Grand Day Out

With my annual train season ticket I get some free travel tickets and I decided to use one of them today to go and do some spotting in London. So by 8.30 I was a Clapham Junction. Meet up with a guy from South Wales that I'd met before at Eastleigh just a couple of weeks ago. Had a good chat with him before moving on. There was a lot I wanted to do today. Trafalgar Square for a short while to get any buses passing and to see the heritage services that still operate Routemasters. Then off to Marylebone for the train to Ruislip. Caught the bendy bus up there, Slow ride but nice to sit and watch the world go by. Marylebone is the one London terminus station that I rarely visit. So got a load of new numbers and my first ride on a Chiltern Train. Quite nice. Quite comfortable but could do with on train announcements to say what the next stop was. Passed the new Wembly Stadium. Looks good.

Quick visit to Northolt to see the biz jets (of which there was 5). Then tube done to Greenford to do the First Great Western branch line into Paddington. Shocked at Greenford that there were still semaphore signals. Passing Acton Main Line station I noticed that there were some other spotters there. So I got off the train and so glad I did. Behind the station is the freight lines and it was quite busy with locos and wagon plus all the stuff coming out of Paddington. So glad I discovered this little gem. I can see me visiting here in the future. There aren't many trains that stop here and seeing that Action is served by no less than 7 stations this one is reasonable quite. With long platforms us spotters can stand down the end of the platform and not get disturbed by non-spotters.

Wanted to do the Gospel Oak to Barking branch and see the DMU’s which never go anywhere else but no time. Off to London City Airport for the tea time rush. Went via North London Line. Sue bought me a DVD of the drivers eye view of this line for my last birthday so I was good to travel on it. Quick change at Straford. Thought I’d take a few piccies of the buses whilst I was here. Got kicked out of the bus station as a guy there claimed that I needed a permit to take pictures there. Oh well it was only going to be a two min stop anyway.

London City Airport is great. Only visited here once before just after it opened and its improved a lot. Just past the terminal building is a little open area with a few seats where you can sit and look across the water and see everything landing/ and taking off. The other side is a huge Travelodge. Must stay at that one some time. Quite busy at the airport, so much so that I lost track of time a bit and it was soon time to head for home.

Took Docklands Light Railway to Bank station. As these trains are driverless there are seats right at the front of the trains and I grabbed one of these and dreamed of being a train driver. Very bumpy ride on the DLR. You do get thrown about quite a bit at some points on the route. Quick ride on the Waterloo and City Line (my first time on this line for years) and back at Waterloo and home. Great day out.

Good Things Today

1. Free train trip to London
2. Action Main Line Station.
3. London City Airport
4. Pretending to be a train driver on the DLR

Harry Ramsdens (2)

Had lunch with my mate (and boss) Charlie. Did Harry Ramsdens and must say it was an improvement on last time. Still not the outstanding fish and chips that they claim to be. It’s really just another Fish and Chip shop.

Gardening

More gardening done today. Made a frame for the runner beans to grow up. Planted lots more seeds. Oh and sat watching aircraft using the brilliant openatc.com

BBQ, Bluebells and Birds

Spent an enjoyable day in Andover today. Went to a book sale irst thing and bought some more train books. Off to our favourite charity shop in Enham but didn’t buy anything there. Then spent the rest of the day at Sue’s parents place. Had a nice BBQ. Then went out for a nice walk in the afternoon. Saw some lovely bluebells in a wood. Saw some nice birds today to add to my Hampshire list i.e. Long Tailed Tit, GoldFinch, Pheasant, Partridge.

On the mend

Still sick but feeling much better. Decided not to go to band practice though. Too noisy…

Found a disks with pictures I took when I first got my digital camera. Included some I took when Sue and I went away last year for her birthday. Uploaded the bus pictures I took an event that I can’t remember its name, to my bus photo gallery which seems to be getting more hits than all my other galleries for some reason unknown to me. Wonder if anyone would want to buy copies of them...

