By train to Bath

October 2, 2022

Time for us to return home and with it being October we don’t want to be taking quite so long over it as we did getting to England. So if everything goes according to plan there will be four days of cycling in the middle of five days of trains. I’m not sure if that qualifies me to keep writing on a cycle journal website but one or two of you have asked that I do so I will. By the way, a big thank you for all the positive messages when we reached Belgium. I’m sorry I haven’t replied to them all but it was really so nice to read them all and know that people have been following along and cheering for us. I hope you will all enjoy hearing about train rides just as much!

The forecast had promised heavy rain on Sunday morning so it was a very pleasant surprise to see clear blue skies, for we began our journey home with a two kilometre walk to Liskeard train station. There had been train strikes the day before and we had been warned there would be disruption this day but our train left Liskeard on time and wasn’t even full. We had to change in Bristol, and the train we were meant to take from there had been cancelled, but that just meant we had a more comfortable connection and arrived in Bath 31 minutes late, just enough to qualify for a 50% refund. So a good result all round, then.

Waiting for us outside Bath station was our friend Matt. Long time readers might remember Matt as the guy who stopped his motorcycle in Mongolia when he saw me cycling along, thus facilitating my meeting with Dea who was at the time riding a motorcycle just behind him. I owe Matt a great deal then, for without him none of the best things in my life would be in my life.

Short term readers might remember him as the guy we phoned from outside a Lidl who told us he had spent two days travelling on trains to Denmark with Greta Thunberg.

Matt providing Dea with complimentary Sherpa services on the way to his home.

Matt now lives on his own boat and it was here that we would be spending the night. It was fun to climb on board, very carefully, with Kevin and see inside where it was all very cosy. There wasn’t that much space of course, and the bathroom sink was used as a urinal, so it was all quite a contrast from the past couple of weeks at my parents’ big house. But there was one thing that Matt’s house could do that my parents’ big house will never ever do, and that is go for a pleasant sail down the River Avon.

And it was a very pleasant sail down the River Avon through the centre of Bath Spa, a place famous for its baths and spas. Matt even let me have a go on the steerer or tiller or whatever it’s called. Unfortunately I have no experience with such things and I crashed into the historic baths and we began to sink. No not really, steering a boat going at four knots is pretty easy.

Kevin loved it of course. Just like he loved going on the trains again. Kevin loves everything. And he was soon all tuckered out and ready for a good sleep, leaving the three of us to sit and chat over a takeaway curry at the front of the boat. It got dark and we saw the moon rise just as it had on the night we’d met in Mongolia and it was so nice to chat and reminisce. But there was one thing we wanted to chat about most of all. “Matt, Did you really hang out with Greta Thunberg?”

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