Sketchy Scenarios

London Underground, Bedfordshire Overground: Taunton - Bottesford After my first big Great Western Railway adventure to Bristol and Severn Beach, it was only the very next day that I was out on another. Back out of Paddington again, on a slightly quieter train than yesterday's, straight through Bath Spa and Bristol Temple Meads again, which felt strange, before my first new stop of the day at Taunton. I actually stayed on the train to Exeter St David's, where I changed for a rather bizarre branch line. That's because this line only runs on Summer Sundays, and rather infrequently as such, running to a place called Okehampton, with a tiny station in between with the strange name of Sampford Courtenay. Okehampton is the place to come for a heritage railway line, and provides the perfect place to come in on a GWR service and change directly for a much older train. The fact it calls at a heritage railway line station means that there's a lot of brilliant railway related thin...

Britain's Smallest Train: Dunton Green - Filton Abbey Wood The Darent Valley Path is about a 19 mile signposted walk that starts at the Dartford Creek Barrier, and begins along the River Darent to Dartford, of which I had walked before as part of one of my favourite walks by the Littlebrook Power Station. This pathway continues all the way until it finishes at Sevenoaks, and this last couple of miles or so is what I started to walk along on this trip out of London to tick off a small amount of new stations, starting at Dunton Green, the first stop outside of the oyster zone. I came away from the Darent Valley Path to visit the Sevenoaks Wildlife Reserve, a rather nice spot by a lake here, which I thought at first was the source of the River Darent, but it's actually more closer to Westerham, despite the pathway ending at Sevenoaks. Using Sevenoaks Station for the first time, I went one stop on a Thameslink train which starts here, to get off at the interesting named station of ...

Urban Exploring: Kemsley - Henley-on-Thames I hadn't spent a whole lot of time travelling to new stations at this point, as I was very much focused on riding on all of the London bus routes. However, because I had accomplished this now, I could focus a lot more on these trips. Therefore, I went to go and do one in Kent on Southeastern, but I should mention that I've done this trip before. Back in 2010, when I was rather young, a family member had gone to stay on the Isle of Sheppey near Sheerness in a caravan site, and me and some of my family decided to go down and stay with her for a night. I hardly remember that trip at all because it was so long ago when I was rather young, so I decided to check out this branch line out to Sheerness, coming off of Sittingbourne, again. I didn't realise until I found that I still had them old 2010 train tickets to Sheerness in my drawer at home that I had coincidentally gone on the exact same day 8 years later on the 1st of September. Tw...