And home. And breathe.

Today has been more or less fully occupied by travelling and waiting around, but partly that has been because we've been pretty tired after yesterday. And we lost an hour's sleep, of course. 

We left the house, taking our bags with us. I only managed to leave my kindle behind - which is not terminal as I have a spare kindle in Tain and also read kindle books regularly on my phone and iPad.

We squashed on to a 63 bus. Large numbers of residents of that part of South London were out and about for religious activities. Lots of people attending Christian Sunday worship. And large numbers of Muslim families preparing to celebrate the end of Ramadan which was today. It was a varied cultural experience and rather loud on the bus at times. It was calmer by the time we made it to Kings Cross. It was interesting to see the different groups of people who got on and off the bus as it cut through South London and then over Blackfriars Bridge and on to Farringdon. There was one other person that I saw who was heading all the way to the station.

At KGX, we had a coffee and picked up some lunch for the train, managing to find a table on the upper level which was occupied by someone who was the spitting image of the university's interim finance director. I don't think it was he, but I hope Mr A didn't say anything too rude whilst I was away sourcing some coffees.

The train journey was a bit trying. We were due to change trains in York - that fact itself being a source of some tension between us over my ticket choices..... However, as soon as we left KGX on a train headed for Newcastle it became evident that the train had a problem because someone had activated the passenger alarm and the crew couldn't switch it off. We sat in Peterborough station for about 25 minutes whilst they didn't manage to switch the alarm off, so we resolved to get off the train at Doncaster and change to another Edinburgh bound LNER train just behind (also late out of London for other reasons....) because we were going to miss our connection at York onto a Cross Country train. We didn't think we'd be challenged about not being on the right train, because it was LNER's fault we had missed our connection. And indeed we weren't, although there was a ticket inspection after Newcastle when a new crew boarded. But the ticket inspector was profoundly uninterested....

Picking up some quick things for dinner at M&S in the station, we've had a quiet evening and I've caught up on my missing blips which start here.