If you carry your childhood with you, you never become older -Tom Stoppard

I'm struggling to get to grips with the whole business of Christmas shopping this year. It seems that time has gone on fast forward since our holiday in Norfolk August and suddenly it's mid November. I have managed to do a little bit of Christmas Shopping because we went to see my brother in law and his family in Plymouth at the end of October and I took the opportunity to deliver the presents for my niece and nephew. I love going to see them, but we don't manage to get there as often as I would like, it's a long way to drive for a weekend and it's expensive to travel by train. We planned this trip to fit into Robbie's schedule, he is very busy with work at the moment and most weekends seem to be booked up in advance with an assortment of commitments. Robbie was very kind to me, he booked our tickets and reserved our seats making sure that we were booked to travel on a Voyager rather than an HST for both journeys. I can see the attraction of HSTs but in terms of comfort I prefer Voyagers because I'm not very tall and I find the seats more comfortable. I know the vestibules are a bit smelly but we usually get a good journey on a voyager and recent experience with Cross Country suggest that we get better service on a Voyager than on an HST. 

My favourite part of the journey is stretch Just south Exeter which follows the River Exe to Starcross and onward to Dawlish Warren and the sea. It then skirts the coast to Dawlish and on towards Teignmouth where it turns inland again and snakes along the edge of the River Teign towards Newton Abbott. It's a beautiful route and I always stop what I'm doing to look out of the window and soak up the view. In the winter it can be a bit alarming when the waves pelt the train along the sea wall at Dawlish. This area of track was badly damaged in the storms last winter, it is in use again now but there must be a question about it's long term viability.

My favourite part of the visit to Plymouth, apart from the obvious pleasure of spending time with family, was our Sunday morning walk to the Barbican. What could possibly be better than breakfast at Cap'n Jaspers on a sunny autumn morning. No trip to Plymouth is complete without a visit to Cap'n Jaspers. 

Early morning in Plymouth

My son came home from uni for a few days last week, it was nice to have him back but I didn't see much of him because he had things to do and he wanted to catch up with his friends. I took on my old familiar role of his 'taxi' driver - I had forgotten how many extra journeys one nineteen year old could create! When I picked him up from his friends house on the other side of town he was chatting to me about his friend's odd perception of age. Apparently they had been discussing a local news story and his friend described a 38 year old man as elderly. I was briefly reassured when Will told me that he'd explained to his friend that thirty eight is not elderly, but then he went on to say that it is probably more accurate to describe it as late middle age!! I wondered out loud how on earth someone so bright could have such an odd perception of reality! He looked at me with a grin on his face and informed me that as he's nearly 20 he is due for his 'quarter life crisis' so that he can get some practice in before his mid life crisis. I love his sense of humour, but he makes me feel very old.

Last Monday I drove Will back to Cheltenham. There are two possible routes but I prefer the one through the Cotswolds, it takes about the same amount of time as the other route but it is a much more interesting drive with beautiful views of the countryside. Will disapproves of my iTunes playlist, he is not a fan of Woman's Hour and I can't tolerate the overspill noise from his headphones so we had to resort to that quaint old fashioned pastime - conversation. Chatting with Will is fraught with difficulty, if I seem too interested he claims that I'm interrogating him, if I say too little I'm variously accused of disinterest or disapproval. So I take my lead from him, sometimes he is very chatty, but often when we travel together he is less talkative and we lapse into comfortable silence. It was like that on Monday, he had chatted happily about his university course for the first few minutes of our journey but by the time we reached Banbury we were both lost in our own thoughts. 

As we drove through the town I pointed out a rather ornate monument ahead of us and said "I wonder if that is Banbury Cross?". Will looked at me as if I was speaking in a foreign language and I explained that I was referring to the nursery rhyme Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross. To my surprise he told me that he had never heard the rhyme before and I couldn't convince him otherwise. It seems that I neglected  my duty as a parent to pass on the rich assortment of nursery rhymes which have been passed down the generations, so rather belatedly I recited the nursery rhyme to him. With a look of horror he begged me to stop, he knows me too well and  he was afraid that if I got started I would progress from nursery rhymes to poems and we would still be ploughing through the Pied Piper of Hamelin when we reached Cheltenham. My maternal grandmother could recite the entire poem from memory and thanks to her frequent renditions I can still manage to recite most of the poem without prompting. Will hastily changed the subject to the more pressing matter of lunch and we decided to treat ourselves to lunch at Wetherspoons when we got to Chetenham.

After lunch Will took me to see his flat, I hadn't been inside since the day he moved in. To my surprise his room and his adjoining bathroom are neat and tidy. I sat on his bed I glanced around at the unaccustomed sense of order and I noticed a row of bottles of alcohol arranged in height order along the top of his bookcase. As my eye travelled along the line of bottles I noticed with some concern that all were less than half full, then I noticed the smallest bottle at the end of the row, it was Gaviscon! I couldn't help laughing. 

Will and I walked into the centre of Cheltenham to have a look at the Shops. He showed me his favourite book shop and we had a look at a slightly quirky clothes shop. He pointed out various garments on his wish list, but having already bought him a lava lamp I didn't grant any further wishes that day. His birthday and Christmas are almost upon us so I expect some of his wishes will come true in the near future. We visited Tiger, one of my favourite shops, we don't have one locally so I enjoyed browsing and by the time I reached the tills I had a full basket and I had ticked off a few more items on my Christmas shopping list. Then it was time for me to head home, alone with my thoughts and leave Will to his new found independence.

It's funny how fast you can wake up when you realise you've overslept.

