Tag: europe

Athena

Athens: Parthenon, Acropolis, Greek Flag and rooftop hot water tanks.

This blog is not really about the Greek goddess of wisdom but about the city that is named in her honour, Athens. I’m just trying to be a clever dick. If any nuggets of wisdom are contained within the next few paragraphs, it is purely coincidental and, to be honest, rather unlikely too. Elaine and I have done some early spring city breaks in the past year or two, Alicante, Malaga and Seville to be precise, and have enjoyed them but I never felt they were worth blogging about beyond my daily Facebook updates. This year our early spring break actually took place at the end of winter and for a change did not involve Spain at all. Athens was chosen for two reasons. The first was direct flights from Edinburgh. We would have preferred to fly from Glasgow (or even better, Prestwick) but destinations from there are limited. As we had done with Seville last year, and indeed Finland a few weeks ago, we bit the bullet and headed over to Scotland’s busiest and worst airport for our easyJet flights to and from Athens. The other reason for choosing Athens was that Elaine’s niece and her fiancé are working there. Not only would it be lovely to see them, they also have a rather nice apartment with plenty of spare bedrooms and were happy to put us up for four days. The third of those two reasons was we hadn’t been to Athens before. The capital city of Greece is one of Europe’s great tourist destinations thanks to its 3500 year history when it was the home of one of the world’s great ancient civilisations. So yes, it’s probably worth a blog even if I’m hardly an expert on Ancient Greece even after spending a few days there.

This is maybe Athena after whom Athens is named. Or maybe she was named after Athens.

We arrived at Athens Airport on a Sunday evening, a bit late due to the easyJet captain going sick after we had pushed back at Edinburgh. At least it wasn’t after we got airborne. Another captain was found and off we went. Justine and Jack were there to meet us and give us a lift back into town. This was particularly useful as Athens is a big place and the area their apartment is in, whilst central, was a mass of narrow roads and may have proved a bit tricky to find. As it turns out, they are on the 8th floor of an apartment block which in a low rise city like Athens is quite high. This means they have a fine view of Athens’ most famous landmark, The Parthenon. Set high on a hill, The Parthenon is part of the Acropolis, a citadel of temples that date back to 500 bc and when you think of Athens, it is probably the first thing that comes to mind. It was on our agenda of course.

How’s this for a balcony view?

Monday morning duly followed Sunday evening and with our hosts working we were left to discover Athens. We are simple souls when it comes to discovering a new city and we set off to walk around the place. Whilst a bit hilly, most places of interest are within walking distance of where you are likely to be staying. It was certainly the case with us. The Panathenaic Stadium was just around the corner from the apartment and whilst we left that until later to discover, we headed to the foot of the Acropolis Hill passing various bits of antiquity on the way. We wound our way anti-clockwise around to the far side of the hill to the main entrance, realising later that there was a less busy entrance nearer had we gone in the other direction. Not to worry though, we passed through Anafiotika, a small settlement built on the side of the hill. The small, colourful houses and narrow passageways and stairs make it a very pretty area. The story goes that in the mid 19th century, construction workers from the island of Anafi were brought in to work on King Otto’s palace. They built their own houses in the style of their island homes and nearly fifty of them are still occupied, not, presumably, by their original owners. It was here we saw our first cat. We saw lots more subsequently. On the north side of the hill we discovered the main entrance to the Acropolis and after a relatively short queue for the tickets, headed through the gate.

We were there in March. There were plenty of tourists there but relatively speaking it was fairly quiet. Tickets are timed for entry as numbers are restricted. At peak times it is almost certainly better to obtain your tickets online before you go and time your arrival accordingly as it gets notoriously busy. A standard adult ticket costs €30, quite pricey but hey, it’s the Acropolis for goodness sake. Restoration work is ongoing and they’ve got to pay for it somehow.

Anafiotika, colourful houses, stairs, alleyways and lemons.
The main gate to the Acropolis from the outside and in.

Whilst the main attraction of the Acropolis is the Parthenon, there are plenty of other things to see. The Odeon of Herodes Atticus for a start, a stone amphitheatre where concerts are still performed. The stone structure dates back to 161AD and is a Roman addition to the hill. A larger theatre, the Theatre of Dionysus, lies to the south though is now a ruin. That dates back to fourth century BC. Above the theatre on top of the hill lies the Acropolis itself. Literally ‘highest point city’, the Acropolis had been settled from at least the Neolithic period thanks to its strategic situation. It was in the fifth century BC that the buildings whose remains, erm, remain were built. Those buildings were a fancy entrance gate and a number of temples as even in a civilisation that gave the world democracy, appeasing the gods was still important. Times move on and gods change. More to the point, wars happen and buildings get blown up and fall down as happened in 1687. The temples are all ruins, some more ruined than others. Restoration work has been going on since the early 1900s and is currently at the stage of repairing the restored bits as they didn’t make a great job of it the first time. The Parthenon has scaffolding over one side and you can’t go inside, not that there’s a roof to form an inside in which to go. Despite this, it’s still an impressive building considering the 2400 years it has been standing there. It was dedicated to the Goddess Athena, daughter of Zeus, who lends her name to the city in which the Parthenon stands. Smaller but almost as impressive is Erechtheion, another temple dedicated to Athena, where the Porch of Maidens holds up part of the stone roof. They were tough women in Ancient Greece. Most of the statues that used to adorn the site are in the nearby Acropolis Museum (and the not nearby British Museum but let’s just gloss over that for the moment…) and a lot of debris from the collapsed temples is deliberately left lying around. It is, apparently, number six in the list of most visited attractions in the world but don’t let that put you off. If you go to Athens you have to go. I think it might be the law over there.

The Odeon of Herodes Atticus with and without us in the way. There’s a sneak preview of Phillapopus Hill too.
Parthenon from assorted angles. They loved a Doric column did the Ancient Greeks.
Just to prove we were there.
Erechtheion, a temple like the Parthenon dedicated to Athena.
The Porch of the Maidens, perhaps my favourite bit of the Acropolis. Go girls!
Most bas-reliefs are in the museum. I think this one on the Parthenon is a modern copy. If not it has survived the millennia very well. This column probably wouldn’t pass the inspection nowadays.
There’s a rocky outcrop you can scramble up to get this shot of the Acropolis, though the Parthenon is strangely absent.

Having built up the Acropolis, we only spent an hour or so there which left us the rest of the day to fill. Having been up one hill we decided to go up another two. The first one was Philopappos Hill. Perched on top is the Phillapopus Monument, a Roman tomb containing the late Prince Philopappos who departed this mortal coil in 116AD. On it’s own it probably isn’t worth the walk up the hill as you can see it from a distance. The hill also contains Socrate’s Prison, some caves where the famous Greek philosopher, who according to Pythonic legend was permanently pissed, was incarcerated for annoying some gods. It probably isn’t but never mind. That too isn’t worth a trip up the hill. However, the views across to the Acropolis are lovely and in the other direction you can observe Athens spreading out towards the sea. In itself this is probably worth the, frankly, quite easy walk up to the top but sealing the deal is the fact that the hill is home to wild tortoises. Not that tortoises get very wild of course. We saw one and gave it a dandelion. We felt rather pleased with ourselves.

Socrates’ Prison (maybe) and the Phillapopus Monument (definitely).
Views from the hill towards the sea to the west and you know what to the east.
The real star of Phillapopus Hill.

The third hill of the day was Lycabetus Hill, the highest of the lot. To get there we had a bit of a walk that took us back past the Acropolis into Monastiraki, a busy shopping area, passing the Roman Agora and Hadrian’s Library, two areas of Roman ruins. Nearby was the Ancient Agora of Athens which we didn’t visit but probably should have. We did have a quick look round the Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens, which compared with all these antiquities is a relatively modern building from 1862. After this it was on to the hill which has a funicular to make getting to the top a bit easier. I’ll emphasise the word ‘bit’ as the lower station is half way up the hill and many steps had to be climbed to get there. Unbeknownst to us, the funicular runs entirely in a tunnel so no sweeping views were available during the ride. Had we known we might have saved the €13 round trip fare each and continued to walk to the top as we were sweating anyway. At the top there are great views and a small chapel. There’s also a restaurant which serves cold beer. To be honest, we wouldn’t rush back up, either on foot or in the funicular. There aren’t any tortoises for a start and the views are just as good from Philopappos Hill. It does do beer though.

The Metropolitan Cathedral of Mary of the Annunciation, Athens. Suitably blinged up in the Orthodox manner on the inside.
Many steps were climbed to get to a funicular which I have to say was a tad disappointing.
The top of Lycabetus hill with a small church and views of the sprawl that is the Athens.

Moving away from the chronological order of this trip, quite hard for an aspiring OCD bloke like me, I’ll move on to the Wednesday when we had another wander around Athens, avoiding hills this time. We did get to see the Presidential Guard do their thing. These gentlemen, dressed in traditional costume, guard the tomb of the unknown soldier in front of the main parliament building and are a popular tourist attraction with their pom-pomed shoes and silly walks (another Pythonic reference there). Here’s a tip though, rather than stand outside the parliament building where you might get caught up in some demonstration or other – the Greeks love a demonstration – nip to the other side of the park where there are more of them guarding the Presidential Palace. These disciplined fellows attract fewer tourists than their colleagues despite putting on a similar performance. Enjoy the videos, or just scroll down for the stills.

The Presidential Guard guarding the president by means of silly walks.

We felt we ought to visit at least one museum whilst we were there. The obvious one to go to was the Hellenic Airforce Museum but it was out of town and only open at weekends anyway. That left us with only a dozen to choose from and we decided that the Acropolis Museum was the one. It’s a nicely laid out museum containing more marble statues than you’ll otherwise see in a lifetime. There’s a free audio guide if you want to learn more but we were happy just wandering around looking at the exhibits, most of which seemed to be statues of Athena or Aphrodite. Pretty girls sold more back then as they do now. There were quite a lot of bas-relief’s of centaurs being slain by gods as that is precisely the sort of thing the Ancient Greeks wanted their gods to do. It makes sense. You don’t want centaurs roaming around your Acropolis leaving their mess everywhere. There is a fair bit of excavated Old Athens beneath the museum that you can walk around though we ran out of time having spent some time in the cafe enjoying an apple pie in the shadow of the Parthenon. The view never gets old which is ironic considering what you are viewing has been around for two and a half millennia.

Museum exhibits surreptitiously snapped: Arfur, Centaur Ride and My God Has No Nose. Not the official names.
Ancient Athens. To wander round the streets, get there before the Museum is closing.

A late flight home meant we had much of Thursday to fill too so we decided to pay the €12 entry fee to enter the Panathenaic Stadium. The history of this rather impressive structure goes back 330BC and as a marble stadium to 140AD. However, what you can see now dates from the mid-19th century when it was excavated and then re-marbled in time for the first modern Olympic Games in 1896. You can see the stadium from the outside, both from street level and from the top but buying a ticket allows you to climb the terracing (steep) try out the seating (hard) and run round the non-olympic standard running track. You can also walk up the tunnel that the athletes would use to enter the stadium. This leads to a small museum with displays from the 1896 and subsequent Olympic Games. Following this we had another wander through Anafiotika and Roman Agora before heading back to the apartment to pack and depart.

