Travel by Rail

Wednesday

We were on our way to visit, Ray, an old friend of Michael's who lives in Ambleside, Cumbria, UK. He was meeting us at 2:00 p.m. at the Windemere station and would take us to his bed-and-breakfast, an old Victorian mansion that he and his brother had purchased some twenty years ago  and restored to its former elegance. We had gotten an early start in order to make a side trip to Chester, a medieval city on the west coast of England not far from the Welsh border.  We were on a Virgin West high speed train that made the 200 plus mile journey in just under 2 hours. In Britain a government corporation maintains the rail infrastructure and various private companies contract to run the individual trains.  In the entire week we were in Britain, every destination we went to, it seemed, was served by another train operator. After miles and miles of rolling countryside with lots of sheep, yellow crops in bloom, canals with narrow houseboats and small villages or towns passing by swiftly we arrived at a somewhat damp Chester.

Chester had no luggage storage facilities at the station so we dragged our carry-ons the half mile to the city and all about while we were there.  We didn't have a lot of time so we circled the cathedral, admired the walls and walked the streets. The city is an interesting mixture of medieval buildings and fake ancient buildings, most of both with modern plate glass store fronts selling all the usual merchandise found in any mall.  There were a lot of pedestrians.  We discovered  on the train that we had come to Chester on a big race day. The racetrack is just beyond the city.  A lot of men in various fancy attire were flocking to the bars and restaurants.  Going to the races apparently involves a lot of drinking and carousing.  There weren't many women in the race crowd. I'm pretty sure not all of the race goers actually made it to the track.  It made for an intriguing introduction to an ancient city.

After an hour of sightseeing we were back on another train, this time a Welsh operator, headed for Windemere by way of a change to yet another passenger operator at Warrington Bank Quay.  This was a two car self propelled unit operated by First TransPenine. It took us all the way to Windemere at a more leisurely pace than the high speed trains.  All of the trains we took were new, clean and comfortable.  The first class coaches all featured high speed Internet so Michael got to play with his new iPhone without turning on the phone features that cost $1.50  a minute for calls and $20 a megabyte for data.  The only other passenger in our first class coach was a well dressed gentleman returning to Scotland for the elections.  From his non-stop cell phone conversation, he appeared to be a member of Parliament worried about the upcoming election.

Michael's friend Ray met us at the station.  He'd said he would be holding a daffodil and indeed he was - one fresh picked from his garden.  We drove to Ambleside, a very picturesque town at the north end of lake Windemere, the largest lake in Britain. The Lake Country features wonderful landscapes, fishing and boating on the lake, numerous hiking opportunities and hotels in town as well as estates in the country that have been converted to bed-and-breakfasts.  We saw some local sights and had some wonderful soup in one of his family's informal restaurants.  We then drove up and down hill through the countryside to "Yewfield", Ray's family's vegetarian bed and breakfast.

Ray is professional puppeteer and a cruise director on high end boutique cruise ships.  He is away for two or three month stretches at a time.  He has a "wing" in the hotel for his personal use when he is at home. We encountered life sized puppets in all his rooms.  The business certainly took off after the family remodeled the place and introduced the vegetarian breakfasts, as well as established the vegetarian restaurants in town.  We stayed in the "bridal suite." We had a big double room on the second floor overlooking the valley with rolling green hills in the distance. There was a wonderful four poster bed and beautiful antique furniture but a modern bathroom. We freshened up for a few minutes then went on a hike to Tarn Hows, a glacial lake in the national park that backs up on the Yewfield property.  The views were lovely.  I've included a picture of a "money tree" we encountered.  Passers by insert pence into the cracks, supposedly for good luck.  It is the first place I have ever seen money "grow"on trees.

The hike was a welcome break after all the sitting on trains.  All day we experienced typical English weather: temperature in the low 60's and mist or drizzle.  We were lucky there was no actual rain while we were walking around.  We never had to use the umbrellas we toted to England.

We changed quickly as Ray was taking us to a movie in one of his five movie theaters followed by dinner in his gourmet vegetarian restaurant.  The movie was Ghost directed by Roman Polanski.  It is a tale of a ghost writer hired by a former British Prime Minister loosely based on Tony Blair.  It was all the more intriguing as we saw it the evening before the Parliamentary elections. We had seen in the papers and overheard talk that indicated anti Labor sentiment ran high in Britain.

Back at Yewfield we had a wonderfully entertaining visit with Ray including an impromptu concert in his personal recording studio.  Michael and Ray talked about everything  one can imagine as they had not seen each other or a couple of years and I even occasionally got a word in edgewise.  What a wonderful experience!