Thought we were done with train trips? You thought wrong!
The West Somerset Railway used to form the bulk of a branch line from Taunton to Minehead. A journey that is just over 24 miles (around 40-45 kilometres) originally, though now only the 20 mile stretch from Bishops Lydeard to Minehead remains operational. The now scenic railway operates regular steam and diesel services throughout the year, along with special event and theme trains. In the Christmas period there is a night train similar to the Puffing Billy Light Train that operates to a Christmas festival in Dunster.
Scott and I arrived early to catch the first service of the day. As we arrived so early there was time for some souvenir shopping. The station building blew a fuse while we were there so there was a bit of hectic action to get things sorted as the power outage affected the ticket stalls for around 10 minutes.
We boarded the train around 10 minutes before the scheduled departure and found some seats in one of the middle carriages of the train. It was actually interesting looking at what was considered luxury at the time and also what creature comforts we take for granted these days.
As much as I have enjoyed blazing along train tracks at 300kph in modern electric trains there’s certainly something special about steam trains. I suppose it will be the same for people who like internal combustion cars in an era where EV’s are starting to take over.
The train departed on schedule and we wound our way along the track towards the coast. We passed a diesel service heading back to Bishops Lydeard, the older Diesel Motor Units (DMU’s) show how far that technology has come where they can now fit a diesel unit under a train carriage that still allows passengers to board a carriage above it. Much like comparing older VLine services hauled by diesel locos to modern VLocity trains back home.
We arrived in Dunster around 4 minutes behind schedule. But who needs a schedule with these trains?
Dunster is a traditional medieval village at the base of the Dunster castle. Every Christmas they host a massive festival where a light train (similar to Puffing Billy train of lights) runs to bring people to the festival. The main streets get closed off and turned into a massive winter market with food, drinks, and crafts.
For us though, it’s not Christmas so we were seeing the town in its day-to-day life. It must be strange to live in a place like this knowing that people are coming to visit it as a tourist attraction. Certainly would be a good motivation to keep up with the garden maintenance! We had lunch at one of the pubs, I had a traditional lamb roast. As someone that hasn’t had a decent roast since leaving home it was certainly no disappointment to see that was the only thing on the lunch menu.
As we finished lunch we checked the train schedule for departures so we knew how much time we would have to look around. It was either just over an hour or just over three hours. I think having our time again we might have opted to stick around for the later train but hindsight is a wonderful thing isn’t it?
Catching the earlier train meant we were rather time limited so did not opt to pay to go into Dunster castle itself, we attempted to wander around the outside but part of the northern area encompasses the watermill that falls into the castle grounds that you have to pay to get into. So we just wandered around the medieval village, found a set of scales that we paid the 20p to check our weight (I’m suss on the reading but more on that another day) and then went and bought ice creams for the walk back to the station.
From the coastline section of the line you can see across the Bristol Channel to Wales. The town of Barry can be seen on clear days, it was a bit hazy but we could still see it today. At Watchet there’s a boat museum. Blue Anchor is a seaside holiday resort town, one of the areas that initially grew as a result of the train line running through the area.
That was pretty much it for the Sunday, we made our way back from Taunton area and had a light dinner as most places close early on Sundays. We picked a few items up from the supermarket and called it a day.
We were up early to head to the Bath and West Royal Show. I would summarise it by saying it is what Royal Melbourne Show would be if it were mixed with the Whittlesea Show’s agriculture community aspect. While Melbourne Show still has agricultural stuff it has very much become more a focus on the entertainment (rides, sideshow alley) over the agricultural stuff for most people.
Sarah and her sister Emily ended up spending most of the day watching the events on the main arena as that was were the bulk of the equine activity was taking place at the show. Scott and I, meanwhile, wandered the event and checked out the offerings of gin, rum, vodka, and cheese. We also checked out the market stalls but that wasn’t as important as the food!
We also tried our hand at air rifle target shooting. It took some adjusting to the scope as (rightfully so now I think about it) the instructor advised us not to put the eye all the way up to the scope due to the recoil. Anyway, I feel like I did pretty well, pulled the shots a little to the right but still had a good grouping in the 9-10 range.
We had a pint at the Thatchers bar, this time I tried Thatchers Haze. They make some pretty good cider let me tell you. We thought about having some food but opted against it as they were still serving the early menu and there were plenty of food trucks around the event to purchase food from.
Walked around a bit more, then it was time for lunch. I ended up having Pad Thai. Scott had a pulled pork burger. A Blues Brothers tribute band was playing on the live stage as we were eating. Some good tunes. We walked around some more, then watched the doggos do their main arena event. Then to finish off the day there was this event with ponies. Juniour riders do these challenges on ponies as practice for ridership (including mounting and dismounting) where they have to pick things up from tables or on the ground then drop them off in another location. A lot of skill and precision involved, it was quite interesting to watch even though I understand very little of the art of horse riding.
After that it was basically time to call it a day. We picked up some fresh cinnamon donuts on the way out but then Sarah forebode us from eating them in the car. So Scott ate all of his before we got to the car, except the one Sarah eventually nabbed off him.
Woke up this morning and my ankle was sore again. Just when I thought it was all recovered the pain has returned. Not quite as bad as it was the day I could barely walk in Lucerne but still quite painful.
Not wanting to do much with it I hung around Scott and Sarah’s place for the morning. Sarah came home at lunch time to work from home for the remainder of the day so I endeavoured to get out for a bit of a walk to leave her in peace for a while and also test out my ankle.
It wasn’t the worst it’s been, but it also wasn’t the best. I did a small loop around West Wick, doing just enough to get me close to 10k steps so that whatever was planned for dinner that night would get me over the line.