Panathenaic Stadium by day for nothing.
Panathenaic Stadium by night for nothing.
Panathenaic Stadium from the inside for €12 per head.
Mister Floppy one side, Mister Stiffy the other. I have absolutely no idea of the relevance of this statue to the stadium.
The walk of heroes and the hero himself.
Gate of Athena (who else?), the Roman Agora and Hadrian’s Library.

What about Tuesday? I was coming to it, don’t get shirty with me. One thing you can do when you come to Athens is to get out of Athens for a day. The port of Piraeus is a half hour ride on the Metro away and from there many ferries of different shapes and sizes serve a multitude of Greek islands, some of which are ideal for day trips. We had considered Hydra and Aegina but Justine suggested Agistri. Agistri is Aegina’s tiny neighbour, an hour away from Piraeus by fast cat. There isn’t much there but it does have a bike hire place next to the port. What’s more, they do e-bikes which sealed the deal for us. The ferry timings were such that we had some time to kill in Piraeus before the crossing, and about four hours on the island. When we arrived the bike hire place was devoid of life though there was a phone number to call. We eventually got our bikes and a brief explanation of which buttons to press and off we went. The bikes made light weather of most of the hills we encountered though there was one where it gave up the ghost and we were sweating a bit by the time we reached the top. There isn’t a lot of paved road on the island and we had covered pretty much all of it after a couple of hours but it was good fun even though the saddles weren’t the most bottom-friendly I’ve ever encountered. Being out of season there wasn’t much open on the island. There is a distinct resort area that was closed and just a couple of villages for the permanent population of around 1000 people. There were a couple of tavernas and a restaurant near the port to service the needs of the handful of visitors that make day trips on an overcast March day.

Ferry tickets can be bought at the port or online in advance. A return ticket to Agistri cost €35 by fast catamaran which served Aegina before continuing to Agistri. There are loads of ferries that just serve Aegina, the traditional ones are slower but allow passengers out on deck.

Fast Cat to Agistri
The busy roads of Agistri.
End of the Agistri road.
Roadside abandoned minibus and roadside church full of apostles.
Other end of the Agistri road, Skala resort, closed until mid-April.

Now for some practical information. Weather. It gets very hot in Athens, be aware or do as we did and go in March when it doesn’t. Temperatures hovered round the 12-14C mark, a couple of degrees warmer when we had some sunshine on the Acropolis day. Ideal temperatures for discovering a city that involves going up hills. Rain was forecast for a couple of days but hardly came to much, though it only took a brief shower overnight to coat all the parked cars with a layer of dust.

Speaking of dust, Athens is, well, very dusty. In terms of general pollution it wasn’t too bad, there’s a lot of traffic but no industrial contaminates. There isn’t much litter either, though there’s a lot of graffiti which does the place no favours at all.

Athens dust.

The traffic problems of Athens are quite legendary but when we were there, whilst it was certainly busy, it was no worse than other capital cities. Public transport consists of buses, trolley buses, trams, three Metro lines and more buses. Unlike a lot of European cities there doesn’t seem to be any will to convert much of the road network to cycle lanes. Cracked flagstones aside, it’s a decent place for pedestrians. Just mind your step as you go and obey the crossing signals like we (mostly) did.

Public transport is cheap and tickets can be paid for by contactless Visa or Mastercard. We used the Blue Line (Line 3) to get to Piraeus and also back to the airport. Getting to the airport requires a €9 ticket otherwise a journey costs just €1.20 and your ticket is valid for 90 minutes. Prices are capped at €4.10 a day, make sure you use the same card for each journey. For €20 you can get a tourist ticket valid for three days and including to and from the airport which seems like a good deal for those on a short break.

Food. There’s all sorts of cuisine to choose from as befits a capital city but it would be a shame to go to Greece and have burgers or pizza all the time and avoid the local stuff. Our hosts suggested a couple of places nearby and they were lovely. One was a typical taverna, the other was a very popular restaurant called Black Sheep. The food was excellent and the prices were very reasonable compared to restaurants back home. The Greeks love their chips which is fine because I love them too. There’s a lot of lamb and fish dishes and it’s probably best to do what we did, order a few different dishes and let everyone tuck in.

Language. The chances are you won’t understand much Greek or are familiar with the Greek alphabet. Don’t worry though, English is widely spoken in Athens.

Cats. There’s loads of cats. Not only in Athens but on Agistri too. They seem to be semi-feral in that they live outside, sometimes in cat baskets and old armchairs left for them. They are provided with food and drink and by the number of clipped ears we saw, are sterilised as soon as they are old enough. Some are friendly, some skittish, there’s big ones, small ones, tabbies, black and white, calicos – pretty much any variety of cat you can think of. Presumably most of them are themselves a mixture of any cat variety you can think of. We like cats. We spent a lot of time with cats, the friendly ones at least.

Athens (and Agistri) cats.

So there you have it, Athens in a slightly bigger nutshell than I intended. I blame the cats for that. It is a place that is well worth going to. We had the benefit of staying with nice people in a very nice apartment in a nice part of town which was all rather nice, but I’m sure staying in a nice hotel would be almost as nice (six nices in one sentence, blimey). Having said that, four days is plenty and that still gives you a day to visit an island. For us it is now a case of: Athens – tick.

Finland – Winter Wonderland?

Apukka Resort Igloo, ideal for aurora viewing whilst lying in bed. Unless it is cloudy.

“Let’s not bother with Christmas presents this year.”

“Good idea, why don’t we commit to going on holiday together instead.”

“Where do you fancy going?”

“Finland in the winter.”

“Erm, okay…”

This was a summary of the conversation Elaine and I had with our son, Nicholas, before Christmas. To be honest, we had never thought of going on a winter break to somewhere that has proper winters. Other than the skiing set, not many Brits do. When Nicholas mentioned it we thought why not. It isn’t too far away. It would be a new country to tick off. There are direct flights from Edinburgh. There’s really no excuse not to, is there? Apart from the expense, the lack of suitable winter clothing and maybe the sheer cold but hey, no pain, no gain as some idiots say. As it was Nicholas’s idea we left it to him to come up with an itinerary that fit between the flights we intended to book. This was it: Fly to Helsinki from Edinburgh early morning. Spend the rest of the day finding out what Helsinki had to offer before overnighting in a city hotel. The following day we would fly to Rovaniemi which is situated on the Arctic Circle and part of Lapland, the name given to the northern bits of several already quite northerly countries. We would spend three nights there before flying back to Helsinki and spending a night there before the even earlier morning flight back to Edinburgh. We booked the two Helsinki hotels and for Rovaniemi we splashed out for two nights at the Apukka Resort, some ten kilometres out of town, and one night in an apartment in the town itself. Finnair then threw a spanner in the works by cancelling the outbound flight so we were rebooked on an evening flight the day before and had to book an extra night in Helsinki. It turned out to be a particularly fortuitous spanner as it meant we were well rested before our day in Helsinki.

Finland isn’t a bargain destination. Whilst the hotels in Helsinki were certainly cheaper than, say, London, everything else was a bit on the pricey side. I’ll talk a bit more about this at the end as doing so here might put you off reading the rest of the blog.

Helsinki

Helsinki Cathedral

The nation’s capital city is situated in the south of the country on the Baltic Sea. South is a relative term of course, it is at a similar latitude to two other Nordic capitals, Oslo and Stockholm, and also the Shetland Islands. It is served by Helsinki Vantaa Airport with the IATA code HEL which amuses the Finns greatly. There certainly were no fires of Hell burning there when we landed at 23:00 on a February Monday evening. It’s a nice airport – they play birdsong in the toilets. It is also well connected with commuter trains taking two different routes to Helsinki Central Station. These take either 28 or 32 minutes so there’s no real hardship if you miss the faster one of the two. It’s about €4.50 for a ticket into town, better value than the Elizabeth Line at Heathrow so a thumbs up from us for that. We were staying at the Scandic Helsinki Central which was next door to the station. We were glad about this as it was well beyond midnight when we got there, -12C and we were dragging suitcases with us as you need to take a lot of stuff to Finland in the winter. The hotel was pretty good, did a decent breakfast and had the only sauna I went in whilst I was in the country that claims to have given sauna to the world. We basically had one day to discover the delights of Helsinki. I very much doubt we discovered them all but wrapped up warm we headed out the following morning. We had to quickly come to terms with the art of walking in a snowbound city at, by now, -9C, where the delineation between roads and pavements were not exactly well defined. However, we managed to negotiate the 1km walk to Tempelliaukio Church. This is a fairly modern church that is built into the side of a hill. As such it doesn’t look much from the outside but for a place of worship is quite unique on the inside. They do charge tourists €8 to go in though, everyone welcome.

Tempelliaukio Chruch. From the outside: ‘meh’. From the inside: ‘Oooh’

From there we headed back the way we came, past the station and walked (carefully) to Market Square. Whilst there were one or two market stalls and probably loads more in the summer, I felt the name was a bit of a misnomer as it was basically the Helsinki waterfront. Ferries to the Baltic states go from either side whilst in the middle you can get a smaller ferry to Soumenlinna Island. With the Baltic seemingly frozen over, we were surprised to see the ferry operating but a bit of sea ice is nothing for the Finns to worry about. We purchased some tickets and took the ride over to the island. There we had a wander around. The island is home to 800 folk who prefer the peace and quiet of the place to the bustling city. Positioned at the entrance to the harbour, Soumenlinna had strategic significance and much of it was fortified. It was a nice place to visit and plenty of tourists do, even in February with the sea seemingly frozen over. A few hours on the island was plenty though and after just missing the ferry, we spent an extra hour in a nearby cafe before heading back to the mainland. A few photos of interesting buildings later and we were back at the hotel for a bit of rest prior to dinner. This is where I managed to fit in my sauna session, just to say I’ve been to a Finnish sauna. It was no different to any other sauna I’ve been in to be honest but it was nice to have a bit of a sweat.

Market Place/Harbour. Who would have thought that this humble little ferry was a mighty icebreaker?
Soumenlinna Island. Big guns, interesting buildings and most impressive of all, an outdoor hockey rink.
First Snow Angel of the trip.
Heading back to the ferry which left just before we get there.
Orthodox and Lutheran cathedrals, guess which is which.
Helsinki tram, sadly unridden and Central Station, inside and out.

This brings us on to food in Helsinki. We had two dinners here, once after our sightseeing day and another on the night before we came home when we were staying at the airport Hilton but had time to nip into the city thanks to the excellent rail link mentioned earlier. Neither dinner saw us having Finnish food. The first one was at a Georgian restaurant called Rioni. I guess the link between Georgia and Finland is a shared loathing of their Russian neighbour but our reason for going was that it was rated very highly on Trip Advisor. It was very good too, hearty stuff and plenty of it, washed down with Georgian beer as God intended. It was, however, a bit on the costly side. Helsinki dinner number two was Nepalese. This was a bit of an odd one. I’d found Onni Nepal on Google Maps, the reviews were positive so off we went. Rather than a normal restaurant, it was a concession at a food hall in an underground shopping mall. We ate there anyway and it was fantastic. Despite the Nepalese name the food was what we would identify as Indian but none the worse for that. It was also a bargain – €15 for your curry, rice, nan bread, salad and a mysterious sauce. The accompanying Nepalese beer pushed the price up a bit but per-head it was less than the Maharani in Troon.

