Round The World and other travels
A frequent flyer's collection of trip diaries
This is: A Yorkshire Ramble (2014)
Cross-border retreat
I got up at 7:30 on the final day of the trip, following a perfectly satisfactory night's sleep, and sampled the Premier Inn's buffet breakfast. I set out shortly before 9am for a walk that would take me along various riverside paths and once again up through the old town area. I returned to the hotel just before 11 and took the opportunity to enjoy a final interlude of relaxation before check-out time.
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In view of the climb that would otherwise have been involved, with luggage in tow, I decided to take the easy way out and catch a local bus up to Durham Station.
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| ABOVE: Bound for Newcastle, and onwards to Edinburgh | |
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| ABOVE: Durham Station | |
I passed the time by having a light lunch of smoked salmon sandwiches in the branch of Costa Coffee located on the station's 'northbound' platform, before catching an East Coast train for the short hop to Newcastle, followed by a similar train for the onward journey to Edinburgh. By booking in advance and opting for the minor inconvenience of changing trains at Newcastle, I had cut my first-class fare by around half. A further change at Edinburgh saw me safely home by 5pm.
So there it is! The second of four consecutive 'big trips' was over, and in that sense I was halfway through the severe bout of travel madness that marked the last four months of 2014. During the course of this latest journey, there had been no air travel, I had remained within a relatively small area of the island of Great Britain, and I had not been in a car or taxi from the moment I left home, ten days previously. And despite some less than ideal weather, the risk of which cannot realistically be avoided in the UK, I had enjoyed the experience enormously.