On the Road Again: Dundee to Bath and Back Again

It's the October holidays, so it is time to stop climbing the walls, and get out of town.  In Scotland, holidays mean 2 weeks off school for the kids, and though I usually can't take quite that much time, I did take a week.  This was plenty of time to drive down to Bath, meet up with my parents, tour around, completely wear them out, and send them back to the States.

I say "we" drove, but really it was Paul *now a licensed UK driver* who drove our rented minivan (called a "full size MPV" in the UK, reflecting that is a much larger car than you typically see on the road) from Dundee to Bath.  Now, the UK is a small country.  We drove across Scotland and almost down to the Southwestern corner, and it took approximately 8.5 hours (with stops).  Try THAT in the United States.  Leaving D.C., you'd still be in Virginia! From Tucson, you'd only make it to Albuquerque. It was still a long drive, and we laid down the law to the girls.  "Look," Paul said, "This is going to be a long drive.  It's going to be boring. I don't want to hear about it. This is part of the family vacation, the long, boring getting-there-and-coming-back part. No one will ask "Are we there yet?" Do you understand?"  To their credit, they mostly didn't ask.

And of course once we got to Bath and found Nana and Papa already there, all the long boring hours were forgotten.  The weather cooperated - mostly - which is to say it was mainly cloudy, with strategically timed rainstorms that coincided with our indoor activities. We even had a little sun, pulling off all out raincoats and sweaters to soak in the rays and the 17-degree temperatures (practically 63 degrees - considering it's already autumn in Dundee and about 10-11 (50ish) degrees there, it was balmy!)

Zipping about in our trusty minivan we hopped through history in and around Bath - back to Prehistory at Stonehenge (Paul: I can't live in the UK and NOT visit Stonehenge; he was suitably impressed) and Avebury (where you can actually get close to the stones, and the sheep...)

..through Roman times (the Roman Baths, in the city of Bath itself),

 the 12th-15th centuries (Wells Cathedral) in Wells,

the 17th-19th centuries (Bath Abbey) back in Bath,

and finally to the 1960's at Longleat, with trippy murals by Lord Bath (not pictured, but see here for examples), a hall of mirrors, and the first drive-thru Safari park outside of Africa (opened in 1966).

   

 











When it was finally time to go home, it was an even longer drive, as we did it all in one day instead of splitting it up.  What I appreciated about the British motorway system on the way home, however, was its optimism.  Every time they posted a sign, they only told you about the nearby towns. "Preston 25 miles" it would say, cheerily. Anything further away than about 30 miles just fell into a large category, with a helpful arrow: "The Midlands" "the North."  This would never fly in the United States - what do you mean, The North? I want to know how far it is to Minnesota - never mind that I'm in Mississippi! When we finally started seeing the arrow marked "Scotland" we knew we were nearly home, back to our life in Dundee.

Tales from the Train: Scotland and England

Compared with the US, Britain has a fabulous rail network.  You can get to places small and large by rail in Britain, far more than you can in the US, where your options are really limited to the Northeast corridor (Washington DC to Boston) and perhaps the odd train to Chicago.   Over the past two days, I have gotten to know the rail network much better, traveling from Dundee down to Nottingham for a quarterly research project meeting.  Over the course of two days, this has meant approximately 10 hours in the train, and thanks to travel agents who apparently didn’t both checking that we used the most efficient routes, a lot of changing trains. I don’t really have sour grapes about this – we made all the changes with relatively little effort, as it was just myself and my boss, Wendy, traveling (with the addition of our colleague Mike from Edinburgh on the way back). But here is the synopsis of our travel (with the long, boring parts removed for readability).

10 am Thursday: we are on the platform at the Dundee station, drinking tea and coffee and eating pastries.   The weather is sunny – if you stand in just the right place on the platform, the sun filters down from the street above and warms you up.  I am amused by a sign posted on the platform encouraging people to clean up after their dogs – something Dundee citizens need to be reminded of, given the frequency with which I run across dog poop on the street, left as a little present to passer-by. 

Until they have their own toilet...priceless.