Finnish cuisine from Georgia and Nepal.

Apukka Resort

Apukka Resort igloos.

Between our Georgian and Nepalese dinners, we had to fit in the main reason for our trip to Finland. We took a flight from HEL to RVN, the latter being Rovaniemi Airport. The airport will be well known to quite a lot of Brits who take their kids or grandkids there to meet Santa Claus on day trips or short breaks in the run up to Christmas every year. The airport itself has the Arctic Circle running through it but as we were soon to find out, there was plenty of Finland further north than that. From the airport we took an Uber to the Apukka Resort. This went past the destination for most of those pre-christmas travellers, Santa Clause Village. We could have stayed there but decided Apukka, a few miles further north, would suit us better as we wouldn’t have to tell some bearded bloke that we were going to be good boys and girls for the rest of the year. Despite not having the Santa franchise, Apukka is popular with families as well as adults. My first impression was that it was a bit like a small Center Parcs but that does it a disservice. There’s a range of accommodation types but all feature a lot of glass. The idea is that the Aurora Borealis, aka The Northern Lights, may well be dancing their merry dance and you sure as hell don’t want to miss them. We had chosen igloos to stay in. These are not the ice domes that Pingu lives in but wood and glass structures. They look really quite stunning in the snow and were equally stunning on the inside. We chose them as the idea of lying in bed on the upper level and gazing through the glass roof at the Aurora was more than appealing. That didn’t happen but more on that in a bit. The resort has a couple of restaurants and a bar. Guests are a bit of a captive audience, though you could head into town by bus or Uber if you didn’t fancy what was on the menu. We enjoyed lunch there but the one dinner we had was Lappish cuisine. It was quality fare at a price but we didn’t really like it very much. Should there be a next time we would probably seek our evening meals in the town. A breakfast buffet is included in the room rate and was a good quality. There was plenty of things to do there, mainly at extra expense but just wandering round the place, sledging down a hillock and making snow angels was free. It was -13C when we arrived with glorious sunshine. It was, to coin a phrase, magical.

The coldest swing you’ll ever go on.
Inside the igloo.
A walk on the lake and one of the resort’s reindeer, not the one I’d eaten the previous evening.
Winter scenes as the sun tries to break through.
A walk through the woods for the last Snow Angel of the trip.

One of the main reasons we had chosen Lapland for a winter break was the opportunity to see the Aurora. In the run up to the holiday we had been keeping an eye on the forecast. Not for the solar activity as that is virtually impossible to predict but the weather. It doesn’t matter how much coronal mass ejection is going on, if it is cloudy you won’t see it. The clear skies had allowed the resort’s visitors a great view on the evening before we arrived. However, those clear skies were due to cloud over just after we got there and remain so for the following three nights. Based on this forecast we (Nicholas actually) decided to fork out for a Northern Lights tour. The tour company would take you to wherever the forecast was more favourable. If that meant entering another nearby country (not Russia, obviously) then so be it. The tour was booked for the evening we arrived at 19:00. Nicholas then got a text to say we would be being picked up at 16:30, instead. Along with three others from the resort, we were picked up at the new time, driven to the company’s office in Rovaniemi and issued with cold weather gear which none of us needed as we were pretty well wrapped up already. Then we set off in search of clear skies. As it turned out we didn’t quite leave Finland. We headed north and bar a couple of comfort breaks kept going for four hours, passing signposts to Murmansk on the way. That’s a long time in a minivan. Eventually we came to the town of Ivalo and left the main road. A few miles further we turned onto another road heading north and a mile after that came to a stop. We got out of the van. The sky was as clear as a bell. The two guys from the tour company set up a camera and reported that the Aurora was there, if rather faint. So faint in fact that we couldn’t see it but the night mode on the iPhone picket up a slight green glow. To be honest, a four hour, 300 km drive for that would have been a disappointment. However, we only had to wait a minute or two before an arc of light formed above us. It was the Aurora! We spent about an hour at the location, oblivious to the -17C temperature, gazing in awe at the spectacle. Well, when I say oblivious to the temperature I might have been lying. Removing gloves to take photos resulted in painful hands almost immediately but I wasn’t going to not get the photos. Speaking of which, the photos bring out the colours. Even after giving my eyes a chance to adapt to the darkness, it was hard to see the colours. The vivid green in the photos was a slightly green tinge to the naked eye and the reds only became apparent when reviewing the pictures. This, however, did not diminish from the spectacle. We have wanted to see the Aurora for years. Every time there has been good sightings where we live we have missed them. Elaine and Nicholas went to Iceland a couple of years ago and didn’t see them. We’ve seen them from an aircraft but observing them whilst on Terra Firma was the goal. Had we stayed at the Apukka Resort that evening we would have missed them. It took £120 each, a ten hour, 600km round trip in a minivan, some frozen hands and a very late night to finally tick off that bucket list item. Woohoo!

Aurora Borealis, nearly perceptible at first but growing stronger.
Aurora in all its glory. Not quite as green to the naked eye but still.
Very cool, both literally and figuratively.
Last of the iPhone pics and my personal favourite.
‘Official’ photos. Faint aurora when we arrived, soon becoming vivid.
They certainly put on a display for us.
Portrait photos…
Landscape photos.
Not just green, there’s a hint of red here too.
I promise you that is Elaine standing with me.

Back at the Apukka Resort, under overcast skies now, we had other things to do. The resort offers ‘experiences’ and we’d booked three of them. One was a session in the sauna/whirlpool but we’d cancelled that in the nick of time when we decided to go on the Northern Lights tour. Experience bookings are cancellable up to 24 hours before. That left snowmobiling and dog sledding. The activity centre issues all guests with cold weather gear which, whilst a bit of a faff to put on, is certainly required. For the snowmobiling they give you a helmet too which thankfully wouldn’t be tested on our two hour session. It was good fun zipping around a snowy wilderness on what is basically an ATV fitted with skis. I did nearly take out a signpost but managed to avoid it at the last second, thankfully. There was a €900 excess on the machines if you damaged them. They are easy enough to operate but very heavy on the steering. The speed is limited to 40 kmh or 25 mph if you prefer it.

Hell’s Angels Snowmobile Chapter.
Nicholas going no handed up a seriously steep incline and whizzing through the snow at 40 kph.

Activity number two was the Husky Adventure. This was originally planned for the morning after we arrived but we rearranged it for the day after that just in case the Northern Lights trip went on late. This was a good call as the Northern Lights trip certainly did go on late. A short introductory course on how to operate a dog sled was given before we were assigned to our sleds and, of course, the huskies that would be pulling them. Having had Elaine as a passenger on my snowmobile, she decided to be a passenger on Nicholas’s sled leaving me to do the mushing solo, hauled by four dogs rather than six. Two of mine were trainees so the handler went ahead on a snowmobile to encourage them. Dog sledding proved even more fun than the snowmobiling. The dogs just loved the snow and seem to enjoy pulling us along. They did drop the occasional shit which was then squashed by the sled runners, thereby liberating more of the smell than the mushers and passengers would have liked, but this was a small price to pay for the experience. Once back at base we were given a hot blueberry juice and a cookie to warm up before being allowed to pet the future sled-haulers. We were told they were puppies but they seemed awfully big for pups. I got a face full of slobbers when I picked one of them up, otherwise they were all rather cute and a bit squidgy thanks to the insulating layer of fat they all have.

My husky dog team. Prada and Casta, two trainee sled pullers at the front and two experienced Siberian huskies behind them who probably had names too.
Master musher Neil with Prada, Casta, Thingy and Whotsit.
The six dogs hauling Elaine and Musher Nicholas enjoying a brief break by frolicking in the snow. They really can’t get enough of the stuff.
(Big) Puppy handling was almost as fun as driving the sleds, except when one of them licks your face.
They likes being petted almost as much as mucking about in the snow.
Husky experience, tick.

Rovaniemi

With the Husky experience done (and slobbered face washed) we had a spot of lunch before leaving the resort and checking into our apartment in Rovaniemi town. Being the centre of all things winter and with many references to Santa, Rovaniemi is something of a boomtown at this time of year. As a tourist destination it is more of a hub for the activities in the surrounding area than a place full of stuff to see. There’s plenty of shops and restaurants and a walk along the river is rather nice but I would say that is about it. It’s cheaper to stay there than at the Apukka and fine to use as a base but I’m glad we didn’t book all three nights there. One of the things that is listed as a tourist spot is Roki, the town’s ice hockey club who play in the second division of the Finnish league. As it happens they had a game on the evening we were there. Elaine and Nicholas didn’t want to go for some reason, I can’t think why. They went off for dinner at a nearby Tepanyaki place (they said it was very good) whilst I set out to walk nearly 3 km to the Lappi Areena to take in the game. A ticket was €22 and the venue was nearly full of locals and quite a lot of tourists. I enjoyed it, with Roki winning 3-1. The quality is very good. Finland were, until a week prior to me being there, the Olympic hockey champions and they do seem to love the sport. The following morning we had another wander around the town, saying hello to Santa on the way. He has a booth in the middle of town where you can go and pay to have some photos taken with him. We declined. It was quite interesting to see how a town works when covered in quite a lot of snow where temperatures remain below zero for, seemingly, months. It had actually got warmer whilst we were there with the mercury hovering around -5C – it was almost worth taking a layer off. It was soon time to get an Uber to the airport which was mobbed and finding it hard to cope with the volume of passengers. We flew back to Helsinki, where the temperature had actually crept up to +3C, for a night in the airport Hilton and the aforementioned Nepalese curry. We rose at 04:00 the following morning for our 06:30 flight back to Edinburgh.

Rovaniemi ice sculpture and, surprisingly, a not completely iced over river.
The town’s Lutheran Church complete with curious stringed instrument.
Roki hockey at the Lappi Areena. This is an official tourist spot so don’t complain at me including it here.
One of many patches of yellow snow, some park benches and an unsurprisingly closed ice cream hut.
Finnair like to join in with the Santa Claus thing.

Conclusion

In the days leading up to our Finland break, we all experienced some apprehension. It was a new country, one quite different from ours when it comes to climate. Would we find the cold too oppressive? Are the Finns welcoming? Was there enough to do? We invested quite a bit of money in cold weather clothing, from snow boots to long johns, though in the Apukka resort they let you have some serious cold weather gear for the time you are there. Layering up was recommended along with a decent hat and thick socks. Maybe two pairs of thick socks. We must have been doing something right as we kept warm for the most part. You need to give yourself time to change out of the outer layers at least when you go from outside to inside as all the buildings are kept pleasantly warm. Weather considerations aside, Finland seems a great place to visit. The language is indecipherable – its closest relative is Hungarian, don’t ask me why – but virtually everyone speaks English and they speak it better than you do. Everyone we dealt with was pleasant. The public transport in Helsinki was excellent though not so much in Rovaniemi where we found Uber (and walking) to be the best way of getting around. Nothing stops for the snow. It was piled up all around Helsinki but the trams ran as normal, cars were driven, bicycles were ridden and the ferries ran through iced up waters. Even more snow was piled up in Rovaniemi but they just shifted it and got on with life. We never spent a single Euro whilst we were there. This is not really true, we spent quite a lot of them, but all transactions were contactless and all the cash we had brought with us came home. Whilst I’m happy to persuade you to go, I have to mention the elephant in the room, or perhaps it’s the reindeer in the igloo. How much did it cost? I must admit, it wasn’t cheap. An igloo at the Apukka Resort is going to cost you over €1000 per night. It’s a couple of hundred Euros to go dog sledding. Having said that, hotels in Helsinki aren’t too expensive and you might find some bargain eateries like we did with the Nepalese so you may not have to break the bank while you are there. Not too much anyway. It may prove to be the only time we go there but we certainly enjoyed the experience and it has given us memories that will last for as long as we do.

