As a slightly, but only just, early birthday pressie to myself, I had booked a trip on a steam train to the city of York.
The jaunt was to kick off from Coleshill Parkway with our excursion leaving at 08:00.
We were up in plenty of time and arrived at the station car park around a quarter to and made our way to platform two to stand in a drizzle unto Clun Castle pulled into view at the head of The Christmas White Rose.
The service was run by Vintage Trains with whom we have travelled a number of times before. There were stewards at the station who directed us to the current place to stand so that we could get into the right coach as quickly as possible.
The train left on time and we were soon speeding along at up to seventy miles an hour.
We had to stop at Nuneaton, Leicester and East Midlands Parkway, picking up a few extra passengers en route.
There are numerous classes of travel (more than the usual first and third) but we were in the cheap seats (if £99 each can be called cheap – I suppose it’s all relative). We were ensconced at a table of four which we had to ourselves until the final pickup.
Our table buddies were a bit quiet on the way out but after a few beers in York were a lot more vocal on the return.
We pulled into York at around 12:15 and after alighting, grabbed an Adventure Lab at the station before moving outside.
Another couple on the city walls upped the numbers and a further adventure in the Museum Gardens further pushed up our total.
Another, isolated, location answered and it was time to adjourn for a spot of lunch.
Our usual choice when in the city is The House of the Trembling Madness and today was no exception.
We both plumbed for the stew of the day, the jerk chicken for Sue and a vegan sausage for yours truly.
To wash it all down we went for No.6 and No.8 from the extensive drinks menu.
Fully fuelled, we continued to look for more AdLabs before, not surprisingly, finding the Stonegate Teddy Bear Shop where Sue HAD to buy a bear (and a little Highland Coo).
With only four hours allocated to York, it was soon time to return to the station where we did an old skool virtual cache. We refreshed our provisions before boarding the train ready to return to Coleshill.
Our table buds had visited a few of York’s hostelries and as mentioned earlier, were a bit more vocal so we had a few chats about, mainly trains and geocaching.
We continued our journey in the dark, with Andy and Christopher alighting at East Midlands Parkway, leaving us with a four seater table just for the two of us.
The remainder the journey was uneventful, arriving back where we’d started a tad before nine to be greeted with frosted windows which required scraping before we could get home.
Update
Just been trawling around Facebook and found that someone had posted a photo of our train going through Chesterfield. I’ve arrowed our window.
Thanks to Nick Rhodes for the pic.
