National Rail Stations: Taunton - Bottesford

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 things to buy in the shop at the station as well as lovely old green heritage signs which loudly presents that you are at Okehampton. The GWR service stayed here for a while, giving me the perfect opportunity to look around, before heading back down to Exeter St David's. Things are looking up for this line as a full timetabled service, no longer Summer Sundays only, is due to commence later on this year. However, this has also resulted in the complete closure of Sampford Courtenay Station. Back at Exeter St David's, it was now time to tackle another line that ran down to Exmouth. I first got off the train at Exton though, another station that starts with Ex, considering that there's a river down here with the same name. That river I can actually see from the station, a little request stop which has amazing views across the waterfront. My intention for getting off here was to take a short walk to another request stop on the line called Lympstone Commando. This station used to be a unique scenario where the only people who were allowed to use the station were people who had business with the military camp that is situated right outside the premises of the station. However, a new pathway had been built, allowing any members of the public to access the station on foot, so of course I had to try it out. Weirdly though, there was still old signs on the platform that suggested that only people involved with the camp were allowed to get off. Therefore, it felt kind of odd to be there as there was nobody else, and even more odd to consider that there was extraordinary long bench in the waiting shelter on the single platform. Requesting the train, I continued to the end of the line at Exmouth, a proper seaside town, with a sandy beach, and I didn't hesitate to jump in the sea, even though I had no spare set of clothes, towel or trunks. It was a fun experience though to come all the way down to Devon for the first time, and my train back out from Exmouth, heading for home, was my very first Pacer train. A weird anomaly in rolling stock on the National Rail network as a Pacer train is an old Leyland bus, which, when not needed anymore, was fitted with bogies so that they could run as a train. A 'temporary solution' to a shortage of trains, they actually stuck about for years longer than they should have, but have actually finally be replaced. They're renowned for being not the most comfortable trains to travel on, and are terrible for step free users, but it is odd to see only one inward opening door at the front of a carriage, as that would have been where the bus entry was. I was happy that I finally got the opportunity to travel on one, as I thought I may not get to before they got replaced.

The only existence of Ex-London Underground trains running on the National Rail network was the 1938 stock on the Isle of Wight. However, there was now a new ex tube train that had been refurbished to run as part of the LNWR franchise on the Marston Vale Line. These trains were the D78 stock, 40 years newer than the Isle of Wight stock, and used to run on the District Line up until 2 years prior. I was rather excited to try out these trains as I had actually been out on the very last journey these trains made on the District Line, and I didn't think I would ever get another opportunity to do that. It was good to see that one carriage had kept the same style of the interior, coincidentally being green like the colour of the District Line, with the seats being in the same place, but with a new moquette. However, the other carriage didn't, so it was rather strange to see tables and a toilet on a London Underground train. The single door, unique for a tube train at the time, was still a thing, but now had open and close door buttons. Unfortunately, these seemed to be very clunky and didn't open smoothly at all. Saying this, the new announcements also seemed to be rather statically and muffled, and the train sounded much quieter than it used to be, so it felt rather different than what they used to be like. It was fun to be travelling on the Martson Vale Line, getting out at some of the stations along the way to see what's around. The posters on the train actually gave information of what to do at the stops on the line, as well as general information about the upcycling of these trains from their previous life on the underground. All the stops on this line seemed to be rather small in the middle of cute little villages like Lidlington, my first explore of the day, which had a nice mural on the platform. There was a brilliant viewpoint to the south of the village with some great views, and I made sure to sit on a picnic table and eat some Pringles. Millbrook was my next stop, where I took a walk up to the next stop of Stewartby through a rather nice nature reserve area that's relatively close to the railway line. Stewartby seemed to have a massive abandoned brickworks factory that was unbelievably huge and the train passes right through the middle of the grounds, so it was so weird to see just how many buildings made up this area. The end of the line is Bedford, which seemed like a slightly underloved town, which also had some abandoned buildings around, as well as an old Poundworld sign, despite that they have now deceased as a business. I walked back to the penultimate stop on the line called Bedford St John's, to start making my way back down the line, but not before getting off one final stop of the day called Ridgmont. There didn't seem to be a whole lot around the station, but it was interesting to explore as it had a visitor centre beside the platform with a cafe attached. The old ticket office was accessible and had a whole bunch of old railway paraphernalia, which was really cool to look around and explore. However, I didn't get a chance to look around the gift shop in the cafe as they were closing up for the night, so I had to spend the majority of the rest of my time waiting on the platform for the hourly service. That was slightly disappointing, and I wished I jumped out here on the way up to Bedford, rather than the way back. When the train was scheduled to arrive, the level crossing barriers went down, but the train didn't show up. The dot matrix screen on the platform slowly ticked by, the