Travel bits and pieces

08 May

Posted at 09:32h in Travel bits and pieces by

Bank holiday. Lines out of Euston closed. Northbound hordes pile into Kings Cross, milling anxiously in the huge concourse. London brick meets tubular steel, a glorious canopy of white metal fanning across the roof. A mezzanine of toilets and Costa coffee – possibly in reverse order – with views to a man dressed as a bride drinking Carlsberg with his stag-mates, a child-woman in a pink frilly coat with an enormous bow at the back. The ordinary, the weird and the wonderful gathered here. And us - mother and daughter meet by Leon to head north. Trains line up, load up...

29 Mar

Posted at 16:10h in Travel bits and pieces by

We call her Cathy. She sounds just like Cathy Clugston on Radio 4. Indeed, she may be that very person, that very voice in the little machine bringing succour to lost motorists on country lanes in Sussex. You feel lost but she soothes; her lilting Northern Irish burr tells me she’s smiling and might, at any moment, say: “Shall I put the kettle on?”.  I could do with a cup of tea! Heck! I was only trying to get to Haywards Heath station to meet up with my rambling friend, Jilly. Of course, I mean rambling in the ambulatory sense –...

14 Jan

Posted at 12:03h in Life, Spain, Travel bits and pieces by

The breeze rustles through the bamboo that grows in the barranca beside the house where we’re staying. The barranca is an old river bed long since dry. Once upon a time it would have carried water all the way to the coast or into another, bigger river that would chaperone it down to the sea – freshwater merging with salt. The sides of the barranca are terraced and planted with almond trees, some already blossoming though this is early in their season. The bamboo is 20ft tall, maybe more. At the right edge of my vision here on a little terrace,...

08 Jan

Posted at 16:32h in Travel bits and pieces by

Spain. 1200 miles not counting the ferry crossing. The road is long, but the driving is easy. Those French autoroutes with their silken surfaces and service stations that do good coffee in sensible quantities. Thanks to that and the absence of heavy traffic, we find we can forgive the high tolls. Those Spanish autopistas, more rough cloth than silk but empty and mostly free. The coffee? Almost as good. It’s a journey, despite being repeated four times now, despite always being in the first few days of the year, despite the wearying effect of hours of sitting listening to the...