I spent most of Friday getting ready to go out on a train on Saturday. So by Friday evening we had a massive picnic ready to take with us, my netbook was packed in my rucksack, my camera was charged and everything was ready for an early start. At least I thought everything was ready, but there was just one thing I had overlooked – Robbie! He was still awake when I went to bed but when the alarm clock went off at a stupidly early hour he was sound asleep next to me and he refused to wake up. I tried and tried but it was impossible, he didn’t wake up but when prodded he produced a selection of grunts and insults. In the end I gave up and let him sleep. When he woke up he was very cross with me. We were too late for the train we planned to catch but we made the best of the day and with a trip to Plymouth on an HST. I always enjoy the views as we pass the sea wall at Dawlish. It was a very exhausting day, we didn’t get home until almost 11pm and by then the roles were reversed, I was asleep on my feet but Robbie was wide awake!

Dangling Legs and Other Problems

Saturday dawned far too early for my liking, but after a lot of moaning and groaning on my part we were on the road and heading for the station. We travelled First Class to Birmingham on a 350; I wasn't impressed because it felt cramped and it looked shabby, but at least it was quiet and we had an uneventful journey arriving in Birmingham slightly late.

I hadn't travelled on a refurbished HST before so I was looking forward to it. I'd been underwhelmed by the livery but I'd heard good things about the refurbishment and was keen to see it for myself. The first problem we encountered was the platforming, it was rubbish, the signage was wrong, leaving us sprinting down the platform to find first class. The platform staff were neither use than ornament - certainly not ornament!

The train looked OK except for the horrible colour of the upholstery and the hideous curtains that looked as if they had been cut down from an old woman's crimpelene dress. The antimacassars looked good, very simple and tasteful, which is more than I can say for the carpet which was too 'busy' and not dark enough, it already looked dirty and shabby. The seats are fairly comfortable if you happen to be a giant, but it is impossible to use the table comfortably because the distance between the seat and the table is to great. I am a bit on the short side but not abnormally short for an adult, so I was annoyed to find that my feet didn't reach the floor when I sat down. The seats were adjustable but unfortunately it required more height than I possessed as your rear end had to be in the seat and your feet in contact with the floor to achieve the required thrusting motion. This was the first of many clues that it had been designed by a man!

Clue number two came when I visited the toilets. They are 'cosy' but I guess there is adequate space for the average contortionist to cope with the 'essentials'. It wasn't the space that bothered me as much as the poor design, the unpleasant smell and the dirty state of the facilities. The toilet tissue does not dispense correctly, it comes out in handfuls, but then it will not flush away. The sink is too low even for someone as short as me! It is not possible to see how the soap dispenser works, so you have to put your hand into the gap and feel around for the soap. This triggers the automatic tap and rewards you with wet cuffs. Then when you have wet hands you have to battle with a towel dispenser that dispenses small soggy strips of tissue, so you have to reach in and grab a few towels. For some reason the towel dispenser is above the sink so while you are doing battle with it the water from your wet hands runs down your arms and drips off your elbows! The final insult was the bin, the gap is too small to put the used paper towels in without pushing your clean fingers into the bin. I returned to my seat with wet cuffs, damp sleeves and soggy elbows, thankful that I had hand sanitizer in my handbag because I had no intention of using that sink again.

It was the bumpiest journey I have ever experienced and I didn't feel safe, even Robbie said it was a bad journey. I wanted to get off but Robbie reassured me that it would be OK.

We lost time at Cheltenham. I thought we had slipped into a parallel universe. The train stopped and the dispatcher came wandering down the stairs looking as if he had escaped from a home for the bewildered and was about ready to be dispatched himself. When he had plodded down the platform and remembered what he was there for we departed several minutes late. There was a really cute dispatcher at Bristol so that was some compensation.

Robbie had to sprint off the train at Bristol because nobody delivered the urns to the train so there had been no hot drinks available between Manchester and Bristol. Apparently the previous week there were no hot drinks available all the way from Manchester to Newquay! There had been a mix up with the reservations too, they had labelled up for the wrong train meaning that a whole first carriage was rendered unusable as the seats were labelled up for people on a different route!

As I was gazing out of the train window my eye fell on the paper notice Headed Manchester Picadilly - Newquay, I wondered why it was necessary to list the starting point, after all even the most 'challenged' traveller knows where they are when they start their journey!

We were delayed from Dawlish onward by an HST in front that was busy going nowhere. Robbie was getting seriously irritated about his timing being messed up, but it was nice to crawl along and enjoy the wonderful views. I couldn't believe that there were so many cranks scattered along the line just to take photos of an HST - what a waste of a Saturday!

We arrived at Plymouth a few minutes late and I begged Robbie to let us travel home on a Voyager, but he wouldn't hear of it. My verdict on the journey, a thumbs down to the refurbished HST and a huge thumbs down to the catering trolley. However there were highlights, the staff were all friendly and helpful and the views from the sea wall at Dawlish were as wonderful as ever.

We spent the day in Plymouth, then we set out on our return journey to Birmingham. My legs were OK just dangling for a while, but then they began to ache and by Taunton they were swollen and painful, so I had to rest them on a rucksack. We saw a kettle at Taunton, Oliver Cromwell, it looked amazing

The ride back was every bit as bumpy, I would much rather travel on a Voyager or a Pendolino, but it was a nice day out. Robbie says I am mad, apparently I don't know a good thing when I see it, he still thinks HST's are wonderful. He says we have to do the journey again soon to check that some of the problems have been put right (he is determined to make me like HST's), but he has promised to take me on a Pendolino next, so I am looking forward to that.