Saturday 15th October 2022
They say life is all about the journey and not the destination. Today I experienced that as my train was substituted by a bus over the one stretch and I had to stay in the moment. Rail repairs and maintenance gets done over the weekends here so we had enough warning of the change.
As I left my friend rather rudely and abruptly, at the station, in my haste to print my ticket from the machine, I realised that I was feeling a little nervous. The reason being that I had 4 train changes to get to my current location and that flustered me a bit. Once on the first train I took a deep breath while keeping my backpack on my shoulders. I ended up much like that for the full 3 hours of journeying after the substitute bus got caught in traffic and I missed my one train.
I asked a station worker what to do and she said
'Yer jus gonna have to wait an hour, till the next one darlin'
And I started to relax. I then asked a station security guy about food and he calmly told me to 'go round to Costas, sweetheart...'
I know some people don't like these terms of endearment from strangers but I enjoy them. It calmed me down and reminded me of the humanness of people.
My Google maps was a little trying when I first set out on foot. I couldn't figure out the way from the final station and I ended up walking up and down a few times before I finally asked someone and I was on the wrong side of the tracks.
I dragged my little wheel suitcase along and it felt like it was very begrudging because it kept spinning around to annoy me. Another reason why I like my hands free and keep my luggage on my back, lol. I got to my travelodge and my phone data wouldn't work. Sigh. Eventually I went over to the small supermarket for some supplies and stopped by for a late lunch and early dinner and where I'm writing this from because I have signal. It has started to rain and I am very glad that it stayed dry on my journey here.
Tomorrow I head towards the Crossness Pump station for their open day and that's my destination of today's journey. But I'm feeling good in spite of my Yorkshire Pudding being rather tough and crunchy and am looking forward to a night in front of the telly.
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