Where the Romans Succeed, Network Rail fails

Carlisle is the last English city before the Scottish border, in truth it’s one of the last settlements before the border. It’s been a key site on the road north for millennia. Even today it’s a major stop on the West Coast Main-Line.

So you would have thought that on the first proper summer bank holiday of the year that everything would be smooth and settled.

That’s what I thought when I booked to go to Carlisle back in the depths of December.

Then, twelve weeks ago, when the cheap tickets should have been release, I got a surprise. I couldn’t find any tickets for trains to Carlisle that didn’t involve changing. Even more surprising was that the change was in Newcastle and the journey involved travelling up the East, rather than West coast of the UK.

At the time I had an inkling as to what the issue might be, but thought that even Network Rail wouldn’t be stupid enough to close a chunk of the West Coast Main-Line during a major bank holiday weekend.

But, I wanted a cheap ticket, so I booked to go via Newcastle, and didn’t think much of it.

Then a couple of weeks ago the engineering works for the Bank Holiday Weekend were announced, and despite all logic and sense dictating that people would probably want to travel more on this weekend than any other around it, the line was partly closed.

Instead of a speedy journey of just over three hours from Euston to Carlisle direct (or other locations on the Western side of the UK), there was a not so speedy journey from Euston to Milton Keynes, then a very slow bus journey from Milton Keynes to Birmingham, before rejoining the slightly faster train journey to the North.

I was quite glad that I was going the scenic route. Though possibly not the people who booked late and didn’t have a seat reservation from Kings Cross and were still standing when the train pulled into Newcastle three hours later!

At least take an interest in the display.

As I was wandering around the exhibition on Scotland’s Crown Jewels in the castle I was suddenly stopped in my tracks by a comment that another visitor made to their partner.

“So what’s the big stone got to do with all this”, pointing to the large stone next to the Crown, Sceptre and Sword.

I could have forgiven them if there had not been five rooms of information boards and displays prior to getting to the Crown Jewels which explained all of this.

I could almost have forgiven them if they had spoken in an accent which didn’t make them clearly English.

But no, despite all the boards, despite all the information and despite all the controversy that it has caused they didn’t appear to have the faintest idea what “the big stone” had to do with the Crown Jewels.

For those who haven’t visited the exhibition, or who don’t have a bit of knowledge of the “Rocky” relationship between England and Scotland here goes.

The stone, the Stone of Scone AKA Stone of Destiny AKA The Coronation Stone, was used to crown Scottish kings from around the 9th century up until 1296 when King Edward I of England, having beaten the Scots into submission, took the stone back to Westminster on the assumption that no King of Scotland could be crowned without it, and it was a pretty big sore point on Scottish/English relations right up until it was returned, in quite a shower of publicity, to Edinburgh in 1996 (Ignoring a short period in the early 1950’s when it was stolen by a group of Scottish students and taken back up north).

Perhaps it's just me then who actually takes in any of the information on the display boards or pays any attention to important things that have happened in my lifetime.

To misquote words put into a famous Scots mouth by Hollywood.

"You can take our lives, but you'll never take our ignorance"

Public Transport as a Public Service

Being a Londoner I am pretty used to crowded public transport, even on a Sunday.

I know that once you get out of London the frequency and coverage of public transport is hit and miss, given that a lot of it has to be done for a profit, and if the local council doesn’t support it, it doesn’t run.

However, I was pleasantly surprised as to how easy it was to get from Berwick to Warkworth on a Sunday, quick connections and a service every two hours.

I was even more surprised by how empty the buses were. On the first leg of the journey to Alnwick I was the only person on the bus for virtually the whole way, and from Alnwick onto Warkworth there were only a handful of other people.

Virtually the same back, less than half a dozen people on the bus from Warkworth and only me and one other person for most of the way from Alnwick to Berwick.

Whilst the tickets may have been quite expensive (only just the right side of £10 in total), it still couldn’t possibly have paid for the trip, and if I hadn’t been out today one of the legs would have had nobody on it.

So a thank-you.

To the people of Northumberland, thanks for subsidising my journey today. Your council taxes enabled me to go and visit a castle that I couldn’t have otherwise reached.

Berwick’s Scottish Roots show

There is a thing that the English are not good at, and that’s celebrating feast and special days. Yes there is Christmas, but ask most English people what day St Georges Day is, or when Shakespeare’s Birthday is and you will probably be greeted with a blank expression.

It’s not something that our neighbours to the North have any problems with. Hogmanay, St Andrews Day, Burns Night, all are important days in the Scottish calendar.

Sadly, for me, Burns Night turns out to be January 25th and this being a Sunday, it would appear that a lot of people have decided to make a weekend of it. So when I went over to Holy Island I wasn’t expecting virtually everything to be closed, including the Information Centre (open 7 days a week all year round, closed for Christmas and Burns!) and the local shop.

Whilst the Island and Berwick may be within England, they have changed hands on numerous occasions and it was becoming increasingly evident that when it comes to having a knees up, the area knows which side of the border it wants to be.

This was confirmed in the evening as the hotel was busy with people staying for the night as they were going to Buns night celebrations in Berwick.

Perhaps in future, when I go away, I should really make a note to check what festivals are on.

When Google maps go bad

Prior to heading up to Berwick I had checked online to see where the hotel was, using Google maps.

The hotel, I knew, was on the outskirts of town, next to the large supermarket. And according to the map I looked at it was there, just the other side of the road from the Supermarket.

Now, technically, I should have double checked on the Travelodge website, or perhaps looked up the postcode before taking this for certain, but I was in a hurry, and it looked easy to find.

Come 7pm I walk past the supermarket and start looking for the hotel. Only there are a couple of problems. The first one being that the road it’s the other side of is the A1, the main North South road linking Edinburgh to London, and whilst nowhere near as busy as the four lane monstrosity that carves through North London, it was still two lanes wide, and quite fast.

Eventually, I managed to cross over, nearly killing myself in the process, walked to where the hotel should have been and found that instead it was a pub.

By now I was getting quite concerned. It was very dark, no lights except for the headlamps of oncoming vehicles, and a few stars. I started to retrace my steps heading back towards the supermarket, deciding that I would go to the supermarket and check there if they knew where the hotel was.

Then, as I was approaching the entrance to the supermarket I saw it, the hotel, clearly signed, sitting at the back of the supermarket car park, and when I later checked online, the location given by the third and fourth placed results.

Something makes me think that someone has a sick sense of humour and enjoys sending people to their deaths on the A1, that or its a cautionary warning not to take everything you see online as the truth!

Holidaying in Britain, it’s all the rage

So as the pound nears parity with the Euro the whole concept of popping across to the continent for a short break starts to look fiendishly expensive.

So it is with great joy that I was up early this morning joining the hundreds of others taking part in the sales. Except, I wasn’t buying DVDs, or the fixtures and fittings from a bankrupt Woolworths store.

No, today I had my cyber elbows sharpened as I dived into the melee of the Travelodge Christmas sale.

Whilst I have several objections to Travelodge, my experience with their London City hotel being my main negative against them, you have to agree that a £9 a night for a hotel room your principles can become a little looser than normal.

Given the number of times I got the “Server Busy” message and had to repeatedly hit reload, it would appear that they were doing pretty brisk business.

But still, I managed to walk away with some stunning bargains.

Consequently I’m going to be spending a little more time exploring my own country this year (or until such time as I get a 100% pay rise [impossible], the pound surges to record highs against the Euro [almost impossible], or just recovers so it’s back around the 1.20 mark [still highly unlikely]).