Category: Travel

Return Journey

Kings Cross to Peterborough3.45 pm, Kings Cross to Peterborough; Once you’ve gone through the tunnels north of Kings Cross, it’s amazing how soon you find yourself travelling through open country, starting with the rolling, wooded Chiltern Hills. Somewhere beneath the layer of glacial debris which was plastered over the landscape north of London during the last advance of the ice there are chalk downs.

For a short while we follow the course of the River Great Ouse, a delightful stretch of the river that would make a suitable setting for The Wind in the Willows then, after Huntingdon, we start crossing flat fenland which stretches out for miles, as flat as a chessboard.

Peterborough to the Trent

The scribbled birches at the top of the next page of my sketchbook represent the brief view we get of Holme Fen national nature reserve (and before it, further from the railway, Woodwalton Fen) as we approach Peterborough.

As the light fades the colour seeps out of the landscape and I carry on in pen only until we cross the Trent at Newark and I decide that drawing is no longer possible.

How to be a Hit

You TubeThen I can indulge in the other pleasure of a train journey; reading something from the station bookstall. St Pancras does better than most because as you walk in and head towards the Eurostar terminus there’s a Hatchard’s on your left, built into the Victorian brick arches. However, I had my eyes on a magazine that I’d spotted earlier in W H Smith’s, How to be a Hit on You Tube; ‘Become rich and famous doing something you love.’

Don’t laugh, that could be me once I’ve read it, but at least I’ve managed one out of those three so far.

Misleading Cases

red case

‘We don’t need colour!’ says Barbara, as I hurry to complete my thumbnail sketches.

‘We need to remember which is which.’ I suggest but really it’s just the pleasure of slapping on colour that makes me go a little over the top with my scribbled notes.

blue case

We’ve got a trip coming up and we’re determined to travel light but, you know how it is, you get to the store and, out of context, in different surroundings, sizes can look different. On one occasion we spotted a rucksack that looked just the right in-between size we’d always been looking for and came back to discover that it was exactly the same size, in litres capacity, as the one we had at home.

I’ve been drawing exclusively natural history recently and putting a lot of effort into completing a page a day, so these quick sketches are a rare example of offhand note-taking.

Result; we went for two ‘cabin size’ 1.56 kg cases. Should be easier to carry, or pull along behind us (they have wheels) than one large case and they’re designed to suit the hand luggage requirements of all airlines, even the budget ones that we’re most likely to use, although these can change so you’d always have to check before travelling.

When we were travelling to France a couple of years ago, my sister-in-law Michelle inadvertently exceeded the limit when she popped in a blockbuster novel in the front pocket of her bag at the last minute! Luckily Barbara had some spare capacity.