A Bittersweet Northern Break
Posted in Travel on 31st August 2016
It was good to be back on the road. The lead in to this long weekend away had been painful and sad, and there was a point where I feared we wouldn't get away. But as we made progress on the now-familiar stretch of motorway through Somerset and Gloucestershire, it...
A Tale of Two Ports
Posted in Railways on 29th August 2016
This year has been full of surprising twists and turns, not all of them for the better. But one perhaps unexpectedly good thing among an oddly bittersweet period is my cautious return to the railways after an economically enforced absence of almost four years. Way back in February I graced...
A Walk in the Park - On the trail of Pymmes Brook
Posted in London on 6th August 2016
It's a long time since I visited Cockfosters... My solitary previous excursion even predates the records I've kept on this venerable website. Back then I have a hazy memory of emerging from Charles Holden's low-slung, futurist station building to find a solitary row of tall redbrick shopfronts across a busy...