Hethersett to Eastbourne. Ok I know that if you are jetting off to Europe you wouldn't usually go via Eastbourne but we aren't used to doing things the easy way and the first part of our journey involves visiting our son and future daughter in law who are coming to Spain with us for the first week.
A friend picked us up from home really early which gave us time to have coffee on Wymondham Station before getting the train to Cambridge.
Wymondham Station used to be one of the prettiest in the whole country. It's still pretty nice but a touch of shabbiness has crept in. It still has a bistro which many years ago was run by a gentleman named David Turner. One day we decided to have our piano tuned and guess who turned up to do it - yes David Turner. Obviously a man of many talents.
In David's time, the station won many awards and quite rightly so. It was a haven of floral abundance. A few years ago we were looking round Wymondham Abbey and one of the guides started chatting to us. David Turner had aged as I suppose we all had but his voice was still very recognisable
There seem to be a few things wrong with Wymondham Station. It needs a lick of paint. It needs flowers. It had electronic announcement boards that didn't work and worst of all to get to platform two you have to go over a bridge which means humping our heavy suitcase up and down about 50 steps. There is no other way of getting across.
We stuffed everything for our almost four week journey into one suitcase because good old Easyjet charge you extra for everything - cases, seat reservations, food, having a moustache. Ok I made the last one up but you get the idea and I hope they're not reading this or you may find yourself paying extra for face fuzz.
The train to Cambridge was continuing to Stansted Airport and there's some relevance in that remark. These are new modern trains. They aren't very big and they no longer have luggage racks. I think you are expected to store heavy luggage under your seat which can be problematic when trying to get it out on a full train. I don't so much walk with a case as stagger.
So we staggered off at Cambridge and then had another Wymondham like experience as we faced more steps to get from platform four to platform seven. I must have looked in a bad way because a lady said: "can I help you with your case sir?"
She was well meaning and my heart was racing I have to admit. But I politely declined the offer on the grounds that she didn't look much younger than me and was about half my size.
We made the train connection comfortably and found ourselves on a Thameslink train to Brighton calling at virtually every station known to mankind. We went as far as East Croydon where we had to change again.
There was plenty of space on this train and it's a pleasant journey because it goes right into the heart of London and then out again. I lost track of time as I got stuck into writing this travelogue and an hour passed as if it was only five minutes and before we knew it we were in East Croydon and onto a train where the first stop was Gatwick Airport and guess what ? There were no luggage ràcks. Obviously it's a deliberate move not to provide luggage racks on the trains that need them the most i.e those going to airports. This train had a very small 12 seater first class section into which we slumped.
Oh I forgot to mention that we have first class Euro pass tickets. Not because we had paid extra but because it was a special offer of a month's ticket to travel Europe in first class. On the Eastbourne train there seemed to be little or no difference between second and first class.
I always remember the day when I worked for an emergency media company and travelled first class to somewhere down south - the exact location I cannot recall. Anyway another member of staff complained that I had travelled first class on company's money.
She kept quiet when she was told the cost of going first class was less than going second class. So I was on effect saving the company money.
I have always shopped around for rail tickets and still do. Once I needed to go to London and found it cheaper to buy a ticket to Portsmouth via London and just not do the London to Portsmouth bit. I have always found this rather ludicrous but even the train companies tell you to split journeys to get better deals.
We once wanted to go from Norwich to Liverpool which is a direct journey with no changes. Rather than get a ticket from Norwich to Liverpool, we got two. The first was Norwich to Nottingham and the second Nottingham to Liverpool. The train remained the same and so we just stayed on in our seats at Nottingham, but it saved us £20. Ridiculous.
And of course on the way to Eastbourne not everything went exactly smoothly as we couldn't open our tickets electronically. Thankfully we had an understanding conductor who accepted our explanation but I would still much prefer to have paper tickets. There's just too much that can go wrong with electronics like the phone running out of juice, not being able to get online and much more. And I had the horrible thought. If the tickets won't open on the UK what chance do we have of them opening in Spain and Portugal? But what's a holiday without oodles of stress? Answer - a holiday.
Got to Eastbourne in reasonable time and hurtled down towards the end of day one. Lugged the cases on the number one bus to Old Town and got in in time to watch Tipping Point (don't ask).
I see that NatWest Bank is now following Barclays lead and closing in Wymondham - another serious erosion of services as communities continue to grow and expand. I sometimes wonder where this will all end. Our town centres will become ghost towns with no heart. That's just a random thought to finish with.