minute delay increasing every 60 seconds, until suddenly, it just disappeared from the screen. I was really confused what happened because the train didn't come through and the barriers were still down, so how on earth did it disappear from the screen. Even staff, when I used the help point for information, told me that the next train was in an hour's time, and I really didn't want to have waste more time waiting on a desolate platform with nothing to do. Even a man who was waiting for the barriers with his bike to go up, gave up, and just climbed over and crossed the tracks. Eventually, the train actually came into the platform, and speaking to somebody on board, apparently it just got held for a long time for whatever reason. Weirdly though, nearly all of the lights were off on the train, and the information screens were having issues too, so it was kind of a little bit creepy. Back into Bletchley, where I started earlier, even my train back into London was a little delayed. I hate to say that I was a little disappointed with the refurbished underground trains, as I was really hoping I'd like them, and they didn't just feel like they were running smoothly at all. It'll be good to see how these trains fair on the Isle of Wight as they are scheduled to replace the older 1938 trains very soon, as well as somewhere in Wales. Despite being slightly disappointed with the trains and my shortened time at Ridgmont, I was still happy to have come out here and explore the other places along the Marston Vale Line.

A trip to try and get into an abandoned building, followed by the ending of London Loop allowed me to tick off Chertsey and Purfleet Stations respectively. My next big adventure though on the trains first took me out of London Marylebone on a Chiltern Railways service to Bicester Village, which features a large shopping outlet area with many expensive jewellery and clothing shops where I had a look around. Looking at old maps, you never used to be able to get a Chiltern service to here, and I think this used to be just a branch line for First Great Western services from Oxford to a station called Bicester Town with one stop in between called Islip. However, Chiltern had taken over and recently introduced this service from London with the new Bicester Village and Oxford Parkway Stations, providing two alternative ways to get to Oxford from London. I was very excited to come to Oxford as this was one of those cities I wanted to explore for the longest time, but I found it rather strange that a major station like this still had a permit to travel machine on the platform, albeit not working. My first port of call on my city tour was the castle, with its mound attached, but I found out that you had to pay to go up, which I didn't bother to do. I got some McDonald's that I didn't eat in the restaurant, and rather took it round to eat whilst sitting beside the River Thames, which passes through here. I imagine that it would have been nice to see more of the city, but because the River Thames comes here, and I have a personal association with it by living in London, I wanted to take a walk alongside it. That's exactly what I did until I reached where the Sheepwash Channel met the Thames, and it was really pleasant. Walking underneath the railway line, I came across an old swing bridge over the river that trains would have used, and you could still see an old lever for it, which was really cool. Back at the station, I was now on a rather busy GWR service that took me to Hanborough, where I went on a lovely walk across the countryside to the next station along the line. This station was Combe and was completely strange as it was kind of in the middle of nowhere, the platform was tiny so would only fit one carriage despite that services were multiple carriages long and came all the way out of London Paddington, and also only got two trains a day on a Monday - Friday only; one in the morning towards London, and one in the evening away. I was in time for the evening service so I waited on the completely desolate platform for a 9 carriage train, only being able to get on the very first. Finstock, the next station on the line, was very similar in comparison to Combe, with the same two trains stopping at these stations only. However, I messed up here with the ticket I bought as I stayed on the train towards Worcester. That's because the ticket I had for the day was a London - Worcester Off Peak Return, which you're allowed to use to break your journey, of which I had done at Bicester Village, Oxford and Hanborough, but because I hadn't reached my final destination of Worcester during the off peak period, I was actually on a train that came out of London during peak time, so my ticket was invalid. If I stayed on my original train and didn't get off to tick off Combe and Finstock, I wouldn't have to pay the excess fare to bump my ticket up to a peak one. This was fine though however, because I would have always had to pay more to tick off Combe and Finstock anyways, due to the nature of their trains only running during the peak, so it was an accidental mistake on my behalf. Once I finally reached Worcester though, my train was held at Foregate Street for long enough to check out the Victorian waiting room, which looked pretty cool, before jumping back on to go one stop more around to Worcester Shrub Hill. Seeing as I had now only reached my furthest destination of the day well into the peak period, I couldn't spend too long there before having to head back into London. I had enough time though to go and check out the racecourse, because of course I would, and a brilliant railway bridge over the river. The line between Oxford and Worcester, known as the Cotswolds & Malverns Line, is rather strange as, for a major main line railway, a lot of it is single track, with Combe and Finstock distinctively having only one platform, so if a train is delayed coming one way, it can cause a delay for a returning train. My London bound train was on time though, and was actually really enjoyable as bizarrely, I was lucky enough to get the carriage all to myself for the 3 hour journey back to London Paddington. That was a brilliant day on the railways, starting at one London terminus and returning via enough, seeing a whole new city like one as infamous as Oxford and using a strange small station like Combe.