Still Sick

Still sick, and it was Sue’s birthday today. I’ll let her blog all about that.

SIck

Oh no I’ve caught the cold that Sue had. So no work for me today. Just spend most of the morning sleeping. Sue and I thought it would be good for me to get some fresh air and so did a quick walk round the park. Saw a nice bird, I think is was a blackcap, which would be a new one for my life list, gosh two lifers in two days. Got back home and went to bed.

sparrowhawk

Spent most of Sunday sat in the garden with the laptop. Looking at openatc.com. Bagged a nice lot of aircraft. Did a bit of gardening. Some of the flowers I planted from seed are beginning to come up. My broad beans are not looking their best. I’m not sure why. First time that I’ve grown them. Perhaps I felt them inside too long and they got too tall before placing outside and the wind isn’t helping them. Or it could be that they need tying up properly, or I not watering them enough. I don’t know.. They are still alive and so fingers crossed that well get a crop off them this year.

Saw some sort of bird of prey circling over the garden. Studying pictures of it I think it might be a Sparrowhawk.. No wonder our sparrow boxes are still empty if that this is around. Still when confirmed it will be a new one for my life list.

going senile?

Football again today with the visit of Swnasea. Who are pushing for a play off place. Again travelled by train and again went from the Down line into Platform 1 at Brockenhurst, which got me so excited last week. As this the engineering work at Basingstoke is due to finish this weekend, and the trains back to normal next week, I don’t think that this routing will be repeated soon.

You may have noticed that I’m avoiding talking about the match. Well the first 75 mins were great, going 2-0 up. It really shut yup those Swansea fans. Then they scored two and we ended up being the quite ones. OK a draw is better than most of us really expected before the match if we were going to be totally honest. Let’s just hope that we already have enough points to stay up.

I did do one worrying thing on the way home. After football Sue always picks me up from the airport station car park. As they train I catch doesn’t normally stop at Eastleigh. However, luckily the train I was on did stop at Eastleigh. You see I just totally forgot to get off at the airport station. As we were pulling out I looked across and could see Sue in the car in the car park. Oh s**t, I thought. It did worry me that I could forget to do something normally like getting off a train. OK the two girls in the seats in front of mine were getting on everyone’s nerves by constantly taking photos of themselves, and I was busy pulling faces behind them hoping that when they get home and get the photos onto the PC they could see me. But that’s still no excuse for getting off the train with your caring fiancé having come to collect you.

Too busy, too shut

OK was going to give Harry Ramsdens another go today at lunchtime and treat my mate (and boss) Charlie, well I did have a buy one get one free voucher. However the queue for the take away was HUGE and we asked whether we could sit on the balcony and was told that it was closed… Oh well went and got a baguette at Greggs and sat in the gardens. We'll try again next week perhaps when the kids are back at school.

Harry Ramsdens is over rated

Sue and I went to see Ricky Gervais tonight at the BIC. Which I sure Sue will blog about in her blog. Decided to have Fish and Chips from Harry Ramsdens on the sea front and go and sit on the beach. Now it boasts that it’s the world famous Fish and Chip shop. Trouble is it’s just like any other fish and chip shop and so employs youngest. The fish was nice but the chips were barely cooked, and we waited ten minutes in the queue for this. Luckily we had a voucher offering us two for one on meals.

Ricky has a support act in the form of a comedian who’s name I forget. He was quite funny I guess. One thing he did say that struck a chord with me is this. When you are stood on a railway platform, and there are people around you. Does the thought strike you to push one of them off the platform onto the tracks.? Well yes I do have those thoughts. There’s even a couple of people who travel on the same trains as me that I would love to do that to. Annoying gits that they are. But I thought I was a bad person for having such thoughts. But knowing that I’m not alone in that thought has made it more acceptable. Its more of a normal thought rather than a really bad one. So I don’t feel so uncomfortable with those thoughts, knowing that the people around me are having the same thoughts…. Oh my God does that mean that they are thinking about pushing me off the platform??? I’m not going near the edge ever again.

