Out to the station for 0915 in good time for the arrival of 5051 "Earl Bathurst" leading The Torbay Express from Bristol to Kingswear. Intention was to grab a quick snap of the train arriving, then hop straight onto the 0930 for Bristol. Managed to do so, by virtue of the 0930 being a stock positioning move made up of a 158, a 150 and a 153 - this long train putting the front doors right next to my vantage point. Snapped rather randomly and boarded, not a fantastic shot but resolved to get the return working tonight.

Alighted at Temple Meads only to realise that the front unit was due to form the 1015 Cheltenham Spa train, minus the attached extras. Boarded again, having decided a little shopping in Gloucester was in order. On my previous visit, I'd found the city centre on a Sunday reasonably quiet, easy to navigate and generally pleasant to wander around. Reminded that Gloucester was one of my early targets when I first began travelling around on the railways many years ago. Set off on time, but ominously halted several times on the bank up to Bristol Parkway due to congestion in the station - spotted a couple of 60s passing each other on freight or engineering duties.

On arriving at a packed Parkway, it was announced that a major signal failure near Charfield had closed the line northwards. Nothing moving in either direction. Eventually, our train was cancelled, and disappeared off back towards Filton empty. A London service arrived, discharging hordes of holiday bound (and somewhat inebriated in some cases) passengers from South Wales. Further anxious crowds arrived heading for the Test Match at Edgbaston and the Gloucester vs. Kent match. As more and more services were delayed or cancelled, the place became increasingly tense, and members of staff seemed to be getting quite violently abused in some quarters.

Finally things started moving. First northbound train was a Virgin service - slipped aboard and enjoyed much needed air-conditioning as far as Cheltenham. Changed and headed back towards Gloucester on a Central 170, shuttling back and forth between Birmingham and Gloucester due to engineering works at both ends of its usual run! Straight into the city, and the shops. As before, a quick dash into the record shop and bookseller. Time for a coffee break, then back to the station. Quiet, but far too warm run back to Bristol. Again managed to get off the train, only to reboard the same unit which then formed a Penzance service.

Later, headed out to the station again, with a rather glorious sunset in view. The return leg of the Torbay Express was reported running to time, and again there was a good turnout of photographers at the station. Still getting the hang of the Olympus camera, but even attempted a short movie. 5051 departed with a huge blast of black clag and a volley of camera flashes.


It just remains to attempt to get a day off during the week to use up the last day of the Wessex Rover. Hardly epic travels this weekend, but plenty of variety. England also won another test match.

Another sort of vague and directionless, and also extremely hot, day - the problem is with Summer Saturdays and holiday specials, that there is a lot going on locally. I considered travelling further afield, but laziness and curiosity got the better of me once again, and out 'skipping' I went...

In an effort to get out earlier however, decided to try to get the Class 31s heading for Weymouth, for at least part of their journey, and as a result decided on a Wessex Rover. Out of Weston on the 0809 and onto the 0858 Weymouth as far as Bath, with 31128 leading and a respectable amount of racket as we went! Planned to stay on to Westbury but it became apparent that getting back for the next move would be impossible, so hopped off at Bath having just spotted a professional acquaintance on board too!

Back to Weston via nice cool First Great Western 180 in time for 67001 on 1E99. This was 67001's first outing for some time, having been out of service for around a year. Lucky to get it too, as it seems it later failed at Sandal & Agbrigg on the outskirts of Wakefield. Just a short hop to Bristol, but another 67 ticked off.

Lingered at Bristol to see the Virgin HST arrive, then off to Newport for a nose around and a spot of lunch. Not much doing at all - a single 66 on Godfrey Road in fact, so soon back heading for Bristol with a quick glance into Barton Hill where both a Class 73 and 5051 "Earl Bathurst" were present, the later for tomorrow's Kingswear trip. Watched the borrowed GNER HST pass by, before hopping onto 67014 on 1V19 heading back to Weston, and the inevitable photo call - producing one of my better efforts, which is reproduced below!



Used the rover to fund a quick visit to my parents in Highbridge, the return leg of which was delayed by a late running Virgin HST from Newquay which seemed to storm through at an incredible speed. Said goodbye to the guard at Weston, leaving him with a trainful of reasonably drunken passengers boarding for Bristol after a day in Weston. Normally, I get annoyed at guard's who do not check tickets during the journey. This one had my blessing!

Today started weirdly, with strange but funny transatlantic messages, and an intercontinental conversation which made me chuckle, and started my day much better than I'd hoped. Its a long time since I traded on my English accent to get by. Made me want to visit the New World again, something I've not thought of doing for a very long time indeed. Its also very good to hear that friends are doing OK, and how fantastic it must be to re-establish contact after years. Wish I could find a way to keep the messages too...

Work was strange. More data cleansing in preparation for next year. Confident we'll have a really solid base for the work to begin soon. Can only hope that other coordinating LEAs have spent the time and effort to get things as close to correct as we have. A new employee started too, who lives in my old home town. Reminisced about our old school and teachers, many of whom are still around it seems. Burnham it seems, remains much the same as when I left - a little more run down, a little more depressing. Its almost comforting. I passed through on the bus last week and noted some changes, but reassuringly I think all the reasons I left remain much the same.

Browsed bookshop at lunchtime, since it was pay day - couldn't find a thing. Have a dwindling backlog of reading matter. Perhaps I will address that this weekend...

By helping with the arcane syntax of the tar command, I won the honour of testing the BlueVelvet theme for GNOME. However, myself and fellow #lemmings soon noted that gnome-theme-manager did not do anything with the BlueVelvet.tgz file. Some poking around showed it moving it correctly to ~/.themes but not unpacking it, and silently failing to report this to the user.

Soon found myself poking around in the gnome-control-center and ended up supplying a patch which firstly deals with .tgz files correctly, and secondly gives the user a clue when things have gone wrong. Another rather paltry contribution, but slightly amazed to find myself motivated to do such a thing after months of feeling utterly incapable of helping in any way!