As it was the summer, it would be rude to not go and visit some new seaside towns, and take advantage of the longer days to go on large trips out of London. That's exactly what I did as I made my way to London Bridge, coming off of a Great Northern service at Moorgate, which I believe to be my very last Class 313 journey, the oldest trains on the National Rail network if you ignore the obvious 80+ year old Isle of Wight tube stock. Whilst waiting at London Bridge for my Southeastern train, the train in front pulled in and weirdly still had a Network South East logo on the front, so this train, despite the ceasement of NSE in 1994, was still rocking with a part of its old company branding. I got a fast train to my destination of today, passing through Tonbridge and Tunbridge Wells, which I had previously explored on another adventure, so that means on the way home, I had to make sure to pick up an all stations service. I eventually got to Hastings, a brilliant historical seaside town, which I spent the whole day exploring and falling in love with. Leaving the station, there seemed to be some run down looking buildings, but when I got down to the beach, it was rather beautiful and of course I had to go out on the pier, even though it felt slightly cold despite it being the middle of summer. Walking across the shingle beach, there was a lot of fishing boats moored up on shore, and strangely, what felt like hundreds of dead crabs and fishes, lying across the stones, probably from the fishing nets. There was a miniature railway line running to the north of the beach, behind what looked like old wharfs, but I don't think it was running. I almost went to where I wanted to go next, but got distracted with a side street that looked kind of interesting, and I'm glad that I went down there as it led to another beach hiding underneath an amazing cliff edge, which was an amazing spot, and I definitely took the opportunity to dip my feet into the sea. Returning to where I originally wanted to go, it was time to ascend East Hill, containing an incline lift, which technically was a railway that runs at an angle, so you don't have to walk up. I've known that a few seaside towns to have one of these so called funicular railways, but had never an opportunity to ride one, so I tried it out, costing only £1, to find the top of the hill to have amazing coastal views on top of the cliffs I saw from the beach, and an ice cream van, which looked so out of place for some reason. Back down at ground level, I made my way around to the appropriately named George Street, which was one of those beautiful quaint, narrow roads lined with pubs and cute shops, with one of them having an old London Underground roundel in their window, which I of course found interesting. Hastings actually has a second funicular railway that ascends West Hill, but unfortunately this one was currently closed, and I would have liked to do this one too as it actually went through a small tunnel in the cliff face, which would have been interesting. I still ascended West Hill on foot, yet again, taking in the breathtaking coastal views, relaxing by the cafe on top, and looking across to the ruins of Hastings Castle. I found this place to be really interesting, especially with its historical notice of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the funicular railways, amazing views from the hills, and it being a beautiful seaside town, and I was really happy that I finally got the chance to explore here. I made sure to jump on an all stations stopper train on the return to London, however, the driver announced that we would not be stopping at Hildenborough, despite our scheduled arrival, due to an incident. I didn't think it would be much of an issue if I skipped Hildenborough because I thought I'd get another opportunity on another trip, but the closer we got to the station, the driver announced that we would indeed be stopping, so I got to tick it off after all. 

