Train Day

For Mike, today was definitely a train day: six trains in 11 hours! It was time for Jess and Alice to return home and the reason we were moored at Cherry Tree was the nearness of a station. From there it was a short hop to Preston and then down to Birmingham. The final leg of the journey took us to Reading (the festival was in full swing beside the railway just before we pulled into the station). The girls were handed back to Mum and Dad leaving Mike to retrace his steps back through Birmingham and Preston stations.

Although it was a long day, it was straightforward as everything went according to plan. At worst, a couple of trains (the branch line service through Cherry Tree) were two minutes late but the others were spot on. The trains were very well run, the staff very positive and the fare which Mike paid was remarkably good value. One can only hope that any new operator of the service (the part between Birmingham and Reading was Virgin Trains West Coast franchise) can sustain this standard. From this small sample it is hard to believe that the suggested improvements will be all that noticeable - and this on a Bank Holiday Sunday when traditionally services were rather poor.

Mike was back at the boat by half past eight and caught up with Christine's day. We had spotted a launderette just by the station so she made use of that to process most of our washing - after the unsuccessful attempts at the end of the last trip we just had to use this one! She had also caught up on some cleaning and the meal (and a bottle of wine!) was ready and waiting.

No pictures of the journey, unfortunately but one from yesterday of the two girls concentrating on their drawings during heavy rain. An SD card in our extra camera had ceased to work and so a few pictures had been stored on the internal memory and only today did Mike work out how to recover them to the laptop!