To conclude, as long as you wrap up warm, Finland is a great place for a break. A true Winter Wonderland.

Scotland’s Railways

Back in March, not long after I’d completed my Aberdeen to Penzance mega train ride, I had a free day. Still in railway mode, I decided to head up to Glasgow and purchase a Strathclyde Roundabout ticket for the princely sum of £7.40. This gave me a day’s off peak travel on Glasgow’s suburban railways, much of which I had never travelled on before. I had no plan, just to start at Paisley Canal St station, take the short ride to Glasgow Central and choose whatever trains that subsequently took my fancy. That day saw me visit the delights of Newton, Hamilton, Dalmuir and <Neilston>, the last of which is displayed on the departure boards at Central Station with the < and > to aid passengers in distinguishing between it and Newton. Many a rushed commuter had caught the wrong train home in the past so a solution was sought and for all I know it probably works. There wasn’t much in the way of nice scenery and some of the trains were old and smelly but it was interesting getting to know some of Glasgow’s urban and suburban rail network, the largest in the UK outside of London. Having travelled on new ‘metals’ (its a word trainfans use to mean ‘tracks’ as having an extra syllable is as important as the right anorak) that day, along with some more on the earlier cross country trip, I started to wonder just how much of the Scottish passenger rail network I had not been on. I downloaded a couple of maps off the Scotrail website and a plan was formulated. It wasn’t a very complex plan: I was to travel on every mile of the network with a time limit of whenever.

Yellow highlighted lines already completed…
…with still a fair bit of the Central Belt left.

The maps showed me that I’d done a fair bit of the network as it was. Of the ‘biggies’ the West Highland Line, Highland Line, Stranraer Line, Dundee-Aberdeen Line, West Coast and East Coast Mainlines, Kilmarnock, Dumfries and Carlisle Line along with a number of Glasgow-Edinburgh lines were already in the bag so to speak. However, three major lines in the north of the country were notably absent from my tally along with plenty more suburban lines in Glasgow, the Central Belt, Edinburgh and Fife. There was also an annoying number of short branch lines to places like North Berwick and Ardrossan Harbour that would prove a bit tricky. The East Kilbride Line would have to wait as it was closed whilst being upgraded and whilst the line from Kilmarnock to Glasgow was technically ticked off, it must be more than forty years ago that I travelled on it so I was never quite happy that it counted. So plenty to do, best to crack on.

I hastily arranged a trip to Inverness to bag those lines at the northern extremity of the British railway network. I purchased a Spirit of Scotland Rover ticket for £100 with a railcard (£155 if you don’t have one). This gave me four days of travel within an eight day period on any train within Scotland with the exception of some, but not all, peak morning services. Unlike my day on the suburban railways of Glasgow, I made a plan and set off. The Rover ticket allowed me to take a leisurely route up to Inverness thereby ticking off the Glasgow-Edinburgh via Shotts line and most of the Fife lines that I needed. Annoyingly the branch to Leven wasn’t completed and I’d have to formulate a plan to do that later. In Inverness I checked in to my cheap and not exactly cheerful hotel – when in Inverness do yourself a favour and pay a bit extra to stay in hotel that isn’t the Waverley Guest House – and prepared myself for the early start the following morning. The first train to Thurso and Wick departed Inverness at 07:00 and the Rover Ticket is accepted on this route despite the ‘peak’ departure. The Far North Line takes over four hours to reach Wick having first branched off to Thurso to visit Britain’s most northerly railway station before returning to Britain’s most northerly railway junction and continuing on to Wick. I had actually done some of this line before but north of Dunrobin Castle it was new ‘metals’ for me. Once in Wick the obvious option was to return to Inverness but I had an alternative plan. I’d take Wick Airport’s one daily service to Aberdeen, thereby ticking off another airport in another potential challenge, and get a bus to the city’s station. There I would catch the next train to Inverness which meant I’d complete another line before dinner. The following day I needed to get home but not before I’d ticked off the Kyle of Lochalsh Line, an outrageously scenic trundle from the east coast to the west. I had to do this both ways before catching the train from Inverness back to Glasgow with a small detour to Alloa on the way to capture one of those annoying little branchlines I was talking about. Even in Glasgow I managed to tick off a stretch of suburban railway that might otherwise have been a bit of a pain to complete, before returning home.

The Rover Ticket still had one day left on it and a few days later I used it to do more of the Glasgow suburban lines including extremities such as Helensburgh, Gourock and the legendary Cathcart Circle. That left plenty of suburban lines still to do and through a mixture of opportunism and another Strathclyde Roundabout ticket, I ticked them off by late-May. The East Kilbride line had reopened and was the last of the Glasgow lines to be completed. This left just two small branchlines to do, North Berwick to the east of Edinburgh and Leven in Fife, the latter being a newly reopened line that had been closed to passengers following the Beeching Report on the 60s. It took me a while to get round to doing them as summer stuff had got in the way. On August 27, however, I set out from Troon via the Kilmarnock Line, thereby taking away my unease at a journey forty years ago counting towards the total, to Glasgow and then Edinburgh. There I changed onto the local service to North Berwick and removed that short branch off the East Coast Mainline from my to do list. Back at Edinburgh I changed onto a train to Leven and prepared to tick off the last short stretch of railway – only for signalling problems that saw the service cancelled at Kirkcaldy. An hour on the platform at Kirkcaldy is long enough for anyone but thankfully the issue was fixed by the time the next scheduled service came along. I got on it and a short while later we branched off the main line onto the curiously meandering line to Leven. At 15:16 the train pulled into Leven Station and my not exactly onerous quest to ride on all of Scotland’s passenger railways was complete.

Scotland’s Railways complete. Note: the carriage behind was not the one I’d travelled in.

Well, almost. Technically speaking there is a short section of track on the Fife Circle and another near Cathcart in Glasgow where passenger trains sometimes route but I’ve discounted these as they don’t contain any stations. I’ll maybe get round to doing them someday, just for the hell of it. Anyway, enough of the boring stuff, what you all want to know is what are my favourite bits of the network, where are the hidden gems, which bits are the most depressing and other stuff that might make you want to jump on a Scotrail Class 150.

Best Line

The West Coast Highland Line takes the gold medal, though it is a close run thing. The journey from Glasgow Queen Street to Mallaig is just spectacular. Sure, the Scotrail trains aren’t up to much but they’ve got big windows from which to enjoy the big country outside. Branching off the North Clyde line at Helensburgh, the line climbs high above Gare Loch and Loch Long before cutting through a gap in the hills at Arrochar. Loch Lomond is on the other side of the gap and the line heads north along its bonnie, bonnie banks to Crianlarich. There the train splits with one half heading along the Oban branch, itself quite spectacular, the other beginning the climb up to the bleak Rannoch Moor. Traversing the moor, the train calls at Corrour Station, 15 miles from the closest public road, before travelling high above Loch Treig and then following the River Spean around the north of the Ben Nevis range. After pulling into Fort William Station, the train reverses out again and branches off to the northwest, passing Neptune’s Staircase on the Caledonian Canal. Following the northern banks of Loch Eil, the train then crosses the iconic Glenfinnan Viaduct, that of Harry Potter fame, heading west to Arisaig, Britain’s most westerly railway station. The Small Isles of Muck, Eigg and Rum are visible as the train heads north to its destination of Mallaig. The journey takes five and a quarter hours. There are alternatives to Scotrail’s old DMUs though and good ones at that. You can take the Caledonian Sleeper from Euston to Fort William, waking up on the banks of Loch Lomond and having breakfast as Rannoch Moor goes by is really quite special. You can also do the section from Fort William to Mallaig steam hauled in heritage rolling stock during the summer months which is perhaps even more special, as long as it is running which it wasn’t the last time I tried it.

Glasgow – Fort William is particularly scenic in Autumn…
…and rather dramatic in Winter.
Fort William – Malaig. Do it steam hauled if you can. You’ll see nice things no matter what is hauling you though like Our Lady of the Braes…
…the Small Isles and of course, Glenfinnan Viaduct.

Hidden Gem

Ayr-Stranraer Line. This line endured thanks to a connection with the ferries from Stranraer to Belfast, but they ceased a few years ago. Stranraer Station still lies next to the abandoned ferry port. The ferries now go from Cairnryan a couple of miles up the coast from Stranraer and there is a connecting bus from Ayr Station for those relying on public transport. Luckily, closing railway lines is a particularly tricky thing to do nowadays and several trains a day make the journey to Stranraer largely devoid of passengers. It is very scenic with both coastal and countryside views and a surprising amount of wilderness to observe. You can also have a chuckle at the name Glenwhillie on the side of a signal box miles from anywhere of note.

Not spectacular but generally rather pleasant with Ailsa Craig keeping you company for some of the way.

More Scenic Lines

The Kyle of Lochalsh Line is almost as good as the West Highland Line. The scenery is just as good but you only get two and a half hours of it rather than five and a half. Like the Stranraer Line it used to connect to a ferry which is probably why it survived the Beeching Cuts of the 60s but there is a bridge to Skye now and the line is served by a mere four trains per day. Catch one though, you won’t regret it.

Of course, doing the Kyle Line on a glorious day helps.
The Kyle Line is almost the Skye Line, Skye being the other side of that bridge.

The Far North Line is rather spectacular in places though not as dramatic as the West Highland and Kyle lines. It is definitely worth doing though and has the feel of being on some sort of expedition rather than a simple train ride.

The Far North Line is all sea lochs and wilderness.
Basic station facilities at Altnabreac and me at the end of the line.

Edinburgh-Dundee-Aberdeen gets a mention too. Not only is the scenery great, you get to traverse two iconic bridges, the Tay Bridge and the mighty Forth Bridge.

Tay and Forth Bridges.

Best Suburban Lines

Very subjective this but I rather enjoyed the East Kilbride Line when I finally got to ride on it. Unlike most of Glasgow’s suburban railway network, it seemed to pass through rather pleasant suburbs and even a bit of countryside before reaching its new town destination.

Sadly, I took no photos other than this end of the line selfie so you’ll have to take my word for it.

There’s nice views of the Clyde along the Greenock Line and also the line to Helensburgh and whilst I’m so used to it now I barely notice, the Ayr line is pleasing on the eye in sections.

Firth of Clyde from the north looking south and the south looking north.

