Doncaster; Saturday, 05 November, 2016

I had a nice long lie in and a very pleasant breakfast before heading out of the hotel and over to the station. As it was such a nice day I’d decided to head out to the nearby North Lincolnshire coast and so picked up the train out to the Victorian seaside resort of Cleethorpes.

Unfortunately, in early November, even on a nice sunny day, there isn’t much to do in Cleethorpes so after a bit of a look around town I headed back to the station and picked up the train back inland a little and up to the ruins of an Augustinian monastery at Thornton.

It was a short walk from the railway station to the abbey and it’s very impressive gatehouse – about the only part of the site to survive the destructive powers of Henry VIII. I had a good look around the site, including both the gate house and the limited remains of the abbey church and cloister.

By the time I’d looked around the whole site, and dodged a couple of very short but quite punchy showers, it had taken around 90 minutes, which was good as the trains on this little branch line are only every two hours. I headed back to the station to pick up the train, catching it on towards the end of the line at Barton-on-Humber before it turned around and came back through Thornton and back towards Cleethorpes.

I hopped off the train at Grimsby to have a bit of a wander round, but it was already starting to get quite dark so I popped into a café to have a quick drink and just to double check on the train times with the intention of catching the bus back to Cleethorpes to pick up the train back to Doncaster.

However, a quick check on the National Rail website revealed that the evening service was gently falling to pieces with lots of delayed and cancelled trains, so instead, after my coffee, I headed back to Grimsby station and picked up the first train heading back towards Doncaster to make sure I could get back.

Back in Doncaster around a hour later I had a quick wander through town to find somewhere to eat and after dinner made my way back through the already quite drunk crowds to the hotel for a drink in the bar before turning in for the night.