LEJOG Blog

We are now safely at home in Prittlewell after the longest train ride of our lives. This was not without incident.

We left Thurso at 13.06 and succeeded in getting a tandem on a Scotrail train. The guard was clearly a bit confused by the number of sets of bars, but the bike fitted in the available space and he made no further comment. We were accompanied for some of the ride by a down-and-out who made a minor nuisance of himself from time to time, but we sat, ate food and admired scenery, on several occasions recognising roads down which we had ridden.

When we arrived in Inverness we had some four hours before our train left for London, or in Chris's case, Crewe (same train). We were just speculating about what to do when a smartly-dressed chap came and introduced himself with a "Hello! Remember me?" It was a passer-by who had offered some sympathy at the moment we had discovered the problem with the Rohloff hub, this time on his way home from work. He had to rush for the Dingwall train.

I had never been to Inverness before, my previous encounters merely to bypass the city via the Kessock bridge. It is a very fine place with a superb river rushing through. We photographed the castle and then found a pub for dinner.

The dinner was pretty good, but again the pub suffered from a lack of real ale. Chris and I opted for Guinness. It appears that there are now two Guinness pumps available - cold and 0° Kelvin. We had the cold version, and I was tempted to ask the barmaid to put the second pint in the microwave for 30 seconds.

We had locked the bikes very close to a BBC outside broadcast bus and had taken a table by the window so that we could keep an eye on them. Suddenly I was surprised to look up idly from the woman on the television in the corner of the bar to the woman on the top of the bus - it was one and the same person doing one and the same thing!

We returned to the station, found our train, and after a little more hanging about, we put the bikes in the guard's van where they were accompanied by polystyrene boxes of live sea food piled high and destined for London. The train set off on time.

The air conditioning on the train from Thurso left the carriage much too hot, but I found myself hunting for extra layers before the journey from Inverness was very old. It was evident that the train crew were also concerned and they made a number of futile attempts to adjust the temperature. It was then that they hit upon a splendid idea, of which any self-respecting fettler would be proud: they came into our carriage armed with a glass filled with ice from the bar, tore a grille off the wall, found the thermostat and stood it in the glass of ice. The air conditioning was fooled and within minutes the carriage was lovely and warm - that is until some moaning minnie said it was too hot and would they turn the heat down please. This they did by the simple expedient of removing the thermostat from the glass.

The ride across London was uneventful, we boarded the train at Liverpool Street and snoozed most of the way to Southend. Denis was there with Morphy to meet us, and the wagging and squeaking commenced. We were home.