Neil’s Least Favourite Lines

To be honest I don’t hate any railway line. There are some, however, that are a bit, well, sad. The Glasgow Central Low Level line utilises old rolling stock that smells vaguely of boiled cabbage, as do the subterranean stations in the middle of the city, and when they emerge from the tunnels at either end it is hardly the sort of scenery that makes you want to look out of the window. It’s a good, frequent service though so I’m not knocking it.

Argyle St Station. A bit smelly.

Neil’s Favourite Trains

Ignoring the heritage stock that does the Fort William-Malaig tourist run and non-Scotrail operators, there can only be one train that takes the crown. A train that, sadly, is unlikely to be gracing the Scottish network for much longer. That is the Class 43, better known as the Inter City 125. Back when I blogged about them in 2019 they were in the process of being introduced onto the Scottish network. Since then they have all been refurbished and their classy interiors disguise the fact that the trains are over 40 years old. Not that you really want to disguise the age of these classic trains, they have so much more appeal than the other types on the Scotrail network. They are due to be replaced soon by new, unspecified stock. You can bet your bottom dollar that the replacements will be soulless and probably have hard seats.

Inter City 125, what an icon and me in an Inter City 125, what an icon.

Neil’s Favourite Stations

Weymss Bay is the jewel in the crown of Scottish Stations. It is a Victorian masterpiece and I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. As for a major station, it’s hard to look past Glasgow Central, Scotland’s busiest, another Victorian masterpiece but on a grand scale.

Weymss Bay Station and ferry port.

Neil’s Summary

Neil says ‘do it’ but then Neil would, wouldn’t he? I like travelling by train and find the history of the railways interesting. Like most people I enjoy gazing at spectacular scenery, unlike most people I can spend hours doing it and little else. See my Trans Canada epic journey for if you need convincing. Scotland has some lovely lines that I can’t guarantee you will enjoy them would be very surprised if you didn’t. As for the other, non-lovely lines? You may need to be a bit of a train nerd to enjoy them. Now, should I do Wales next?

Technik Museums

Last year I blogged about a River Cruise I had taken on the Rhine. In it I mentioned that I’d visited a museum in the town of Speyer. I gave scant details about it and shared just three of the gazillion photos I had taken but that’s not because I didn’t like it. It was the Technik Museum and packed to the brim with aircraft, trains, u-boats, spaceships and other bits of mechanical hardware that make gentlemen of a certain age go a bit weak at the knees. As it happens Germany has two Technik Museums, this one at Speyer and a similar one at Sinsheim, some fifty kilometres away. Naturally, I had to do the set so a plan was formulated earlier this year. As with my trip to Amsterdam to fly on a DC-3 some three years ago, I would be accompanied by my friend and fellow avgeek Graeme for this journey. A year ago we had gone to Paris to visit the Musee de l’Air et Espace, taking the Eurostar to get there, but ended up having limited time at the museum itself due to us having to rearrange our return home plans thanks to a French ATC strike. Who’d have guessed? Anyway, we enjoyed the time we had there and resolved to visit more museums full of old aircraft. The plan for this year’s old plane extravaganza was a simple one: fly from Glasgow to Frankfurt with Lufthansa, get the train to Heidelberg, stay in the Ibis hotel next to the station and on the subsequent two days take the train to Speyer and Sinsheim to visit the museums. Although we knew little about it, Heidelberg proved to be a handy place between the two museums to base ourselves. Apart from a delay at German passport control and a late running train, getting to Heidelberg proved very straight forward and we were all set for our Technik Museums adventure.

Technik Museum Speyer

There must have been a reason why we chose to do Speyer first but I can’t remember what it was. A regional transport day pass was obtained at Heidelberg station for €19 and then a regional train delivered us to Speyer’s Hauptbahnhoff in about fifty minutes. A local bus got us to the museum via the city’s rather attractive (in the spring sunshine) main street. Before you enter the museum you get sight of several exhibits, some of which are situated outside the museum’s fence, others being mounted high on plinths and can be seen from some distance away. We each purchased a ticket that covered both museums including entry to the iMax theatres at both venues. They cost €52, a saving of €6 on buying them individually. If you don’t fancy the iMax, and as the various shows have been dubbed into German you might not want to, it is cheaper to buy individual tickets, €23 at each location. Children aged 5-14 get a discount, children under 5 go free. Armed with our tickets we passed through the turnstile and entered the first display hall. The museum has two main halls and an extensive number of exhibits situated outside. As mentioned, some of these are mounted on plinths and can be accessed by stairs. The most striking exhibit is a Boeing 747-200 formerly of Lufthansa that dominates the skyline both in the museum and beyond. Equally as impressive is a massive Soviet era Antonov An-22 in Aeroflot colours so naturally we made a beeline for both of those. It is quite bizarre climbing up stars to enter these behemoths of the sky and exploring all their nooks and crannies. However, there was much, much more to see. Although we didn’t count them there are supposedly more than 70 aircraft on display at Speyer and we must have seen them all. Commercial airliners, military aircraft, water bombers, wartime transports, cold war jets, we lapped it all up. The second display hall was dedicated mainly to spaceflight and contained a Soviet Buran space shuttle, not something you will see at any other museum. In fact it is fair to say that Speyer has got aviation pretty much covered. Not quite though as you will find out later.

The museum is not all about flight though. There is a big collection of railway locomotives, displays of cars, fire engines, some maritime stuff including an old U-boat and some mechanical organs. There is also a larger number of motorbikes that share the second hall with the space exhibition. It takes at least a day to see everything. We saw most but missed out on the motorbikes. The iMax showing was A Beautiful Planet including a lot of film taken on board the ISS. As mentioned, the soundtrack was dubbed into German and my German is limited to ‘ja’, ‘nein’ and ‘auf wiedersehn’ but the visuals were good enough to keep me awake for at least half of the show. There is a large cafe for lunch and much needed refreshment – it was a warm, humid day – and a big gift shop where I managed to not buy anything. The museum was very quiet on the day we visited. I’d expected groups of schoolkids on their end of term excursions but there were none. Having been there some fourteen months earlier took nothing away from the day at all, the museum is pretty awesome and Graeme was in full agreement. We retraced our steps to Heidelberg, grabbed a burger for dinner and prepared for Day Two.

Speyer photos coming up. Most will be from my previous visit as I felt I didn’t need to take any more so I could simply enjoy the exhibits.

Boeing 747 outside
Boeing 747 inside
Antonov An-22 outside
Antonov An-22 inside
Dassault Mercure, outside and inside
Vickers Viscount outside and inside
F4 Phantom and Hawker Hunter
Canadair CL-215 and Antonov An-2
Buran Space Shuttle
Chinese steam and German diesel locomotives
Nautical stuff
Automotive stuff

Technik Museum Sinsheim

Once again we purchased €19 regional day tickets and jumped on a train going in the other direction. The journey was a bit shorter and there is a station right by the museum itself. The weather was less kind to us but we managed to avoid the worst of the rain by fitting in the outdoor exhibits between showers. Like Speyer, Sinsheim has mounted some of its aviation exhibits on plinths, most of which are on top of Hall Two. Not wanting to be outdone by Speyer and its huge aircraft exhibits, Sinsheim has got not one, but two supersonic airliners on the roof. An ex-Air France Concorde is mounted next to an ex-Aeroflot Tu-144. This is unique and a big deal for aviation enthusiasts. We were both going ‘wow’ and we hadn’t entered the museum yet. Once inside the gate we set off on our voyage of discovery once more. There are slightly fewer aviation exhibits at Sinsheim but it still took up a big chunk of the day seeing them. The stars were, of course, the supersonics. Last year, in our brief visit to the museum in Paris, we got to see two Concordes side by side which was pretty special. Seeing a Concorde next to the Tu-144, given the nickname ‘Concrodski’ by the western press, was on another level. We went inside both, the Tupolev first. The Tu-144 was, by a few months, the first supersonic transport aircraft to fly. It was slightly bigger than Concorde, went slightly faster and was slightly earlier into service. Funny, that. It wasn’t a success, however, for a number of reasons. That being said it was still quite incredible being on board one, even though it isn’t going anywhere any time soon. Having said that, and you can call me biased if you want to, but the Anglo-French Concorde is just a bit sexier than the Russian Tu-144.

What else is there to see at Sinsheim? Loads. In fact if your primary focus is cars then it beats Speyer hands down. Graeme likes Formula One and told me he’s never seen so many F1 cars in one place and he’s even attended some races. As well as racers, there are hundreds of vintage cars, sports cars, military cars, American limousines and there was a special exhibition in Hall 3 about Volkswagen vs Opel. There is also a large military display with tanks, trucks, armoured cars and so on with some of the wartime aircraft included. If tractors are your thing there is a section of Hall 2 dedicated to agricultural vehicles and like Speyer, they are very proud of their U-boat, this one being from the 70s but no less cramped inside. There is a big cafe again and the iMax show was Hubble, another one with footage from the ISS but in 3D this time. Yes, it was in German and yes, I did drop off more than once behind the polarising glasses but the showing was after lunch and a pint of Museum Lager so defy anyone else not to do the same. One other thing to note was the slides. To keep those kids entertained, who might otherwise be less than enthralled about examples of old engineering, there were numerous slides from the platforms on which some exhibits stood and the ground. There was one at Speyer too, a long one down from the 747. We didn’t indulge. Having spent most of the day there we headed back to Heidelberg and decided we ought to have something German for dinner, choosing Das Boots Haus where very large schnitzels were served with a most acceptable pils lager.

Our return home the following morning went off without a hitch and we both agreed that it had been a very successful trip. It might not be everyone’s idea of fun spending two days gazing at old bits of metal but if you are the sort that likes museums full of planes, cars, submarines, space vehicles, railway engines and plenty of other mechanical things then the Technik Museums really should be on your ‘to do’ list. Unless you have already done them in which case you could do worse than do them again.

Sinsheim photos coming up, all taken on this visit.

Not many museums have two supersonic airliners enticing you in.
Tupolev Tu-144 and BAC/Aerospatiale Concorde
Tu-144 and Concorde again from a unique angle.
Tu-144 and Concorde flight decks
Tupolev Tu-134 and Ilyushin IL-18
Ilyushin IL-14 and Vickers Viscount
Junkers Ju-87 and Heinkel 111
Nicky Lauda’s F1 car and Back To The Future De Lorean
Electric locomotive and a 1970s U-Boat
More planes on plinths.
I’ve no idea what this is.

Cross Country

Cross Country Trains Class 220 Voyager. Looks cool. Isn’t.

Apologies for the lack of action on this blogging site. I tend to do mini blogs on Facebook, usually day by day on any trips I make. I feel this is adequate for the stuff I’m doing but I really ought to make the effort to blog about entire trips or anything that takes my fancy. It’s not been happening though and it is possible that I might wind the site up when it comes to the annual invoice from WordPress. We will see. To prove to myself I’m still in the zone for blog writing, I’m sharing with you a little trip I did recently. A year or so ago I travelled down to Stourbridge in the West Midlands to ride on the Stourbridge Shuttle, a train ride that lasts all of three minutes. You can read about it here although it was more about the reaction to it than the journey itself. It turns out that that particular train trip is the shortest in the country. Yes, there are stations closer together but the trains connecting them do not start and end there. The Stourbridge Shuttle completes an entire 0.8 mile journey between its point of departure and final destination. So what? I hear you say. Well, if that is the shortest, there has to be a longest. Once again by longest we are meaning a complete journey by one train. You could travel from the far north of Scotland to the extreme south west of England but you would have to change trains a few times. The longest single journey is, however, from the not quite far north of Scotland to the extreme south west of England. It departs Aberdeen at 08:20 each weekday and arrives in Penzance at 21:31. As the return service doesn’t go all the way to Aberdeen, the southbound service is officially the longest train ride in the country at 13 hrs 11 mins and 774 or 785 miles depending on which source you believe. I had to do it, didn’t I?

