works on the Island Line finish. I'm currently due to be on the Island at the end of May, but this will obviously depend on the covid situation. 

10. Land's end to John O'Groats by public transport.

Using buses and the sleeper alongside other trains. 

I'd be interested to hear what your railway bucket list has on it - either comment below or tweet me @girlonrails98

That's all for today, I'll see you on Saturday to explain what my upcoming plans are, and what trips I had cancelled on me at the end of 2020, and into the start of 2021.

The Argos Adventures

 Argos. The shop where you can order pretty much anything. Except when the product isn't available anywhere close to you and they can't deliver it either. This is the situation I found myself in the other week. I've been reorganising my bedroom to update it from the room I had as a 17 year old to the room of a 21 year old. I've got some new artwork (musical theatre themed, if you're interested), and a corkboard, which I collected from my local Argos store, but the issue revolved around jewellery boxes. 

I'll admit, updating this is something which I should have done a while ago. I still had my old barbie one, which when I emptied it the other day also had a decent amount of cheap plastic kids jewellery in it. I finally found what I wanted, but I wanted two of it to enable me to not overfill them, and at less than £10 in the clearance, it was cheaper than the other box I had seen. I also saw a travel box, with a zip to keep it closed, which I thought would be useful for trips away (and this was something stupid like £2.50). The travel box wasn't too bad, as my nearest one was in Croydon, which isn't too far away. But the bigger, glass box, wasn't local, and if I wanted two I was going to have to travel to two different places: Didcot, and Gosport.

After struggling to purchase them, because of an issue with my bank card (the details had potentially been compromised so it was being replaced by my bank although they hadn't told me this), I had to get to the three different Argos stores within a week. My first trip involved me popping up to Croydon to collect the travel jewellery box and then down to Gosport to collect the first of the glass boxes, which were thankfully packaged pretty well and got home in perfect condition. I ticked off Portsmouth Harbour station and used the Gosport Ferry as well. It was a little bit hectic as I only had an hour and a bit to get to Gosport and back because of needing to be home for something that evening, but I made it work and even had chance to pick up a very late lunch on the walk back from Argos to the ferry.

My second trip, however, took me to some new stations. I'd been hoping to to a trip from Paddington to Oxford and return to Marylebone, however with needing to stop in Didcot this wasn't feasible sadly. My destination was Argos in sainsburys, which is thankfully very close to Didcot Parkway station and my trip up was largely uneventful, passing through Reading on the way up. I wanted the chance to be able to have a brief look around Oxford, so only had about 45 minutes to get to Sainsburys and back, which was fine. I managed to grab my order from Argos, grab a snack in the supermarket and then headed over to the nearby Starbucks for a drink. To my disappointment, the mobile app for Starbucks took my order, but technical issues meant the store didn't get it and there was no sign up saying that there was an issue with this, so I headed straight to the collection point. Having waited for almost as long as I could (around 10 minutes) before needing to head back to the station, I asked, given the fact that someone who had paid at the till after I had arrived had had their drink. The member of staff explained the issue however, when I showed the confirmation on my phone got my drink made quickly. I was, however slightly disappointed that there was no mention anywhere near the collection point that they had issues - at every other store I've been to they say head straight there, as did the app on my phone, however the member of staff told me in no uncertain terms that I should have queued up for the till to check it had gone through. I did point out that the point of the app was that we could go straight to the collection point and that I had used it because I didn't really have time to wait. Another Starbucks (Ealing, to be precise) that I've used had my drink ready pretty quickly after the order went in on the app and I didn't have to queue at the till.

I made my train up to Oxford with around 5 minutes to spare, and arrived in Oxford with around 45 minutes until my train back to Paddington. I looked online and saw that it would take around 25 minutes to do the walk into the city and back again, leaving me around 20 minutes to buy some lunch. I opted to place an order on the Mcdonald's app for collection in the city centre, which was ready quickly but then made my almost fatal mistake. I'd seen online that there was a branch of Ben's Cookies in the city, which looked really close to Mcdonalds. I am a fan of their cookies, so wanted to try and find it which I did although it took me a lot longer than I thought it would, leaving me to run back to Oxford station with a couple of minutes to spare before my train. I ended up eating my chicken nuggets and cookies on the train back to London!

All in all, this was a successful week as I managed to achieve everything I wanted to and ticked off some new stations: Portsmouth Harbour, Reading, Didcot Parkway, Oxford and Slough.

Girl on a Hike part 1... in the beginning

 And now for something completely different.

Firstly, it's Monday and I don't post on Mondays. Secondly, this isn't about trains. But I asked on twitter and 2/3 of the respondents said they'd like to see this on my blog. So, here goes.

Welcome to Girl on a Hike.

