BON VOYAGE G

Backblipped - photo taken 26/04 and blipped on 28/04/2023


It's been a bit of a week so I apologise for the lack of blips.  I am now in the process of caAtching up with you all.

G went back to Edinburgh this evening and this is my poor attempt at a black and white portrait of him.

BIT OF A MINOR RANT COMING UP

As I was checking that G's train was running this evening I went to book him a train for when he is next due down towards the end of June.  On doing this I discovered that they've changed all the train timetables and it would appear that Avanti have cut the trains from Edinburgh to Oxenholme down from 5 a day to just 2, but going to Edinburgh from Oxenholme is the same.  It doesn't make sense.  These trains are always busy and Oxenholme is one of the busiest stations so it did seem rather odd. I put in a request to see what was happening and got the usual blurb and railworks and the strikes.  It still didn't make sense because you can go to Edinburgh but not necessarily get back.  So I contacted our MP to see if he knew anything.  That is Tim Farron.
Within 24 hours of my request he had written to the  Chief Executive of Avanti to find out what was going on.  We are now just waiting for their reply.  

Basically it would mean an early morning journey to Oxenholme or later afternoon - which is better than nothing I suppose but still doesn't make sense.  The solution by Avanti is to get off at Carlisle, wait 1.5 hours there to catch a Transpennine service which comes from Edinburgh anyway and, well I won't touch Transpennine at the moment anyway as they as so unreliable.

He can get to Penrith or Lancaster so I guess it could mean driving to either of those places - Penrith for preference due to the awful parking in Lancaster.  Unless I can get a train from Kents Bank to Lancaster to pick  him up and not wait too long for a train back after his train has arrived from Edinburgh.

My head is spinning with it all.  Ah well it will be sorted one way or another.  Not too bad whilst I can still drive, long may that be the case of course.

Anyway after all that his train, amazingly arrived spot on time and arrived in Edinburgh 4 minutes EARLY and it was a very busy train.

He went back today because we'd only just realised when booking a train for him that there are actually 3 Bank Holidays in May, I thought they'd amalgamated two of them, and this coming weekend is the first so best not to travel on Friday then!!

That's all from me for now, will now go and catch up with the rest of this week's blips.