Unlike the Stourbridge experience I couldn’t do the journey to Aberdeen and back from Penzance in a day so I had to do a bit of forward planning. I’d head to Aberdeen the day before, spend a night in a Premier Inn, do the trip, spend another night in a Premier Inn in Penzance and return home the day after. All tickets and hotels were secured at the beginning of January which was handy as there was a sale on, part of Railway 200 celebrations. The hotels were inexpensive too. I’ll reveal the costings at the end. To get to Aberdeen I took the local Scotrail service to Glasgow Central, walked to Queen Street and took the Inter7City service to Aberdeen. The nice thing about the latter service was that it was on board an Inter City 125, the world’s fastest diesel train, the grand old lady of active British trains. Whilst their days of doing 125mph have past they still provide a comfortable and pleasant ride between Scotland’s seven cities despite being well over forty years old. Having obtained them from GWR and refurbished them to modern standards seven years ago, Scotrail have stated that they are going to get rid of them and replace them with something almost certainly less exciting and probably less comfortable too. This seems to be the way with trains at the moment. Whatever happens, I was glad to get this opportunity to ride in one and it delivered me to Aberdeen on time. A wander through a strangely quiet town centre got me to the Premier Inn and a handy curry house nearby.

Class 43, aka Intercity 125. Looks cool. Is.

Retracing my steps the following morning, I returned to the station in good time for the 08:20 departure. The train was sitting at the platform having arrived from Dundee earlier which allowed me to take the necessary photographs before boarding and finding my seat for the next 13.5 hours. The train was a Class 220 Voyager operated by Cross Country Trains. The train and indeed the company are not particularly well loved by the travelling public. It was a four car unit which gave it a passenger capacity that would prove woefully inadequate later. The front carriage was reserved for First Class passengers and it was here where my seat was situated. There was a not insubstantial premium to travel in First Class, an amount that was far more than the value of the included catering we were supposed to receive. It was, however, worth it for the extra amount of personal space it gave you and the fact it meant avoiding the overcrowded Standard Class carriages further back. If I was going to be on the train for over thirteen hours I wanted to be as comfortable as possible. The chair itself was nothing special – it was a bit worn and not particularly kind to the old bum but there was a bit of recline which was nice and being a solo seat there was no need to worry about facing or sitting beside some other traveller. I had read that a forward facing seat on the left hand side was the best for the views. Mine was rearward facing and on the right. I wasn’t too disappointed but I did miss out of photographing most of the interesting sights on the way which is possibly a blessing as there’s not many worth including in this blog. We departed Aberdeen right on time and were immediately subjected to a ticket check. The carriage steward came down the aisle and served us hot drinks and some seventeen minutes after departing we made a stop at Stonehaven. This was the first of 39 intermediate stations we would call at including some biggies like York and Birmingham New Street and some small ones like Ladybank and Liskeard. We would sit at some stations for a few minutes as the train crews were changed and supplies were reloaded but for most of them we spent no more than a minute. Before the second stop, Montrose, the steward handed out bacon rolls which looked a bit insipid but were not actually too bad. For the next few hours we were regularly visited by the steward with drinks and snacks. No alcohol though, my request for a beer went unheeded. I could have gone in to Standard Class and bought one from their trolly service but I wasn’t that desperate, not a 11 in the morning at any rate. The first of several notable bridges was crossed after leaving Dundee. The Tay Bridge, which we crossed seemingly at snail’s pace, impressively spans (of which there are many) the Firth of Tay and deposits southbound trains in the Kingdom of Fife where the aforementioned Ladybank is one of the small towns we would visit in that grandly named county. We left Fife by way of notable bridge number two, the Forth Bridge, possibly the most impressive piece of Victorian engineering in Britain. Like most bridges it is better seen when not on it but it is still an impressive sight seeing the bits of the structure pass by just a few feet away.

My seat for the next 13+ hours. It was ok, not exactly plush but better than Standard Class.
First Class Catering. No silver service on Cross Country.
Tay Bridge, it has lasted longer than the original.
Forth Bridge. Scotland’s Eiffel Tower, only better.
Edinburgh Castle in moody silhouette and Arthur’s Seat hiding behind a fence.
My rather pathetic attempt at capturing the Scotland (unicorn)/England (lion) border.
Tyne Bridges and Durham Cathedral. As with the Tay Bridge I had to sneak over to the other side to get the photo.

Our first extended stop was Edinburgh Waverley where there was even enough time to stretch my legs on the platform. That brought back memories of ‘smoke’ stops on long distance trains in Canada and the USA, not that anyone could have a fag of course. The train then followed the East Coast Mainline which for some of its length runs along the coast either side of the Scotland/England border. That border was passed nearly three and a half hours after departing Aberdeen. At Newcastle we got a crew change but the galley wasn’t restocked as it should have been so any chance of something warm for lunch was gone. Leaving the ECML just to the south of York, we entered the best part of God’s Own County, the West bit. Passing through Wakefield I caught sight of the mighty Emley Moor Mast and was tantalisingly close to the place I spent my formative years. Not for long though, we entered South Yorkshire with the stop at Sheffield being the half way point of the journey. I was feeling good, if slightly peckish. The train, however, was getting busy. The seat reservations were confusing a lot of people in First Class. Back in steerage the aisles and vestibules were filling up with standing passengers. Passing through the East Midlands on what for me are unfamiliar tracks, the scenic stretches dried up somewhat. The West Midlands was no improvement, Birmingham is a huge industrial sprawl when seen from the train.

Emley Moor Mast, proudly thrusting skywards and Chesterfield’s spire, wonkily thrusting skywards.
I finally resort to listening to IQ as outside the window the midlands didn’t have much to offer. Except the HS2 work in Birmingham.

Our arrival at New Street allowed the galleys to be restocked, not that we’d find out until much later. The train was, by now, absolutely rammed which may have had something to do with the horse racing at Cheltenham. If it was not that, several gentlemen on board were going to a fancy dress party dressed as turf accountants. Arriving at Cheltenham itself didn’t improve the situation and it wasn’t until Bristol that things started to ease and Exeter before there were any unoccupied seats. Meanwhile someone discovered that there had indeed been some provisions loaded in Birmingham but the trolly service was suspended due to aisles and vestibules being blocked. If you wanted something you had to visit the galley. By the time I realised this the only hot option was a sausage roll so I had it. After Bristol the catering ended although we were welcome to raid the remaining snacks and soft drinks. Scenery wise, things had picked up after escaping the Birmingham conurbation as we skirted the cotswolds before Bristol and enjoyed a pleasant Somerset sunset after. By the time we reached Exeter at 18:45 the light had faded and the rest of the journey was completed in darkness. This meant missing seeing the stretch of line along the seawall at Dawlish, the Royal Albert Bridge and the scenic Cornish countryside. With the last three hours of the journey taking place in darkness, things started to drag. As the last few stations were ticked off, however, Penzance was getting closer and at 21:42, some eleven minutes behind schedule, we pulled into Platform 4 and came to a standstill. Britain’s longest (single) train journey done and dusted.

A Somerset Sunset means the solar panels are little more than rural artwork until sunrise the following day.
Your correspondent reporting from Penzance, his epic journey completed.
Penzance welcomed me when I arrived but I waited until the morning to photo the welcoming committee. The train that delivered me there is behind and just about to depart, destination Edinburgh.

That evening’s Premier Inn was just across the road from the station and a little further was USA Chicken which, thankfully, was open. It was more kebab shop than a KFC clone but it provided me a fried chicken wrap the size of a well inflated rugby ball. My hunger didn’t last long. My journey home started at 09:10 the following morning with a ride in a GWR Class 802 IET to London Paddington. This is another train that is loathed by railway enthusiasts but in reality, apart from a lack of padding in the seats, it is a decent machine on which to make a five hour journey to the capital. I was in First Class again as it only cost £7 more than Standard and I really enjoyed the journey. I got to see what I’d missed when it went dark the previous evening and then had the chance to enjoy the Taunton-Reading branch of the Great Western Mainline. From Paddington I caught the Heathrow Express which is vastly overpriced but if you plan more than a month in advance and use a railcard you can pick up a ‘bargain’. From Heathrow it was a BA flight to Glasgow, the airport bus and train from Glasgow Central to Barassie completing the trip.

The Class 802 that would whisk me to London was called Shania Train. GWR have a sense of humour.
Train enthusiasts hate them but I think it looks rather smart. The seat could be a bit softer but otherwise it was fine.
It was nice to get to see what I’d missed in the darkness of the previous evening. Here is the Royal Albert Bridge crossing the Tamar and taking us into Devon.
Speeding along the seawall at Dawlish and the Westbury White Horse. To be fair, the horse was on a different line to the one I came down on.

Would I do it again? No, but that’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it. It’s a long old haul but that’s the point. You get to see a good bit of Britain on the way, warts and all, but the important thing is knowing that you’ve done it. I wasn’t the only one to think the same thing – there were at least five other folk making the journey for the same reason as me and that was just in the First Class carriage. A longer, newer, better catered and more comfortable train would not have gone amiss but I wasn’t expecting Pullman service. Here’s the thing though, it was just as well I did it when I did as this service is due to be curtailed in the middle of May. The train will likely depart Aberdeen and terminate at Plymouth. This will inconvenience hardly anyone other than folk like me that want to do the full journey ‘because it is there’. Its ending will, however, hand over the crown of Britain’s longest (single) rail journey to the Caledonian Sleeper’s service between Euston and Fort William. Will that be on my to do list come May? No, as I already did it five years ago. You can read about it here.

Costings:

Barassie-Aberdeen, Standard Class £22.70 (Split ticket, senior railcard)

Premier Inn Aberdeen £46

Aberdeen-Penzance, First Class £161.55 (Senior Railcard. Standard Class was £62.20)

Premier Inn Penzance £54

Penzance-Paddington, First Class £48.60 (Senior Railcard, Standard Class was £41.00)

Heathrow Express, Standard Class £6.65 (Senior Railcard, one month advanced purchase)

Heathrow-Glasgow with British Airways £58.00

Airport Bus Free (Scottish Entitlement Card)

Glasgow Central-Barassie £5 (Scottish Entitlement Card)

River Cruise

The Spirit of the Rhine. It’s long, narrow and low. It’s also hard to get a full photo of it.

