Sue was feeling a little more pissed off than usual so I asked if there was anywhere or anything that she wanted to do.
“It’s too far to go where I want!” she exclaimed. I knew where she meant. The seaside.
Now, living in Birmingham has a certain disadvantage when wanting to visit the sea. Rhyl, Weston and Aberystwyth are the nearest and all over a hundred miles away – a two hundred mile round trip.
Sod driving, I thought, What about the train.
I checked on Trainline and discovered that we could travel from Birmingham New Street to Borth (just north of Aberystwyth) for around thirty five quid all in. I booked tickets for the forthcoming Tuesday.
Leaving the dogs at home would have been a problem but one of our daughters agreed to nip and and exercise the hounds.
On the allotted day, we caught the bus into Brum in plenty of time for the 09:22 to Borth. We had split tickets meaning that we had two tickets each for the same train journey. We would have to change, for real, at Shrewsbury.
Our Transport for Wales train arrived and departed on time, travelling through Wolverhampton and Telford pulling into Shrewsbury with less than ten minutes to swap platforms – which we did with time to spare.
At just after mid-day, we were dropped off at Borth station just minutes from the sea front – and the sun was shining.
We had an Adventure Lab series based on Borth with the first location at the station, followed by one at the end of Station Road on the front.
We took a leisurely stroll along the prom-prom-prom even though there was no brass band to play.
We found all the answers to our AdLab by the time we reached the end of the won except for one at the war memorial which happened to be at the top of a headland some sixty five metres above the sea.
Before tackling the heady heights, we called into The Sands restaurant for some fortifying rations. My fish and chips (traditional seaside faire) was most excellent. Sue spoke highly of her ploughman’s.
Looking up to the memorial from our dining table, Sue decided that I could have all the glory whilst she would be more than content to sit in the sun watching the sea and the people going by.
I followed a small portion of the Coast Path arriving at the top of the hill and completing the AdLab. I had the bonus of a real, old skool, cache that was hidden just down the other side.
After descending and locating Sue, we took an even more leisurely stroll back towards the station.
Borth is fortunate to have a number of excellent murals painted on various structures including The Great Wave on someones house.
Back at the road leading to the station, and with time on our hands, it was decided that I could run down to the golf course to bag another cache. Actually run is a bit strong, and physically impossible, but a brisk walk could be managed. Again Sue would keep eye on the waves.
At the golf course, at the opposite end of the town to the war memorial, I was poking around looking for the cache when someone, obviously connected with said sports establishment, started asking me stuff about golf. All I know about golf is that it’s a waste of a good walk but I blagged my way through the conversation. Apparently, the course was running well ?
After reuniting with Sue, we purchased some provisions for the return journey before making our way to the station.
The train arrived on time and we were soon nipping through the welsh countryside.
Stopping at Machynlleth, where the line from North Wales joins, I snapped a photo of the station and sent it to a friend who is due to retire shortly. He promptly replied saying that in a few weeks that could be him on the train.
We continued across the border and were soon joined by the long awaited rain on our approach to Shrewsbury. The rain was either unexpected or the wrong sort as our train was delayed.
We had no need to change on the return as the train was going all the way to Birmingham International.
I had a flash of inspiration. Instead of alighting at New Street, we could continue to International then get a bus from there to the bottom of our road. My bus pass would allow me to travel between the two Birmingham stations but for Sue, I bought a £2.40 ticket, online.
Shortly after this masterplan was hatched, the Trainline tracker informed me that the portion of the journey from New Street had been cancelled. Bugger !
Eventually, some thirty nine minutes later than planned, we pulled into New Street and had to content ourselves with the 94 bus ti get us home.
The next day, I had a couple of emails in my inbox.
One was for our delayed return from Borth offering us a refund of twenty five percent by contacting Transport for Wales.
The other email was for Sue’s cancelled £2.40 ticket. This was done directly through Trainline as the ticket was never used.
Thirty nine minutes wasn’t really a hardship but it did make our £37 trip and even better £29 trip to the seaside.