The day’s journey starts smoothly, and then we begin the string of train changes.  First in Edinburgh, then in Newcastle, then in Sheffield, then finally arriving to Nottingham close to 5 pm.  Not too tiring – we have managed to read and work pretty much the whole way. We walk around the corner to the ticket office on Nottingham (literally, around the corner, since the whole station is under construction) to see if we can get better seats for the train home the next day.  The ticket agent says, “it’s a good thing you stopped in” because the time of our train has been moved up 10 minutes, due to a landslide and poor track conditions near Sheffield, with no notification to us.  Good thing we did stop in.  She can’t really help us with the seats, only about to give us a different seat for the very last leg of our journey – Edinburgh to Dundee. Before hopping in a taxi, we stop in at the sweet shop to buy some “sweeties” for the kids in Scotland.

After the meeting the next day, taxis arrive slightly earlier to get us to the train station on time.  Although things are only a few miles apart in Nottingham, it seems to take 20 or 30 minutes to get anywhere, sitting in traffic for an interminable amount of time, waiting to turn right across traffic, taking many detours that seem to point us away from the station, until we finally arrive.  I am in a mild panic, thinking it’s nearly time for the train, but in fact it’s only 16:16 and the train doesn’t depart until 16:38.  As the time for the train draws closer (16:37 and still no sign of the train arriving on the platform) the number of people waiting grows, and we realize that because of the track problems, they’ve put two trains-worth of passengers of one train, and any hope of having a reserved seat flies out the window. We muscle our way on and grab a seat, leaving the unlucky Nottingham students to stand. Although we leave late, we make up enough time to catch our connection at Sheffield – even having to a wait a bit for it, time to take a picture of the Victorian bar, the Sheffield Tap, a World Beer Free House – not, Wendy explains, that the beer is free, but that the bar is not connected with any particular brewery and can serve whichever brands it pleases. 

Sheffield Tap, a Victorian bar in the rail station.

Colleagues Wendy and Mike waiting for the train in Sheffield.

 Our train arrives and we board, finding our seats in the front coach (coach F…not the most intuitive one to put first, but I spy the letter as it goes flying past, leaving us scurrying up the platform to board). This a long haul. After the first train, I am ready to be home. Forget flying cars – I want to skip straight to teleportation.  We stay on the train for a long time. I finish my book, and we are still an hour and a half from Edinburgh. To make matters worse, the train is slow – 12 minutes slow, to be precise, shaving our comfortable 10-12 minutes change time at Edinburgh to a perilous 6 minutes or less. If we don’t make the 21:40 train, there’s another on at 22:08 but it’s the “milk run” – stopping at every podunk station between Edinburgh and Dundee. C’mon train, speed up! Just a few minutes will make a difference between making or missing that connection. A few minutes, and the luck of where the trains happen to be parked…if we step off one and just have to cross the platform to the other…       

Divine intervention – and the nicest train conductor ever…intervene. They identify eight or nine passengers (including Wendy and I) hoping against hope that we can make the connection to the 21:40 train.  Although we’re due to arrive at 21:35, the conductor talks to Edinburgh Waverly and gets us a track as close to the departing Aberdeen train as possible. They also talk to the other train and they agree to hold the train for 2 minutes. The conductor gathers us all in the end of the First Class carriage and gives us directions on how to go from track 11 to track 15, and says maybe the staff will even open the ticket barriers for us. We pull into the station, and Wendy says “Ready, set, go!” The first man opens the door and sprints out of the train, followed closely by the other 7 or 8 of us. We run flat out across the platform, crossing the road in front a bewildered taxi driver, not used to seeing eight or nine people dashing across his path, even at the train station. We race toward the ticket barrier, and the staff open up the handicapped gate, allowing us all to flow through at top speed.  “The end of the platform for Aberdeen” they yell helpfully, as we dash pell-mell down platform 15, finally reaching the still-open door of the train. We pile in, breathless. I was tired before, but now I am awake. We made it! After catching our breath, I enquire what carriage we are currently in, and realize our carriage is just one up, so we walk through and sit down just a half a minute before the train departs from the station. And the boredom resumes. But only for another hour.  And then I don’t have to take a long train journey for another month….