El Weekend

So… what did we get up to this weekend? Well. On Friday evening we didn’t do very much, we went to bed fairly early because we had to be up rather early on Saturday morning! We got up at about 5AM on Saturday to be at Colchester Station at 6.24. We were going on a train tour, which Philippa’s Dad had bought for us as an early Christmas present! We travelled about 600 miles in one day (including the return journey), all the way up to Grassington in Yorkshire, and got back at about 11:15PM. It was actually a very relaxing day – although travelling can be quite tiring, I didn’t find it so, and it was just nice being able to sit back, relax and chat for the journey!

At Grassington, there was a “Dickensian Christmas Festival” going on — all the villagers had dressed up in Dickensian costumes, and there were plenty of stalls and things around the village! There was a lot of Christmas spirit too, I really felt like I was getting in the mood for Christmas. As we were served all of our meals on the train we didn’t need to have anything to eat there, which meant we were able to spend most of the time looking around! The only downside was that the village was absolutely packed.

The food on the train was absolutely fantastic too — they managed to cook a full Christmas dinner on a train! That’s pretty impressive by any standards really. You can have a look at the same tour for 2007 (click on ‘Christmas in the Yorkshire Dales’ at the bottom), I don’t know whether we will go next year but we would definitely like to go on another one at some point!

Aaaaanyway. Yesterday. We went to Church in the morning, had lunch, went to church in the evening for an candle-lit Advent Service (which I rather enjoyed).

So, that was the weekend! And that’s all from me for now…


Comments

5 responses to “El Weekend”

  1. That’s really interesting! Did you have to go via London or did the train go straight oop north?

  2. we didn’t have to go through London – we went up to Stowmarket, and then off via Ely, Peterborough, Grantham, Doncaster, York, Leeds… it’s a shame they couldn’t do that on more commercial journeys, it’s a good route really!

  3. That’s good! I’d forgotten about the Peterborough connection! (Sorry – starting to sound like a trainspotter….)

  4. Yay … Oop nyorth!!! It all sounds very civilised, Mr Phill! Your good lady wife is obviously having a most positive effect. Wonderful. Must arrange to come and see you lot all still hanging around in Colchester … I begin to wonder how I escaped the North Essex tractor beam!

  5. are you suggesting that I wasn’t civilised before, Joe? 😉

    Yes, please do come down and see us in Colchester! We promise we won’t use the North Essex Tractor Beam (ooooo aarrrrrr).

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