Southend was a popular place for me and my family when I was younger, and I frequently went on seaside trips there on C2C services. However, I had never been right out to the end of the line of C2C, with the last three stations beyond Southend Central called Southend East, Thorpe Bay and Shoeburyness, which allowed me to completely tick off all C2C stations. The train company names almost seems to be referencing the fact that their services really does travel from seaside stations to seaside stations, and Shoeburyness was no different. This looked to be a rather peaceful place beside the sea, right at the end of the Thames Estuary, and although the tide was out, the beach looked rather pretty and it was great to go down to it to have a look. Although the line ends here, the railway actually continues as part of military only track which does enter MOD land that lies north of the town, but I have no idea when the last time this was used. It was actually my friend's birthday, and he wanted to spend it at Southend for the day, so that's where we headed next, but if course I forced him down to Shoeburyness first just to tick off them stations. Southend-on-Sea, what is soon to become the newest city in the country, and although technically still is the River Thames, is always a pretty good place to go to, and although there's many attractions like Adventure Island or the actual beach, my favourite has to be the pier, the largest in the country, with a railway that runs alongside it the entire way. The reason why it's the longest is because, considering that the Thames is tidal here, it can go rather far out, so the pier had to be built over a mile long to allow boats to access it even if the tide was out. However, when built, they were unsure whether people would want to use it as they would have to walk for over a mile to land, so that's why the railway was built, and it is rather fun to travel on as it's rather rattly and offers great views. We did go relax on the beach too, and yet again, like Exmouth, I did go right into the water despite not having trunks or a towel, and whilst sitting there drying off, I came up with another seaside trip coming up soon. It's always fun to travel to Southend, but I wasn't expecting to be back there so soon, only another month later. That's because there was a plan to revisit the Isle of Wight and stay over there a night, but that idea got blown out. Some of my family decided on the night I was going to go to the Isle of Wight, they were going to spend the night at Southend, so I decided instead to go and surprise them there. Therefore, this gave me the opportunity to travel to Southend Victoria for the first time, on Greater Anglia, a station slightly north of the town, which allows a longer walk down the High Street to the beach, and also allowed me to travel through Southend Airport Station, one of London's six airports, despite not being in London. I've always quite enjoyed travelling on Greater Anglia's branch lines, and if I did the Southminster line in the summer back at the start of this year, I probably would have squeezed in the Southend Victoria line on that day for an evening chill time on the beach, seeing as both lines split away from Wickford Station.

It was time for the Great Western Railway adventure that would be even larger than my previous Bristol and Devon ones that I planned whilst sitting on Southend Beach only a week before. It was really early in the morning when I got on a service at Paddington at 8AM, the same train I caught previously to Exeter St David's, and continued to stay on for an entire 6 hour journey, I believe only coming second to my overnight Glasgow journey in terms of journey time, all the way down to Cornwall for the first time. The journey was rather fun, providing some amazing views near to Dawlish as the train runs right alongside the coast, and passing over the Tamar Bridge, an infamous structure designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel that seperates the counties of Devon and Cornwall, and it provided me with enough time to come up with an overall plan on how to do all of the London night bus routes as this was at the time I came up with the idea to do them all. I jumped off the penultimate stop on the line at St Erth, very far down at the edge of the country, spotting one of them High Speed Trains with the new electric sliding doors, and noticing how there was still semaphore signals still in operation down here. There's a small branch lines that comes off of St Erth here that runs every half an hour to St Ives, and there's a sign on their bay platform that suggests that they can not hold the train for people to make the connection off of a delayed main line train as the timing on this branch is tight enough as it is. Therefore, Lelant Saltings Station on the line hardly gets any trains stopping as, if every train did this, the running time may be too long and they may not be able to run a half hourly service, and Lelant Station is a request stop, which may help them run this service at the same frequency if some end up skipping. On the approach to St Ives through Carbis Bay, they're some beautiful views across the coast, and the beach, which you can get to almost immediately upon leaving St Ives Station, doesn't look like a British beach at all as there's actual yellow sand, not