July 4, 2024
To Thirsk
For a change it’s me that comes up with the idea this time. There’s a train, I inform Rachael last night after taking into account today’s weather forecast of 25 mph winds from the west with gusts to 40. Then I pop the question: do you want to bike 32 miles with a 25 mph crosswind or splurge and drop twenty quid on a pair of train tickets to Thirsk on the Trans-Pennine Express? She frowns, pulls out her iPad to check our account balances, and then with a smile flips over to the Trans-Pennine Express website to browse their schedule.
Twenty minutes later we’re still trying to complete the transaction. The British trains are fantastic (though the locals keep insisting they’re rubbish compared to the system those lucky Germans have), but it does get frustrating that there are so many different train companies operating, each with its own proprietary website as far as we’ve seen so far and each website working just a bit differently.
So just to satisfy my curiosity I read up on how many different train systems are operating in the U.K. It’s twenty-eight!! I thought we’d been on a lot of them so far (Northern, Great Northern, East Midlands, Transport for Wales, Avanti West Coast, Cross-Country and now the Trans-Pennine Express), but we’re just getting started.
Anyway, we finally book our tickets. The Trans-Pennine website’s special feature is that once you’ve done selecting your route it requires you to register on their website: name, email, password, etc. Once you complete the registration form though, it just hangs there with a fully completed form but no prompts, messages, or tabs to continue on to the payment function. Nothing. Rachael thinks it’s probably just me and the iPad - maybe I’ve got too many windows open or need to reboot or whatever. Which I attend to and then start over more than once, always getting the same result. She doesn’t believe me and tries on her iPad also but without success.
Finally I try something new. Instead of starting with selecting a ticket I start with the registration function, and that works. My registration fails, but this time I get the error messages about the defective password I’ve chosen and how I could do better. There’s some sort of bug on their site apparently such that if you try to register in the middle of ticketing the error messages don’t display.
Other than that, Trans-Pennine gets high marks from us. Their trains allow you to book the two bike spaces their trains provide for free of charge. Trains to Saltburn-by-the-Sea run roughly hourly all day long, stopping at Thirsk. And the train, once we’re on it, is sleek, modern and comfortable. First class, even though we’re riding second class.
Checkout at the Mason Arms is at 10:30, leaving us almost a full hour to bike the mile to the train station, pick up our physical tickets, and find our way to the platform. We’re both starting to get anxious about the time though as she watches the bikes while I stand in line for nearly ten minutes behind four or five other customers with the line not advancing at all. Frustrating, but the upside is that I strike up a conversation with the elderly woman in front of me who inquires about our bike trip. It turns out she’s a biker also, though she and her husband moved on to ebikes some years ago so now they’re stuck on the continent since they can’t fly with them.
She tells me of their current plans - they’re off to France to visit friends, somewhere near Carcassonne if I know where that is. Tell me more I say, as of course we do know Carcassonne and have been there twice ourselves. In a surprise, she says their friends live out in the country somewhere near the little town of Limoux. Limoux! We have friends in Limoux! We exchange some names but she doesn’t recognize the ones I bring up and doesn’t remember any tandem riders from when they rode with the locals about ten years ago. I’ll bet we’re only a few degrees from finding someone we know in common though. Kevin Bacon too, probably.
Two more agents show up to open new windows and the line starts moving, and ten minutes later we’re on platform ten waiting for our train to arrive. Two trains come and go in the meantime but we’re patient and don’t board either of them - we really are starting to get this routine down finally.
The train’s great, and departs exactly on time. Twenty minutes later we arrive at Thirsk, where a fellow passenger thoughtfully helps us unload Rachel’s bike while I get mine. It can’t be more than a minute later that the doors close behind me and the train is under way again.
Our helpful friend apologetically tells us that the Thirsk station is one of the older, unreformed type - meaning there’s no elevator to get you across the tracks. He offers to help us with the bikes on the stairs to but we’ve held him up enough already so we decline. A few minutes later I have some regrets about that decision.
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Thirsk is a small market town, but folks might have heard of it because it was the home of author and veterinarian James Harriot (All Creatures Great and Small, etc). Which makes it sound like it would be a charming place but for us but it’s not. Too damn many cars in too small of a space. It reminds us of Marlborough from two summers back. Places like this really need to reroute the highway that runs through the heart of town to make them livable.
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We each go out for short walks in the afternoon but soon come back because it doesn’t really feel very walkable. So that’s the day. There are two things about Thirsk that leave us with warm feelings though. The first is our lunch at Bianco Ristorante where we enjoy chatting from our server from Sardinia. The second is in our lodging at the Three Tuns, another Wetherspoon place. It’s just as you’d expect of a Wetherspoon place for better or worse, except that when two women show us to our second story room they each volunteer to carry one of my panniers. So nice! This happens from time to time, and when it does it’s almost invariably a woman who makes the offer.
Today's ride: 3 miles (5 km)
Total: 2,540 miles (4,088 km)
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