A Cornish Christmas 1: A Curate’s Egg Journey Down

An account of a “curate’s egg’ journey from King’s Lynn to Fort Picklecombe. Parts of the journey were indeed excellent, and I got some good photos along the way.

A picture of one of the great arched vaults (there are three in total) that form the roof of Paddington Station

I am in Cornwall for Christmas. I travelled down yesterday, which journey I shall be covering in this post, and will staying until Sunday.

THE GOOD: KING’S LYNN TO PADDINGTON

My itinerary for this journey started with catching the 10:45 from King’s Lynn to Kings Cross, so I set off at 10 o’clock sharp to make sure I got to the station in good time. The train ran precisely as per schedule, and at 12:33 I alighted on to Platform 9 of Kings Cross station. The Hammersmith and City line journey from Kings Cross to Paddington, following the original route of the world’s first passenger carrying underground railway was also uneventful. I consumed a light meal courtesy of a branch of Costa that is structurally part of the station, and then it was necessary to be ready for the next and longest phase of the journey…

THE BAD – A GWR HORROR SHOW

Although today’s Great Western Railway has the same name as the company founded by the legendary Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and serves most of the same routes, I do not think that Brunel would be impressed with his company’s modern day namesake. Actually the current GWR should probably be glad that the dead cannot sue under UK law. As I scanned the departure screen on the bridge linking the various platforms at this iconic station (the photo gallery at the end of this post contains some pictures that should go some way to showing you why this station is rated as one of Europe’s finest) I noticed there were some cancellations, and some delays. My own train was among the delayed, and the estimated time was being pushed back in small increments. Eventually at 2:15, 12 minutes after the scheduled departure time we were finally given the platform information. I managed to get to my booked seat, and a few moments later we were finally underway. However the late departure caused us to end up behind a couple of stopping services between Exeter and Plymouth, so the train arrived very late at Plymouth (once I am back in Lynn the company will be hearing from me as I expect compensation from them for both the stress experienced at Paddington and the very late arrival in Plymouth).

THE FINAL STAGE

My sister met myself and my nephew at Plymouth station (he, due to mishaps associated with another train company, South Western, had ended up on the same train as me), and drove us to our final destination, Fort Picklecombe in Cornwall. Apart from the satnav making a few daft mistakes (at one point telling us to make a u-turn when we actually on the Torpoint ferry!) this part of the journey was thankfully uneventful.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Here are the photographs I took yesterday, plus a couple from this morning:

Ely Cathedral, through a train window approaching the station from the north.
An inspection train, near Ely.
The roof at Kings Cross.
A fine combination of central roundel, map to the left and information poster to the right, with a train on the other platform providing the backdroop.
A close up of the roundel.
This was probably the best picture I got of a roof arch at Paddington station.
A reasonably close picture of a Central line train approaching Ealing Broadway and a much more distant one of another train on the same line leaving that station.
A District line train at Ealing Broadway. It has steeper sides than the rounded Central line stock, and is also larger, the District having been built to mainline spec, while the deep level tube lines are smaller.
This yellow train (see also next picture) is I believe an engineering train.
Newton Abbot station features a standard-issue post box at platform level.
Two pictures of the lighthouse taken through the window of the living room at Fort Picklecombe.
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Author: Thomas

I am a founder member and currently secretary of the West Norfolk Autism Group and am autistic myself. I am a very keen photographer and almost every blog post I produce will feature some of my own photographs. I am an avidly keen cricket fan and often post about that sport.

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