full of stones like beaches on the South Coast, and the water is unbelievable blue. It's a beautiful seaside destination though and I did spend the majority of my day relaxing on the beach, going into the sea with actual trunks and a towel this time, and climbing the rocks to the side that lay underneath the railway line, providing some great views of the train shuttling up and down to St Erth. Even having a look around the town I found to be rather pretty and it was definitely worth the 6 hour journey down here to experience this place. Unfortunately, at some point, I did have to leave, on the very last train of the day from St Ives, which meant that they no longer had to worry about the running time, so was one of the only trains of the day to stop at Lelant Saltings. The train doesn't actually terminate at St Erth, so doesn't use the bay platform, instead using the London bound platform, before continuing to the last stop on the main line my earlier train was destined for. Before leaving the St Ives branch though, the train driver passes a token to the man in a signal box. Whatever train has this token has full access to this branch line, and no other train is allowed to travel down there, but considering this was the last train of the day, they had to pass this token back to the signalmen. This train continued to Penzance, the very last station, and is actually the southernmost station in the entire country. A bus outside of the station was going to Land's End, an infamous location where people can start the ultimate journey across the country to John O' Groats, which would be brilliant to visit, but I couldn't stay long as I had one last train to catch. I did get some time to explore Penzance however, which I described as feeling like the edge of the world as it was really quiet and so many shops were closed for the night. It was funny that I thought that because as soon as I did, I came across 'The Edge Of The World Bookshop'. I grabbed some snacks in a Tesco which was still open, as I knew I would need some for this next journey, as I made my way back to the station. It was time to catch the Night Riviera, the other sleeper train in the country apart from the Caledonian Sleeper that runs from here right into London Paddington. It's safe to say that I liked this one immediately more than the Caledonian Sleeper as they actually had plug sockets to charge your phone overnight, which I needed, as I yet again sat in the seating section, at a table seat. I found it weird however that somebody came along to check tickets after we had already set off, instead of at the top of the platform before boarding like what happened with the Caledonian Sleeper. The other thing I found strange was that there was a dot matrix screen at the front of the carriage that kept scrolling the message 'Welcome To This Great Western Railway Service', providing no information at upcoming station names, so just felt incredibly pointless. Unlike the Caledonian Sleeper, where I tried and failed to go to sleep, I did intend to try and stay awake for the full 7 hour return journey to London overnight, and I did. It felt a lot emptier than the Cally, and was a great experience eating my snacks from Tesco, passing through Bristol Temple Meads without stopping, and having a break at Exeter where I got to stretch my legs on the platform. From Reading to Paddington, the train slowed down a bit and got a few minutes delayed, which worried me slightly. That's because I had decided that I would be in time to make the last N205 of the night, as part of my night bus challenge, and I had to run full pelt from the station to the first bus stop to only just make it. It was a fun trip down to Cornwall for the first time, and getting to try out the Night Riviera, and upon completing the N205 and making my way home, it was over 24 hours that I had stayed up for without sleeping. 

I had a pre booked family trip to the seaside destination of Cleethorpes for a few nights, so I made my way to London King's Cross to head up towards Peterborough. However, since the advance tickets were bought, East Midlands Trains went on a strike on certain lines on certain days, and it just so happened to be the day I needed it. I was specifically going to travel via Spalding Station so my nan who lives there, could get on, but she had boarded the rail replacement bus to Lincoln even though we had her ticket. My LNER train to Peterborough, where I was going to change for the Spalding line, got incredibly delayed that I missed the rail replacement and there didn't seem to be any more for a long time. The quickest route to Cleethorpes would have been to stay on the train to Doncaster and change, but we had to go to Lincoln to give my nan's ticket to her, and then travel from there. Therefore, I had to go to Newark North Gate, and with no EMT services from there, got a rail replacement bus to Newark Castle to catch a service to Lincoln. I had been here before as when staying with my nan at Spalding, we got the train up to Lincoln to explore around here one day years prior, so it was call to see again. Another rail replacement bus now, through Market Rasen to Barnetby, where I got off because the bus even though I was meant to stay on longer, as it was taking so long and the driver went the wrong way, so it was a terrible journey so far. I already