It had to happen sometime. I’ve been retired for five and a half years now and I finally got round to taking that holiday favoured by retired folk, the river cruise. I’m surprised it took so long to be honest. It should, in fact, have happened two years ago. We were emerging from the covid pandemic when I caught it for the first time. Luckily for me it was something and nothing but for the people at Saga, the holiday company for those in the Autumn of their lives, it was a serious case of stay away from their boat. The holiday was cancelled four days before we were due to go. Having taken an ocean cruise with Saga last year, it was time to try again for the not so choppy waters of the Rhine this year. A cruise at the end of March was selected and we all managed to avoid catching transmissible diseases in the run up to the cruise, though by now we could have possibly boarded with ebola and no one would have been bothered. (I’m lying. If you catch ebola don’t go on a river cruise.) By ‘we’ I mean my sister Jill, mother and me. If you have read, or indeed choose to read my previous blog SAGA you will see how this threesome of travelling companions has come about and also my thoughts on Saga themselves. It’s a jolly witty read if I may say so myself! I may as well say so myself, nobody else will.

When it comes to river cruising, the choices are limited. There’s a finite number of navigable waterways in the world. ‘Normal’ cruising takes place on seas and oceans and there’s a ton of them to choose from and whilst cruise ships do tend to get concentrated in certain areas, the choice of itineraries is much greater than on rivers. In Europe you can go river cruising on the Danube, The Douro in Portugal, the waterways of the Netherlands and maybe somewhere in France at a push. The biggie, however, is the Rhine. Actually, the Danube is longer and a similarly important river cruise waterway but the Rhine gets my vote as the most important. Defining what is and isn’t the Rhine is tricky at either end of said waterway but the bit we are interested in runs from Lake Constance to the Hook of Holland and is measured in Rhine Kilometres, a unit of length that matches a normal kilometre except in one case which we will see later on. There’s 1032 of those but the first couple of hundred are not navigable. The rest, from Basel onwards, is fair game for river cruises and a surprisingly large number of commercial cargo vessels. The cruise we chose was called ‘Rhine in the Springtime’ and of the three or four departure dates available, we chose the first one of the year for the very sound reason that it was quite a bit cheaper than the others. ‘Cheap’ is a relative term. River cruises are not known to be at the budget end of the holidaying spectrum. What’s more, single occupancy of a cabin will cost you a hefty surcharge so a saving of a thousand pounds or so by taking a cruise so early it only just qualified for the ‘Springtime’ bit is not to be sniffed at.

Pointy end
Blunt end
The bow and the stern of The Spirit of the Rhine on the Rhine in Cologne.

As with the ocean cruise, Saga look after you. Included in the price is insurance and transfer to whatever port of exit you decide to use. For most folk on this cruise this was St Pancras Station where the Eurostar train would whisk them off to Brussels where a bus would pick them up and take them to the boat which was moored in Dusseldorf. We, however, took the flying option. This required us to be at Heathrow Airport for a 12:55 departure so we asked Saga’s UK travel service to take us down the day before. We booked an airport Premier Inn for the night allowing us a more leisurely short ride to the airport the following morning. We spoke to others who had been picked up at three in the morning for the flight or the train so felt the extra expense of the hotel for the night was more than worth it. The flight went directly to Dusseldorf from where we were met and sent on a short bus ride to the boat. We were welcomed on board and shown to our cabins.

Mercedes
Airbus
Mercedes and Airbus, included in the price. You don’t get to keep them though.

Our home for the next eight nights was The Spirit of the Rhine. This was one of two river cruising boats built specifically for Saga back in 2020/1 (bad timing there), the other being The Spirit of the Danube. They promised a big upgrade in the standard of vessel Saga had been using up to then and both my mum and sister, who had been on the older boats, stated that Spirit of the Rhine delivered that promise. As for me, I had nothing to compare it with but find it hard to believe the Spirit of the Rhine could be bettered. It can carry up to 182 passengers – there were approximately 160 on our cruise – with a crew of around 40. Typical of Rhine cruisers, it is 135 metres long by 11.4 meters wide. There are 91 cabins over three decks. 20 are on the Lower Deck. Being near the water line, these have thin, fixed windows and are 14 sq metres. Nicely appointed but a little tight. On the Middle and Upper Decks the rooms are 17 sq metres and have large French balconies. A French balcony is basically a French door with a fence across it to stop you from falling into the Rhine. Other river cruiser boats manage to squeeze an actual balcony in their cabins but they are tiny and I think the French balcony is better by having that space behind the doors. Whatever, these cabins are a fair bit more expensive than the Lower Deck ones, with the Upper Deck costing slightly more than the Middle Deck, but I think they are worth the extra expense. The Lower Deck cabins might feel a bit claustrophobic after a while. I was on the Middle Deck, my mum and sister were on the Upper Deck. We were each in a designated single cabins but from what I could see they were exactly the same as the other cabins on the Middle and Upper Decks, just with one less chocolate on the bed in the evening. There is a reception amidships with the Lorelei Lounge ahead and the main restaurant on the deck below. There is a small, speciality restaurant at the stern on the Upper Deck and they’ve squeezed a small gym – two treadmills and two exercise bikes – on the lower deck. On top there is the sun deck which extends almost the full length of the boat, interrupted only by the wheelhouse which is mounted on hydraulic jacks so it can be lowered to fit under the lowest of bridges. There’s plenty of chairs and loungers and also a small splash pool if you fancy watching the German countryside going by whilst sat in warm water. That’s about it for the public areas. It might not sound a lot but there’s plenty of space for all on board. It’s not a cruise ship though, places to go are limited and theres no casino, beauty salons, bars other than the main one or theatre like on a Saga ship and certainly no surfing simulators, water slides and go-kart tracks like on the mega cruise ships. There’s a large chess board on the sun deck though…

Room 209, where the magic happens. On a Saga holiday, that means a decent night’s sleep.
Vacuum bog, decent shower…
…adequate sink.
En suite, where the other magic happens.
A large space…
…where window seats were the most popular.
Lorelei Lounge
Fore…
…aft…
…even more aft.
Sun Deck

We didn’t move from our mooring until the following morning. Such is the way with some itineraries. It was perhaps just as well as some of the passengers arriving by train had picked up a delay and didn’t get in until late that evening. The rest of us got to sample the catering for the first time. Dinner was served at 7pm. You could have gone in a bit later but with most of the passengers being Brits we all tended to file in at that time in an orderly fashion. There were tables of six and four and it was a case of taking whatever available table you fancied. Sometimes we’d share a table of six, others we got a table of four to ourselves. The menu was four courses, starter (choice of two), soup (two), main (three) and dessert (two, plus a cheese option). The food was almost without exception excellent. There was always some simple items available in addition to the mains – grilled chicken, a small steak or salmon – for those with a more delicate palate. Or, indeed, if you just fancied something relatively plain for a change. Wine, beer and soft drinks were available, all served by the very attentive staff. Portion sizes were just right, not too big, not too small. As an alternative to the main restaurant, the small Rhinefells restaurant at the rear of the ship could be booked for evening dinner. We did this on the second night. It was nice but the food was not really any different to the main restaurant. It was a more intimate atmosphere and you could observe the chefs preparing your dinner but the menu appeared to stay the same throughout the cruise so we felt there was no need to try and book it for another night. All the food on board was included in the price of course. Breakfast was a buffet with a large array of items to choose from. An egg chef prepared fried eggs and omelettes to order otherwise you just got your own stuff and tucked in. We Brits love a buffet breakfast so no one was complaining though we thought the sausages weren’t particularly great. Lunch was also a buffet with some extra items delivered by the waiting staff directly from the kitchen on request. Once again it was good stuff and allowed you to have as big or as small a lunch as you wanted. A lighter version was served in the Rhinefells restaurant. In the afternoon sandwiches and cakes were available in the Lorelei Lounge and on one afternoon afternoon tea was served in there. Drinks were also included, both with meals and in the Lorelei Lounge all day. The selection of included drinks was more limited than on a sea cruise but still perfectly adequate and we didn’t spend an extra penny whilst on board, though there were plenty premium brands available at extra cost.

Starter. It’s a bread stick before you ask.
Main, in this instance an excellent veggie curry.
Dessert. I can’t remember what it was but I finished it.
Food. Add a bowl of soup and this is a typical evening meal.
The house beer. Aptly German and very nice.
The house brandy, not cognac but perfectly acceptable I’m told.
One of the house cocktails. Aperol Spritz. Or maybe Irn Bru.
Drink

Life on board the boat tended to take place in the Lorelei Lounge. Some time was spent on the sun deck, especially for the scenic parts of the cruise, but a March date was never going to see a battle for the sun beds. The lounge was a pleasant space where, as already mentioned, drinks were available from 9am to midnight and nibbles were served in the afternoon. It was the place where the cruise director would give us the appropriate information for our ports of call, the Captain introduced his staff and Michael, the resident entertainer, would, well, entertain us. He’d run quizzes, compare a few games, play a bit of piano lounge music, encourage us to hit the dance floor, tell the odd joke and also sing. He did a pretty good job at keeping most of the passengers entertained and didn’t massacre the songs from the musicals which was good. If you are used to ocean cruising, you might think the entertainment was a bit on the sparse side but for the size of ship you couldn’t really expect anything else. On a couple of evenings visiting musicians serenaded us. One was a trio from the Moselle region who performed typical German drinking songs which, like the drink, went down rather well. The other was a couple of chaps from Alsace who were supposed to perform some folk music from that region but we figured they were just giving us a few light tunes which went on a bit too long. Whatever, there was always something in the evening to help pass the time.

An evening of German drinking songs…
…or Alsace ‘folk’ tunes…
…and the oldies are ready to rock.
Entertainment
Resident entertainer Michael. He’s from Yorkshire you know.

River cruises are, of course, much more than killing time on the boat. Our itinerary had us visiting seven different places though we didn’t see much of Dusseldorf where we boarded. On the itinerary was Cologne, Koblenz, Rudesheim and Speyer where we then turned about and headed north, visiting Bingen and Nijmegen before we arrived in Amsterdam where we spent a full 24 hours before the cruise ended and we came home. ‘Scenic’ cruising only happened on a couple of afternoons. Between Koblenz and Rudesheim lies the Middle Rhine Gorge, all romantic castles, near vertical vineyards and picture postcard towns. Plus, with tracks on either bank, quite a lot of trains. Having cruised this section, passing the Lorelei (or Loreley) Rock on the way south, we cruised it again in the other direction which was not a bad thing. We were lucky with the weather both times. Much of the other time we were moving was in the dark and the for bits that did take place during the day, the scenery tended to be interesting rather than pretty. The Rhine has attracted a lot of industry over the years and it there’s no way of avoiding it. Passing the Bayer Pharmaceutical plant in Leverkusen isn’t going to be high on anyone’s list of ‘must see’ sights but at least we can say we’ve seen the birthplace of Asprin. The river is marked on both banks every 100m. The Kilometres are shown as a number, zero is somewhere in Switzerland, 1032 next to the North Sea. A ‘+’ sign is placed at the half KM with poles placed every 100m. The 529 and 530km indicators are, however, only 580m apart due to a surveyor’s cock up. I got as much pleasure out of seeing that anomaly as I did from seeing the Loreley rock.

Big castle
Medium castle
Small castle
Middle Rhine Gorge, all castles…
Steep vineyard
Even steeper vineyard
Boppard, pretty town, not so pretty name.
…vineyards and pretty towns…
The Loreley approaches…
…but we pass through untempted.
…and the Loreley, where alluring maidens will tempt you onto the rocks and certain death. They must have been havng a day off when we went past.
KM 530, just 80m from the ‘+’ which indicates km 529.5
KM 529, 1 km from KM 528 but only 580m from KM 530
Surveyor’s cock up.

