I'd tell you where I went today but I can't pronounce 'Llanwyrtd'

Posted in Railways on Monday 9th February 2004 at 10:51pm

---

Finally, after years of trying to find the time, the right route and the right ticket, the stars aligned. Since I had one more day of my long weekend, I decided to have another try at the Heart of Wales line which thwarted me at the beginning of the year.

Grabbed another Heart of Wales Circular Day Ranger, and set out on the soon-to-be-legendary 0934 from Weston. This sits for about 15 minutes at Temple Meads. During this time, we were moved from the back unit to the front, then vice versa. The front unit became a Portsmouth Harbour service and we left pretty late. This meant a long wait at Newport, which was also in some disarray as one member of staff seemed to think a platform was closed for emergency engineering work, but the rest didn't.

Finally got to Swansea in good time for the 1323 to Shrewsbury. The stock was an utterly filthy and pretty dilapidated 153. I could barely see out of the window, and the interior was also quite grim. The scenery however was just as impressive as I'd heard. The tiny stations en route provided a small but regular turnover of passengers, and it was a pleasant cold and bright afternoon for a slow trundle through the countryside.

Got stuck at Llanwrtyd Wells waiting for the late down train to pass. Took advantage of the delay to get out, wander around the remote station and enjoy the views and the fresh air. The delay ate into my wait at Craven Arms, and I stepped off the footbridge just in time to see the 1709 to Newport coming into view. A nice, uneventful and thankfully warm ride home!

Pleased to have finally done this troublesome bit of track. Calculated roughly 889 miles done this long weekend!