To the Lakes of England (2)

The day dawned and I was waiting for the taxi that would take me to the train station. It was 5 minutes past the time the taxi was supposed to arrive and I was still waiting. Worried, I called the taxi company and was told they had got the address wrong - Chestnut road instead of Chesterton road. When i called them to make my booking, I gave my address once and there was no confirmation. Given that and my accent, I am not surprised that they got it wrong. But all is well that ends well: a replacement taxi arrived the next minute, impressing me, and five minutes later I was at the train station, well in time for my train.

A word on the weather would be appropriate here: "crap". It was dull, grey and there was every prospect of rain. And it could only be worse in the Lakes: afterall, with saturated clouds from the Atlantic hitting against its mountains, which are the tallest in England, this region is supposed to receive a large amount of rainfall. I kept shaking my head so many times during the morning, looking up at the sky and largely seeing not so much of a break in the thick grey blanket of rain clouds. And it was cold. But I was wearing my newest acquisition - a rather heavy and thick jacket meant for the mountains, and hence, I am not entirely justified in complaining about the chill. Here, it would be appropriate to quote a fellow passenger on one of the trains who commented we were going to have a "Siberian Easter".

I will conclude this blog entry with a few comments on the train ride.

As I got on the train the first thing I noticed was a lack of space for large items of luggage. I have traveled by train in England many times, but this was the first I was traveling with so much luggage and I must say, it was tricky to get everything suitably positioned. And if one compares the situation here with the space in Indian trains, you have no comparison really! I cannot, in my wildest dreams, see anyone comfortably placing the large trunk boxes that often go on Indian trains in the English ones.

I had to take four trains during the journey; Cambridge to Nuneaton, Nuneaton to Crewe, Crewe to Oxenholme and a local train between Oxenholme and Windermere. The first two trains ran on time, but the one between Crewe and Oxenholme was delayed by 15 minutes. And given that I was supposed to wait only for 10 minutes at Oxenholme for the train to Windermere, I was justified in deciding that I was going to miss my connection and end up waiting another hour. Luckily, this was not the case. In fact, the train to Windermere was also late because it was caught behind the delated service I was on!

All said and done, I arrived at Windermere station at about half past one, facing the bleak prospect of a grey holiday!

(to be continued)