Lazy Day

Pottering around day today. Sat planting lots off seed in seed trays etc. What will hopefully be some nice flowers. I want to end up with a garden that is split into two. One the veg plot with as much veg as I can grow and the rest I want a sea of colour with flowers, shrubs and bushes.

Popham Airfield

First Popham Fly-in of the summer today. Been looking forward to it for ages. Mainly to see if any of the stuff we have bought during the winter months for the stall would sell. Its quite a buzz when you buy something to sell on and it does sell. Some did sell and were snapped up and we sold out. Others didn’t sell, still its early days. Mind you there are only about half a dozen Fly-in a year, so we got to sell sell sell.

I will be listing the aircraft at Popham on my Plane Spotting Blog, or at least the ones I took pictures of. You see, for the first time ever I didn’t keep a written note of the aircraft. Just relied on my photos. Here’s a link to my Popham Aircraft photos

Down line to Platform 1

Most of the time engineering work of the rail network are a pain in the backside for passengers but not today for me. Whilst complete closure of Basingstoke station has meant a timetable re-jig, its helped me in that I don’t have to leave so early to go down to Bournemouth for the footie. I did get excited when passing Northam we went onto the up line to go though Southampton Tunnel, something I think I’ve done before but not that often. However than was totally eclipsed later when the train went from the down line into platform 1 at Brockrnhurst. Now that is something I’ve never done. Brilliant.

Oh and the footie was a 1-1 draw. We needed to win that match really to make sure we were safe.

More photos in print

Sue bought home a leaflet about the Countryside day at her work place next month. The leaflet contained no less than 3 of my photos. More stuff to add to my portfolio.

Brian's Dad's place

We round to help Denise and Brian sort out Brian's dads house. Strange standing in the hallway where his dad’s body was found only a few days before. Even stranger to be going through his things. Still it had to be done and we made good progress.

Sad News

My sister Denise rang this evening. The father of her husband Brian, has died. So she's down in Shirley at the moment trying to sort stuff out, going back home on Wednesday and then back next week for the funeral. I'm doing my good brother thing and agreed to go round there tomorrow night and help out. Then back to our place for tea. Going to be a strange evening.

Manchester and spuds

Sue had warned me that I really shouldn’t blog too much about Dopey Doris, as it would make it look like I was obsessed with her. So all I say is that I was served by her on Thursday but finally managed to avoid her on Friday, but was served by someone equally as Dopey.

Had a good day Saturday. Went to up Manchester on the train. Did a quick bit of spotting at Manchester Piccadilly train station before heading out to the airport. There was another guy there who warned me that they were being a bit tight on security and he had to sign in as a visitor. Even had a visitors ID badge. Thanking him, I took a few train photos before heading off to the airport.

There used to be a couple of small portacabins on top of Terminal 1 car park at Manchester airport. One was a spotters shop selling anything from photos, books to radios and telescopes. The other was a snack bar. Looking forward to both I found to my horror that they had both gone. There are re-doing the surface of the car park. I do hope that the portacabins will return. Good afternoons spotting before return to the city centre to photograph more trains, the trams and the odd Buses. Now do I put the tram pictures in my train gallery (as they do run on rails) or in the bus section (as they do really operate more like buses). However I do collect tram numbers as they are listed in my train spotting books, so they are trains. But who would be more interested in seeing pictures of them, the train people or the bus people? Oh the decisions.

Today was a day in the garden after the coffee trip that Sue mentions in her blog. I’ve planted the spuds. Taken up more room that I had hoped, In my grand plan I was going to go for first early potatoes, and so try to get in some more veg in the plot they were in after they had been harvested. However, Sue wanted baking spuds, so I’ve gone for main crop. Meaning no extra veg, and now they have taken up half of another plot. Some serious re-thinking here I guess.