This is a new series of posts, following my journey over the next year, as I train to take part in the London 2021 Marathon Walk (not the same as the running event). There will be a post most weeks, on Monday at 10am. I say most weeks, because there will likely be some weeks, particularly before I start fully training in the Spring, where I don't have anything interesting to say. Today's post will be explaining a bit about my challenge, why I am doing it, and what I've done so far to prepare.

Why are you doing this?

Yes, this is a very good question. I'm still not entirely sure myself. Whilst at uni, I have really lost the "love" I had for exercise, and I've really not eaten healthily, so I've put on a decent amount of weight. I say "love" for exercise because it's never been the highlight of my day, but I've become more and more sedentary over the last 3 years. So I'd like to lose the weight I've put on, and get back my fitness. I'm also raising money for a charity, in the hope that will help to motivate me even more.

Who are you raising money for?

I am raising money for Girlguiding. I am a volunteer with the charity, and know how badly, like other charities, it has been hit by the pandemic, at all levels. I'd like to help give something back to a charity that has done so much for me over the years.

What are you doing?

I have signed up to the 2021 London Marathon Walk event, organised by Discover Adventure. I don't know the exact route yet but the information I have suggests that it starts in central London, before heading east and south over the Millenium bridge, before using the Greenwich foot tunnel to cross back to the northern edge of the Thames. Heading back into Central London, we will head west towards Westminster, before ending up back where we started. We have a full training plan, which I'll be following from the spring. The plan is 18 weeks long, hence why I don't need to start for quite a while yet, however I will be doing some walks before I officially start training as there's a few things I'd like to test out.

What have you done so far?

I've had a kit list through and, whilst I have most of the items needed already, I've sourced a new rucksack and a couple of water bottles to use on the walk. It's been recommended that we have a rucksack in the region of 25-30L, with a waist strap to help carry it more comfortably. The water bottles are of the variety which have like a built in straw, to save me having to repeatedly unscrew them. The bag had side pickets for bottles and I'm planning on using one for water and one for electrolytes. I'll also carry a slightly larger screw top bottle, as we've been told to be able to carry 2L, and I can top my bottles up at the checkpoints/rest stations on the way. I can refill my drinking bottles as I need to using my larger bottle. I've also picked up some relatively cheap dumbbells to do some weight training with at home, to help me build up the strength to carry my bag. I have to carry water, any snacks I want to provide myself (they do provide some food but if there's something specifically we want we have to provide it ourselves) plus any of my layers (waterproof/fleece etc) that I take off during the day.

Nutrition is something which is key for something like this, as there's nothing worse than trying to walk a long way on an overly full stomach, but additionally there's no point at all in me not consuming enough and not making it to the end. There's a couple of strands to this: carbs/protein and electrolytes. I'll explain the carbs and protein strand of it first because it's less complicated. 

As I walk, I'll be using a lot of carbohydrates to power my muscles, and there won't be enough stored in my body (even with carb-loading beforehand) to not eat during the day. You can basically snack on whatever you want, but it's important I try stuff to check it doesn't make me feel unwell. I've picked up some pretzels that come in individual serving bags, as well as some cheese flavoured savoury biscuits. I also have sweets! One other thing that I've picked up to try are some energy sweets, similar to the gels used by runners, which pack a punch of sugar to give you energy. I've used them once before on a long camp with Guides when I was exhausted, so a few of those may be useful, particularly on the really long training walks and the day itself when I don't want to eat constantly. Protein is useful to help repair my muscles after exercise, so I've picked up a protein flapjack to try, an I'm looking into other options. 

Electrolytes are often found in sports drinks and are minerals, such as sodium, which can be found in the body. You often lose these when you sweat, so it's important to replace these if you're exercising heavily or for a long period of time. I've picked up two types of these to try: a sachet that you simply tip into water and shake, and effervescent tablets that you drop into the drink. Whilst a lot of these have flavours, they can taste salty, so having a separate water bottle just for these will be useful on the day, so I can switch between electrolytes and water without needing to rinse the bottle out. In a way, they are similar to the rehydration sachets that you can get if you are ill, and I know that the taste of those was greatly enhanced by some fruit squash, so I've also obtained some of the Robinsons squash'd squash on the go packs. You just squeeze these into the drink to add the squash, rather than having to carry a bottle and pour them as you would at home. I'm looking forward to giving all of this a go.

I'm going to leave this here for today as this seems to be quite a long post. I'll be back on Wednesday with your next Girl on Rails update, or for more Girl on a Hike check back next Monday. I'm hoping to do a medium (6-8 mile) walk in the next few days, so will be able to tell you how that went next week! 