don't like coaches as it is because I always find them rather cramped and uncomfortable for some reason, and I was already really late. My very first Transpennine Express service pulled into Barnetby, which finally took me to my destination of Cleethorpes, where a sign suggested it was welcoming visitors since the creation of the first underground railway in London in 1863. I was actually going to go off by myself now to ride another train, which I was worried I'd be late and miss, but only just made, as it heads back down the line to Barnetby, where I just came from. If I was too late to make this specific train, I could have caught it at Barnetby, but because I was with family and we had group tickets, it would have proved difficult if I didn't stay with them for the whole journey. This specific train runs through Brigg and Kirton Lindsey to Gainsborough Central on Saturdays only, a few times on them days, so this provided me with the perfect opportunity to travel on this line, even though my train ended up being 14 minutes late on route. This was also my very first Northern service, as I had never really been this far north in the country to try out these two train operating companies, and it turned out to be a Pacer train, which looked really different to the GWR one at Exmouth. I'm glad I got an opportunity to travel on this type of Pacer train as these are the generic ones that people complain about as a terrible train to travel on in the north. Waiting at Gainsborough Central, noticing a semaphore signal, I found a nearby McDonald's which I wanted to get a McFlurry from, but unfortunately the machine was broken. The silver lining though, was that on the return train, another different type of Pacer, a random women, who was about to get off the train, gave me a sealed packet of Cadbury Caramel Nibbles, probably because she didn't want them, so I appreciated that and found that hilarious. Back at Cleethorpes, and once reunited with my family, I found out the news that my nan had booked the hotel for the wrong days, so we had to spend the night in a different room that was bug infested, dimly lit and had a shower in the middle of the double bed room with no censorship, so everything that could have went wrong on our trip to here did go wrong. The next day though, I went off on another trip on the railway, catching another Northern service to Barton-on-Humber, which stopped at all stations my fast TPE and Northern service yesterday skipped, and noticing that Thornton Abbey looked like a really nice and cute station, featuring a heritage sign. This line runs every 2 hours, so I did spend that long exploring Barton whilst waiting for the next train, and it was a lot of fun as I got to see The Old Tile Works, take a walk onto the impressive Humber Bridge as well as underneath it, and having a look at the visitor centre beside the amazing River Humber. It was a lot of fun travelling on this line, and I would have loved to get off at some of the stations, as well as exploring places on the north side of the Humber once across the bridge. The next day, I actually spent exploring Cleethorpes, and now that I'm back in the hotel room I was meant to be in originally, I found that the building was shockingly similar in design to my uncle's house, with the stairs being the same and the rooms being in the exact same position and size. The tide was out for most of the day, so chilling by the beach early in the morning and in the evening was rather fun. Going to an arcade first thing in the morning is a wise thing to do as the coin slot machines are not emptied during the night, and can fall at random times, so you can collect a whole bunch of 2p's right away. Cleethorpes Pier also features the world's biggest fish and chips shop, where the menu is creatively published as a classic newspaper that your fish and chips used to be wrapped in. Down the coast a bit, there's a miniature railway line that starts off at Kingsway and runs through to Lakeside Station, providing some good views across the boating lakes. Lakeside features a brilliant building called The Signal Box Inn, which claims to be the smallest pub in the country, and if that's true, it really was tiny. There was some miniature railway tracks that tables and seats for the cafe was placed over, and this is where I went for an explore. The tide was out, and the ground wasn't muddy, so I decided to walk around barefoot on the sand, seeing the Humbarston Station which the miniature railway didn't seem to run to anymore, as well as some nice beaches and even the Meridian Line, showing that London was 143 miles away, just slightly short of the London Loop. This part of the coast, down from the busy town of Cleethorpes was a lot of fun to explore, and on the way back, I sat on the part of the train that didn't have a roof so I could feel the wind. Despite the journey here being problematic, and the issue with the hotel, I actually thoroughly enjoyed my time here, getting to explore Barton and the Meridian Line on the coast, and travelling to this new area of the country for me. Luckily, the journey home was completely fine, allowing me to get an explore of Lincoln that I didn't get on the way up, seeing the castle on top of the hill, as well as actually being on a train that stops at Market Rasen this time, so it wasn't all bad after all.