Scott and I ended up having dinner at the St Nicks Night Market in Bristol, Sarah dropped us off and went to do her own thing for a couple of hours while we had a wander around the market and a bite to eat. It was a slow wander and enough to get me over 10k. Our only regret was not having more of a wander around before picking on food as we found more food joints past the markets after we had already eaten. The burger I had was nice but there was an interesting looking Taco joint I probably would have opted for instead had I known it was there.
We stopped at a bar by the waterfront, watched a couple of party boats expertly handle the narrow channel, had a pint, and made our way back.
Today was a fairly low key day, it was all train travel via National Rail from London to Weston Super-Mare to spend some time with Scott and Sarah.
I was on the tube by 9:30 as I was aiming to be on the early train to Bristol so I could get near to Weston where Sarah works. So much for not using this station on the way back though, the best suggested route over the Circle Line. Look it’s not ideal having to lug the case up three flights of stairs but it is what it is.
Paddington was the destination, and there were plenty of lifts here to use. I made my way from the tube to the main concourse. The 10am Bristol Temple Meads train was on time, I just had to upgrade my ticket from an off-peak ticket that wasn’t valid to one that was. Easy done, just had to wait to find out what platform we’d be departing from.
Luckily I had opted for this route over heading straight to Worle station (which is near where Sarah works) as the train that would have taken me directly got cancelled.
The Great Western Railway (GWR) service was running on one of the new Hitachi trains from the High Speed program. Built in conjunction with upgrades to the Eurotunnel corridor the High Speed 1 and High Speed 2 projects improve connections with regional centres.
We got held up due to a signal fault near Swansea, and that delay was enough to put the timing for the ongoing connection out. I should have organised the ticket for the Bristol to Worle train in the morning but neglected to do it and had to head to the ticket office when I got to Bristol. So I missed the connecting service and had to wait for the next one.
That service arrived on time, and I got to Worle as expected. Met up with Sarah who had arranged to drop me at their place during her lunch break so I could drop my stuff off. Sarah headed back to work and I made my way out the rest of the way to Weston Super-Mare for the afternoon to see what was happening out there.
Short answer was there was a lot of kids as it’s currently school holidays, but that is ending this weekend so it should be quieter around there later this week when I head back.
Headed back to Scott and Sarah’s, got in just before 5pm. Sarah cooked a delicious pasta bake and garlic bread.
This morning I knew I wanted to get back to Tower Hill to resume the Yellow line tour before using the hop-on-hop-off bus tour to get around to all the places I wanted to see. I figured if I used the buses for the morning to get around, I could have lunch at Borough Market then make my way out to see Lord’s and Abbey Road.
The circle line of the tube would get me to Tower Hill easily enough, I figured I could walk around the base of Tower Bridge for about 20 minutes and then make my way back to the bus stop to continue the tour. When I arrived there was a tour bus already there so I confirmed with the driver the next bus would be in 20 minutes. He confirmed this so off I went.
10 minutes later the bus went past while I was still on Tower Bridge. Perfect, guess I’ll have to wait the 20 minutes for the next one. So I slowly started making my way back to the stop. Made it back there at around 10am. By 20 past I was asking the rep when the next bus was as several buses from other companies had turned up and by this point it had been over 30 minutes since I had seen the last Tootbus from on the bridge. He said to me there was a holdup near Victoria Station due to a protest.
At 10:45 I was still there, at least three other buses from each of the other companies had turned up and gone, one had even had as many six buses come and go in that time. Growing increasingly impatient as I only had today to complete my sightseeing I asked again where the next bus was. He opens up his phone and checks the tracking app, it says there’s a bus 8 minutes away. Great. Almost an hour lost.
10:55 he says to me the bus is 5 minutes away as they had divert around the protest and the traffic was chaotic. I say to him that I’m now going to have lost an hour of my day because their operator was not able to redirect any buses around the protest like all the other companies seemed to be able to do. He then shows me the app where aside from the one bus that was coming to get us, the rest were all clumped in around Victoria Station in the traffic caused by the protest.
I should have abandoned the bus there and then, but jumped on it when it finally turned up. After 30 minutes I had only made it one stop due to the amount of traffic. Luckily that stop was Westminster Pier so I jumped off there and started my own walking tour.
I managed to get to Westminster and Elizabeth Tower, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, the Australian High Commission (it was closed to non-appointment visitors though), the Admiralty Arch, Millennium Bridge, and St Paul’s Cathedral among others. I’ll make a map one day to plot where I walked similar to the Chur map from a few weeks ago. The only places I didn’t get to properly were the exterior of St Pancras International, Kings Cross Station, and Buckingham Palace. Simply because I was running out of time to get to things.
Conscious of the time I jumped on a tube train to Baker Street and made my way up to Lord’s Cricket Ground. Unfortunately it was closed for an event so I couldn’t actually go in but I wandered around the outside while making my way up to the iconic Abbey Road pedestrian crossing. I didn’t walk across it myself (there was enough people causing traffic bedlam there already) but did help a family get a group shot of the four of them crossing when there was no traffic.
At this point it was almost 9pm so I made my way back towards Baker Street station and took a photo of 221b, the iconic Sherlock Holmes apartment with a museum and store on the ground floor. Unfortunately that was also closed for the day.
So that was basically that for the day. I managed to scrape in a light dinner at one of the pubs before turning in for the day after a mammoth 28k steps. I might have overdone it a little…
I’ll be emailing the company for a refund on the second day as I didn’t end up getting anything out of it. We’ll see what comes of that.
Cheers!
3/6 Update: Got an email this morning notifying me they’re refunding the difference on on the day 2 pass.
Recent Comments