Caboose

‘Twas the night after Christmas and all though Norfolk not a petrol station was stirring, not even the ones on major roads…

Left my Grandparents house this evening in the car, didn’t have too much fuel left but thought there wouldn’t be any problem filling it up. WRONG! Ended up in Attleborough after discovering that the services on the A11 (the main Norwich-London road) were all closed.

In the end I had to call Direct Line, they sent out a man with a gallon of petrol. That got me most of the way to Newmarket, where I found the first open petrol station on the road.

I know it was all down to laziness on my part and assuming that stuff would be open today and I was really embarassed at having to call out the breakdown guys. On the other hand, it’s only a bank holiday, it’s not like it’s Christmas Day or New Year’s day. It’s the kind of time when people are travelling.

After dropping off my bike at my Grandparents’ in Norfolk this weekend I had to make my way back to Cambridge by public transport. Even if you don’t share Mrs Thatcher’s hatred of sharing a vehicle with other people this tends to be an experience that just gradually grinds you down.

I got to the bus stop in Wroxham at 1630, five minutes before the bus was due to start its run outside Roys just up the road.

By five past five I was about to start walking back to the house when I saw the bus going past in the opposite direction. It then took twenty minutes to go a mile up the road and turn round. No apology from the driver, no explanation of why he was almost an hour late.

So I missed my train and had to hang around Norwich station for three quarters of an hour. The Anglia Railways service through to Cambridge was good though, the train was clean and on time. It was also mostly empty so I could stretch out and read (Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm).

In fact it was so quiet the guy sitting on the other side of the train seemed to feel quite happy to finish doing his homework (or whatever it was), pull out his packet of king-size Rizlas and sit producing one joint after another for the next ten minutes or so. He got off at Ely, he probably needed some chemical assistance with facing the flat, desolate horrors of The Fens.

My flight back from Edinburgh last night was delayed a bit, you soon run out of things to do in the departure lounge unless you want to drink yourself unconscious at Wetherspoon’s.

As I was walking out to the plane I noticed an amazing fan of light in the sky to the north, which I worked out must have been the lights from The Bridge.

Approaching Stansted I spent a while trying to clean the blurry bottom half of my window before I realised that the blurriness was due to the jet exhaust outside. Even though I now find flying very tedious there’s still something special about approaching your destination, especially at night.

The delay to my flight meant that I arrived at Stansted just as the Cambridge bus was leaving, so I had to hang around for an hour. Pretty much everything was closed, including all the checkin desks. The only signs of life in most of the terminal building were the car hire desks and the poor souls trying to sleep on the deliberately uncomfortable seats.

We had a family gathering at the weekend, to celebrate Grandpa’s 80th birthday. I flew up on Saturday morning (the 0410 bus from Cambridge [shudder]) and returned last night.

I took a few photos:

Grandpa is in the foreground on the right, with Granny to his left and my cousin Kirsten standing behind them.
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I spent last weekend in the Pyrenees with a couple of friends and of course my digital camera.

We flew to Barcelona, hired a car and drove north to the town of Vielha, right up in the mountains. The view definitely makes a nice change from the tedious flatness of eastern England.

We spent Saturday and Sunday walking in the valleys above Arties. It’s great walking all day knowing that at the end of the day you can have a nice hot shower, a cool beer and a great meal back at your hotel.
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