 

Hitting 10% complete

After the brief interlude of the rolling stock themed post last time, I'm here with some more rail action, and it's an exciting one because this is the blog post in which I reach 10% complete on the national rail network.

I knew I was pretty close to 10% complete and was trying to figure out where I should go to celebrate this little milestone, and I thought Paddington would potentially be an idea, but I didn't actually end up at Paddington on the day I hit 10%. I had made arrangements to meet a friend for a socially distanced lunch (eating out to help out) at Westfield Statford City in East London, and decided to use the Overground from Clapham Junction round to Stratford as I'd ended up on a much earlier train to London than I needed to. And so, as I passed around zone 2 on the overground, I hit 10% at Kentish Town West station.

I didn't get off the train at this station, instead heading to Stratford, where I met my friend. I then ended up getting some tube train action in as, once I'd left my friend, I headed to the centre's Lush in the hope that they had a specific product in (a solid cleanser bar, which melts on the skin, but in the new larger size that has been introduced). Unfortunately they didn't, so I decided to head for the other Westfield centre (White City) to see if they had one instead (spoiler: they didn't - apparently it had only just been launched online and the stock hadn't reached the stores yet. I bought a small one as I had almost run out completely, so will have to wait for that one to run out before I try for the larger one again). When working out how to get across London, I decided to head for Liverpool Street and the Circle Line, rather than using the central line to Shepherd's Bush, in the hope that I may be able to see one of the new FLIRT trains that Greater Anglia have introduced. Well, I saw one. Going in the opposite direction to me. They look nice, and I hope to catch one soon!

A couple of weeks later and I headed back to White City Westfield because they have a specific shop which, whilst the chain has one in Nottingham where I've been at Uni, my home town doesn't. Croydon has one, but I decided I'd rather go and explore Shepherd's Bush Overground station by boarding the Overground up from Clapham. I'd planned to go to Five Guys for lunch, but it took me ages to find it because I got lost!

Whilst in London, I had two ideas. Firstly was that I could visit Paddington and get to ride on one of new Crossrail trains (I got one of the old units in January) by going to Ealing Broadway. The second thought was that, given the fact that at the moment I have limited scope for longer trips, I thought I'd try to tick off all of the stations on the Tube Map. I'm still working out exactly where I am at currently regarding this, but I knew I hadn't been very far west on the District Line, so decided to use this to get to Ealing, where I got lunch and a drink from Starbucks (Smores Frappuccino) before getting a train into Paddington, which I promptly forgot to photograph....

I'm going to leave this here before this post gets excessively long, but next time I'll be explaining how and why exactly I travelled a considerable distance for the purposes of going to Argos.

The trains I've been on (part 4)

 Hello, and welcome back to the last post in my series about the classes of train that I've been on. Today, we have another 6 classes of train to discuss, some of which I have stronger memories of than others. 

We start with the class 365, which I used between London Kings Cross and Cambridge on one of my trips to the city. They are very similar to some of the other units that have been operated by Thameslink over the last decade, so I don't think there's a huge amount of new things I can say. 

The next train today is one that I can say quite a lot about as it operates on one of my local routes. The class 377 "electrostar" units are operated by Southern and primarily cover some of their longer-distance services, rather than the services that operate to suburban London destinations. I do really like these trains, particularly the fact that they have air conditioning, which is a blessing on hot days. I like the mix of seats with and without tables, although I'm not a huge fan of the sections of these trains with 3+2 seating because it's a pain to get bags behind you. I've done a couple of shopping trips to the Westfield centres in London and when you've got several carrier bags it can be a bit of a struggle if you get on a 3+2 carriage, so I always aim not to do this!

I remember the class 387 units mostly from their days on Thameslink, although I don't hugely remember them. They were okay I guess, seeing as nothing has stuck in my head which was overly positive or negative. 

The 390 "pendolino" units are one of my favourite trains in operation in this country at the moment. Operated by Avanti West Coast (and previously Virgin Trains) on the West Coast main line, I've never had a bad experience on them, although take that with a pinch of salt because I've only used them 4 times, and all in first class. The first time I used one was between London Euston and Manchester Piccadilly on a family holiday (we came home via York), and we had booked first class tickets because, with our friends and family railcard it was close enough in price to the standard ticket that we actually saved money versus travelling in standard and having to purchase food for lunch (we were on a lunchtime departure). It was certainly a good call as the food kept coming! The "Uglies" chocolates are literally my favourite thing on earth! We also all amused ourselves because we all thought the the "sausage roll" mentioned on the menu would be of the variety commonly sold by Greggs... and that was fine, that was lunch. And then the sausage roll arrived, and it was a sausage in a roll, which we were all thrilled about. The staff's customer service has always been brilliant as well. We received similarly good service on a short trip between London and Birmingham (and return) last year. My most recent trip with them (and the only one of these trips that was actually after Avanti took over the franchise) was in January, when I needed to head from London to Manchester for a careers event, having been in London for a theatre trip (the good old days!). I was travelling alone, and was unmistakably the youngest person in first class, but had splurged to save myself the hassle of buying lunch, and because I'd had a rough couple of weeks around when I'd booked the trip and wanted a treat, if I'm honest. I also love the lounge at Euston, particularly the chocolate brownie. 