Returning from my family trip to Cleethorpes up north, I wanted to go visit a new city in the north so I made my way to St Pancras International to buy a return ticket to Nottingham. I wasn't going to go up there immediately on a fast train as I wanted to tick off all the stops between London and Nottingham. However, my ticket didn't allow me through the barriers to the Thameslink platforms which I was going to use to tick off the stations north of Elstree & Borehamwood to Luton. I was forced up to the East Midlands Trains platforms, catching my very first Class 222, which I found to be rather dark in the interior, that I caught to Luton, missing out four stops. I didn't mind too much as I thought I'd be able to come back and get an opportunity to explore what's around them stations I missed another time. I did get a Thameslink train from Luton though to tick off all stations to Bedford, where I swapped back over to an EMT to Kettering, after noticing that I couldn't see any District Line trains on the Marston Vale Line. Yet again, another EMT service to Leicester, which was running a couple of minutes late, so I was in danger of missing my all stations stopper service, that was a lot smaller in comparison, to Nottingham, and after running around to the platform it was departing from, the guard saw me running and waited to let me on so I only just made it. If I did miss it, and had to wait an hour, I wouldn't have minded too much as I would have taken a quick explore around the city of Leicester. This train took me through Barrow-Upon-Soar Station, reminding me of Barrow-on-Haven up near Cleethorpes a week back, and East Midlands Parkway Station, which features a whole bunch of cooling towers right beside the railway line, which were really cool to see. The train did skip Attenborough, which I thought I may be able to tick off another time, until I finally reached Nottingham, taking 5 different trains just to get here. Nottingham has a tram network, much like Birmingham, known as the Nottingham Express Transit, and you could actually buy tickets on the platform this time, rather than a guard on board. However, throughout the centre of the town, the trams wasn't actually running, so I was only able to get the tram a couple of stops before having to switch over to a rail replacement bus, which was an actual double decker bus this time, and not a coach so I didn't mind. Old Market Square, where the trams were terminating, was very nice by the way, and there was a few people out giving free hugs and brownie slices, so of course I took advantage of that. Back on the tram, I went to tackle both northern branches of the network, noticing that there seemed to be both an older and newer type of tram running, going up to Phoenix Park, a great name, and Hucknall, where the tram meets with the Robin Hood National Rail line. I believe the tram actually took over one of the railway tracks here, which reminded me of where the London Trams took over the second track of Southern trains between Birkbeck and Beckenham Junction. Heading back into town, I noticed that I may not have enough time to tackle both southern branches too that go to Clifton South and Toton Lane. I did make my way down a few stops on the Toton Lane branch to University Boulevard, where I decided to return, passing through the curious named stop of NG2, as I wanted to spend some time actually exploring areas around the city centre. I took a little walk along the canal to go and see the castle, as well as 'Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem', which claims to be the oldest Inn in England. It's interesting I got to see this place as I only had just seen the smallest pub in England, so it was cool to keep up that theme. I then got myself some McDonald's before going back to Nottingham Station, sitting on the platform eating the recently released Spicy Chicken Nuggets that I had fallen in love with, whilst waiting for my train. I noticed a train pull into another platform with 'EMR Regional' written on the inside, which confused me at first, but then I realised that East Midlands Trains was being rebranded into East Midlands Railway soon, which I didn't know was happening. It was important I made this train as it stopped at the very awkward Elton & Orston Station, which only gets a couple of trains a day, which is why I couldn't spend longer on the trams than I did. I did think to myself of getting off the next station, which is Bottesford, on an earlier train, and walk back to Elton & Orston, but it would have been a really tight connection to make and I would have got less time in Nottingham, so decided against it. My train pulled into Grantham, even though I could have stayed on it as it made its way up to Skegness as that is my uncle's local line. A late running LNER service, which was one of the new Azuma trains I hadn't been on yet, just pulled out as I got to Grantham, so I had a little look around, noticing that there's not a whole lot there, before buying some snacks in a Tesco and waiting for my London King's Cross bound train. The thought occurred to me that I could wait for a Hull Train as I had never been on one of them, but the next one wasn't for a long time, so I stuck with LNER, which was surprisingly quiet and not being an Azuma, as I made my way to London, reminicising on what a fun trip it was to the new city of Nottingham for me.