The stops were all interesting with the exception of one. Sorry about that Bingen. Excursions were available at all locations but the uptake wasn’t great and the ones at Cologne and Bingen were cancelled. Some excursions were included in the price and we Brits weren’t going to miss out on them. A walking tour of Speyer and a coach trip from Nijmegen to Arnhem and ‘A Bridge Too Far’ were the first two. In Amsterdam, where we were mored a couple of miles out of the centre, we were bused into the city and took a canal cruise. In the afternoon a shuttle bus was organised for those who fancied an independent wander round the city. Those leaving by Eurostar got a bonus tour of a tulip farm on the day of departure but not those who flew. The extra paid for excursions were walking tours at Koblenz, the Mechanical Music Museum plus wine tasting at Rudesheim and the Technik Museum at Speyer. We didn’t join any of those. Mum and Jill had done the Mechanical Music Museum before and the Technik Museum was just a short way from the boat so I went myself, paid at the gate and saved twenty quid. Walking tours are a big thing on river cruises and whilst Jill and I did the included one in Speyer, it was better discovering the locations at your own pace. Saga boats even have little gizmos you can use to have a self-guided walk around most ports of call. We tried this in Bingen without much success and elsewhere we just did our own thing. In Cologne we visited the famous cathedral. In Koblenz we took the cable car over the confluence of the Rhine and the Moselle. In Rudesheim we took another cable car and mum and Jill sampled Rudesheimer coffee. I don’t like coffee but I’m sure it was delicious. In Bingen I did manage to discover an interesting crane. Sorry again Bingen. There’s plenty to see wandering round Amsterdam as I’m sure you know. Not that I saw those bits, I went on a tram ride instead.

Gothic Cathedral…
…and metal bridges (ignore the rusty padlock nonsense)
Cologne
Cable Cars…
…and Kaiser Bill
Koblenz, confluence of the Rhine and Moselle
More cable cars…
…Germania…
…and rustic streets.
Rudesheim
Romanesque cathedrals…
…ancient Jewish baths…
…and traffic free high streets.
Speyer
Boeing 747
Dassault Mercure
Antonov An-22 ‘Cock’
Speyer Technik Museum – just three of hundreds of exhibits.
Old wooden crane, still works apparently…
…and station building. That’s just about it as far as Bingen is concerned.
Bingen
I can’t remember the story but I think there’s a bit of SPQR going on here.
Hardly any old Nijmegen left after WW2. Here’s a bit.
Nijmegen
Outside the Airborne Museum
Commonwealth Cemetary
Not a great result for the allies unfortunately.
Arnhem tour.
Low tour boats…
…not very sexy bicycles…
…impressive stations…
…wonky houses…
…trams…
…and many canals.
Amsterdam

So, river cruises, yes or no? For me the jury is still out. I think I need to take another to form an honest opinion. I couldn’t really fault Saga. Whilst I have nothing to compare it with, the boat was excellent, the staff were great, food and drink were fantastic and I fail to see how all that could be bettered. Yes, it was the first cruise of the season so there was the odd teething problem, the onboard wifi wasn’t great and a few more excursions suitable for the less mobile passengers would have been good but these are straws I’m clutching at. So why the indecision? I’m just not sure river cruising is really me. Certainly if my mum wants to take her kids on holiday again we will probably plump for an ocean cruise as there are more choices, both in terms of itineraries and what to do on and off the ship. Having said that, the Danube looks an interesting river….

Famously Dull

Me on the Stourbridge Shuttle. A perfect face for radio, also appearing in a tabloid near you.

I became famous a couple of weeks ago. Not very, just a bit, and I’m not famous any more. Andy Worhol stated that in the future, “everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes” and whilst my stardom was unlikely to extend round the word, it lasted a bit longer than quarter of an hour. The reason for this fame is something I find it utterly bizarre. It is a story of a dull day out I had on a chilly February Tuesday and how it touched the heart of a nation. Or maybe made a few people in the West Midlands chuckle which, thinking about it, is the more likely. The story goes as follows:

Winter is a dull time for someone with a bit of wanderlust such as me. That’s fine though, I tend to spend the time arranging trips both long and short for later on in the year when the weather has a chance of being clement. However, if I’ve nothing planned in a certain month I do like to arrange a Day Out. In January for no good reason I flew from Glasgow to Dublin, then to Heathrow. There, a bus and a couple of trains took me to Luton Airport where another flight delivered me back to Glasgow. I did visit an aircraft model shop in Hillingdon that I hadn’t been to for a while but that was just a bonus, the journey was the only reason I did the trip. A coincidence was that all three flights were 53 minutes long, take off to landing which is of no significance whatsoever but pleasing nevertheless. I enjoyed the day and decided to do something similar in February. This journey, however, would have a ‘reason’. You may not think it a good one but to me it justified the eighteen hour door to door round trip. Back in 2017 a YouTuber called Geoff Marshall along with his then partner Vicky Pipe went on a journey around Britain visiting all the railway stations on the National Rail network. There were 2,563 of them at the time. It was during this journey I learnt of the Stourbridge Branch Line. This is a 0.8 mile branch off the Birmingham to Worcester (via Kidderminster) line that links Stourbridge Junction Station with Stourbridge Town. It is advertised as the shortest branchline in Europe though this is disputed by the Germans and, strangely, the Vatican City. Whatever, it is certainly the shortest in Britain and not only that it has unique rolling stock. The Class 139 Parry People Movers utilise flywheel technology to shuttle what is a small single carriage ‘train’ between the two stations at a maximum speed of 20mph. The journey takes place almost entirely in a cutting where the most exciting thing to see is a retaining wall, and lasts three minutes. On learning about the service I decided I wanted to try it one day and that day finally arrived on February 27. To get there I decided to utilise three unremarkable EasyJet flights. The absence of a direct flight to Birmingham in the morning necessitated flying from Glasgow to Belfast and from there to Birmingham. This had the bonus of seeing me tick off another UK airport as I’d never been to Belfast Aldergrove before. From Birmingham Airport I would take a train into New Street Station, walk to Snow Hill Station then get another train to Stourbridge Junction where my experience of the Stourbridge Shuttle would commence. The journey home would see me reverse my tracks to Birmingham Airport where a direct flight would take me back to Glasgow. Due to the scheduling of the flights the whole trip, including the getting to and from Glasgow Airport, took over eighteen hours, all to experience two three minute journeys on this unique service.

The Class 139 Parry People Mover, Britain’s cutest train.

If you are still with me, and I wouldn’t blame you if you are not, you maybe wondering why? Isn’t that a very dull day out? Well yes, it is for most people. For me, however, I quite like flying and trains. I also like transport oddities and the Stourbridge Shuttle is certainly one of those. Whilst I agree that a day out like that is not for everyone, I enjoyed it and that is the main thing, eh? I realised that the dullness of this trip might be something of a story worth telling. Not here, at least not at first, but on Facebook. Facebook you see has a group called the Dull Men’s Club. It started appearing on my timeline last Autumn and it appealed to me. It is a celebration of the dull, banal and downright boring. Gentlemen (and ladies, don’t be put off by the title) telling tales of their spreadsheets, packed lunches, favourite kitchen implements etc. In fact anything that is considered dull is fair game assuming it gets past the moderators. The group went viral and there are now over a million members. Not only that there’s another group with exactly the same name which has half a million members. How annoyingly dull is that? I decided that the dull trip to Stourbridge to ride a short, dull branchline would be right up their street, especially as I’d taken three dull flights to get there and back. I wrote it up and submitted it. It was deleted by the moderators without any explanation. The following day I wrote it up again, the narrative was a bit shorter and I included three photos instead of one. I submitted it and then went out for a walk. A couple of hours later I checked Facebook. I had several hundred notifications. The write-up had been published and the group members were going crazy about it.

Leaving Stourbridge Junction. Round the curve we enter a cutting in which nearly all the branchline runs. The views aren’t great.

The responses were generally positive. A small number had a moan about me being personally responsible for destroying the planet but nearly all fell into one of two camps – one that thought going all that way for a six minute ride was actually quite interesting or another which agreed it was the dullest thing they’d ever heard. It is the Dull Men’s Group so both of those reactions are positive! After about a week the posting had received 18,700 likes, over 2,500 comments and, crucially, 607 shares. Somewhere along the line the post caught the attention of a few journalists. I received several messages through the Facebook Messenger system from folk not in my friends list. Usually when I get those there’s a picture of some voluptuous young lady who wants to be my friend and probably liberate me of a large amount of cash. These, however, were not. One was from a lady at BBC Radio WM, another from the Express and Star, the newspaper of the West Midlands. There was also one from Pre Metro Operations, the company that runs the Stourbridge Shuttle on behalf of West Midlands Trains. I’d later get a phone call from news agency SWNS. They all wanted the same thing – the reasons I did such an insane trip for a six minute ride on a small train. I happily told them my story and provided them with the same photos I’d used in the Dull Men’s Club posting. I figured they might lose interest but no, the following week I appeared on BBC Radio WM (the local radio station of the west midlands) with an accompanying piece on the BBC News website. The morning show is presented by Kath Stanczyszyn (I was relieved that I didn’t have to pronounce her surname) and we had a lovely chat about my day out in the much sought after 10:45 to 11:00 slot. I think we’ve even got a date should I ever return to Stourbridge. The Express and Star did their article about me which appeared the day following the BBC interview and got most of the details correct apart from the paragraph where they called me Paul for some reason. The day after that I hit the national newspapers. The SWNS article had been picked up by the following: The Metro, The Daily Express, The Daily Record, The Daily Mirror and, for good measure, The Stourbridge News. Each shared the article as written by the agency and included my mugshot from on board the train. The Sun also took the story but re-wrote it meaning I only got a quick mention. The Daily Mail did an article about the Shuttle in its travel section in which I wasn’t mentioned at all. The cheek! It was notable that the Broadsheets didn’t pick it up which is a bit of a shame but there you go.

Naturally I informed my nearest and dearest about my elevation to media sensation whilst some other friends were surprised to see my dull looking face looking out of the papers. The original posting in DMC sprung back to life as a few members shared the links and even photos of the Metro article that they’d seen on their morning commutes. For a couple of days people had a laugh about it. Then, no doubt, they forgot about it. Fame is a fickle mistress. Now, a week or so later, I’m just the same old dull man I was before. It was fun whilst it lasted, but not as much fun as the two three minute rides on the Stourbridge Shuttle.

Links to the articles. I’ve no idea how long these survive on their appropriate websites but rest assured they were there for a week or two.

BBC Sounds (Edited highlights of my Radio WM interview)

Kath Stanczyzszyn Show (The full interview starting at the 48 minute mark)

BBC News

Stourbridge News

Express and Star

Daily Express

Daily Mirror

The Sun

Metro Article:

I got equal billing with the dog shit on the BBC Website

My video of the Stourbridge Shuttle departing Stourbridge Junction.
The full three minute journey!
The Stourbridge Shuttle arriving at Stourbridge Town after its epic journey from Stourbridge Junction.