The next train will soon be disappearing from the network and is the class 483 units, which operate on the Isle of Wight. Formed of former 1938 stock due to the clearance at Ryde Tunnel not being great enough for standard national rail size trains, I've used these trains quite a bit over the years on numerous trips to the Island, particularly to Shanklin and the Isle of Wight Steam railway, connecting at Smallbrook Junction. My last couple of trips to the island have been by road, with a uni group, so I've not been on board for many years, but I always used to love the bounciness of them. I even remember the dinosaur livery from the early 2000s, although I was pretty young at the time! Considering their age and the reliability issues which have plagued them, I do think it's time for them to be retired, however much I love them. I'm hoping to go to the Isle of Wight very soon to visit them again before they go and will be aiming to go soon after the line reopens next year to try out the new trains and see the changes. This will also be my first trip on a big ferry (well, catamaran) since COVID-19 hit so it will be interesting to see how things have changed there. I probably won't have long to spend on the Island, but I'll be hoping to go and get fish and chips from a proper chip shop! I say a big ferry as I have done Gosport recently, and that will be in a blog post next week!

And so we come to the final train of this series of posts, which is another favourite (again because it operates locally to me), and that is the Thameslink class 700. I like the walk through nature of the trains, which makes it easy for passengers to spread along the length of the train when it's busy. They also seem altogether bigger inside than some of the older trains they replaced and have a great deal of space for people to stand and sit. Plus they are really long! My only bugbear with them is the fact that it's always quieter at the front/back and the entrance to my local station is in the middle of the train, but I will live!

That's it for today, but on Saturday there will be a post about how I hit 10% completion!

The Docklands light railway

I was in London, at the end of July, when I got the impulse to go for a ride on the DLR. I'd met a friend for lunch in central London, so headed back to London Bridge via a very circuitous route -  the central Line to Bank (where there's one of the biggest gaps I've ever had to mind), then the DLR down to Greenwich, where I got onto a Southeastern service, calling at Deptford en route, back to London Bridge to get a train home. And I was on the train home when I had an idea. I recalled Geoff Marshall's video from the start of this year, where he attempted to break the record for visiting all of the DLR stations, and where he mentioned the explorerticket.co.uk website, where all of these unofficial challenges can be found. 

When I got home, I logged on to the website and, having read the rules, decided to attempt the challenge. Whilst I was in no way aiming for the record (indeed, I didn't run AT all, and I did this during the COVID-19 reduced timetables), I decided to time my journey for the fun of it. Unfortunately constraints on when I was able to be in London also meant that I was travelling off-peak (between approximately 12 noon and 2pm) so had to change at Canary Wharf rather than being able to get a direct train from Stratford to Lewisham. 

My route involved starting at Shadwell, where I boarded a train to Bank. Having made my way through the one-way system to Monument, I used the tube to Tower Hill, from where I walked to Tower Gateway DLR station. And this is where I had my first delay. I missed the train by less than 20 seconds. I would say the driver could see me when they left, but I know the DLR is automatic! If I'd have ran the distance, I'd have crossed the road earlier (the pedestrian green man disappeared just before I got there) so would have easily made the train.

But as I was doing this for fun rather than to break the record, I kept going, boarding a train at Tower Hill 10 minutes later and heading for Beckton. From here, I caught the bus to near King George V station, although I had a 13 minute wait at the bus stop. It was an extremely hot day when I did this trip so I debated running into ASDA in Beckton to get a cold drink, but wasn't convinced I'd get back in time for my bus. Instead, I found a local shop on the short walk between the bus stop and King George V station, so nipped into there to grab a drink, which was possibly the highlight of this very warm day. 

From here, I made the return journey to Woolwich (with a not inconsiderable wait at Woolwich for a train heading north), before heading up to Stratford International, where after another wait I headed back to Stratford to head down towards Canary Wharf. Again, I seemed to have a long wait here before the train left (I think it may have even been a bit late), however had a good change at Canary Wharf for a Lewisham train, finishing in around 2 hours and 45 minutes.

From there, I headed back into London Victoria, from where I headed home, feeling very warm indeed!  

Stations visited: Greenwich, Deptford, Lewisham, Nunhead, Denmark Hill and Peckham Rye.