Not exactly a day but three hours.
The day started with a Great Western Fry, full english to most of us. Young apprentices man the kitchen and this may explain why, when the dish is described as with toast, there is butter on the plate for the toast but the toast has a fried egg on it so not able to be buttered.
I was early at Taunton station and while there the long distance Plymouth to Dundee train arrived.
The longest UK journey used to be Aberdeen to Penzance being over 710 miles. It now terminates at Plymouth reducing it to about 630 miles. The sleeper between London Euston and Fort William is the longest time-wise, taking over 12 hours but is a mere 520 miles, much shorter than the Aberdeen to Plymouth.
My train to PLY was a Cross Country (XC) train, comfortable, reasonably quiet and fairly good free snacks, although the bacon roll was very hot, tongue-burning hot.
I discovered that the windows of that train prevent reception of GPS signals, probably wi-fi too but the onboard wi-fi was fine. Google maps couldn't fix my position to anything better than a few miles and my speed app, which usually 'sees' over 20 satellites, could see none.
At PLY station GPS was fine so walked into town aiming for a particular pub. There's a long downhill park there, about 500yds and I walked down one side of it then was advised to turn right, but couldn't because the entire park is fenced off for construction work. So plan B, find somewhere to lunch. A Brass Monkey pub attracted me and it had order at the table facilities which I tried and failed to use so went to the bar for a pint of Cornish beer. I skipped the food options and looked into getting a bus back to the station.
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| this is half the dual carriageway and a quarter of the footbridge |
Plymouth really is geared to the car and not the pedestrian. Even the nearest bus stop is a 200yd walk half of which is a huge sloping bridge over a dual carriageway.
Once in the station luck was on my side as my return train was already at the platform 30min before departure, interesting rememberences along it's side.
Then a nice comfortable seat, tea and snacks before departure.
No problem with GPS on this Great Western (GW) train so I can tell you the entire journey back to TAU was at an average speed of 65mph including nearly 8 minutes at stations.
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| The hotel from the station |
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