We threw around a few suggestions, and I started scoping them up - looking to spend 3 or 4 days somewhere. The ideas naturally settled upon a few places which take a bit longer to get to so don't usually work for the average weekend trip. So I started looking into some of these - but stumbled across a few common themes, namely its the wrong time of year to try and go to a lot of these places if you want to see and do things because places and transport links either shut down or become very limited. If you're just looking to go there and do nothing, then they might be alright but a) that's a lot of expense for little gain and b) that's not what I was looking for, and I'm sure for Sasha it was the same. Some kinda Scotland trip involving the Isle of Skye? almost impossible without your own vehicle. Same goes for any kind of Scotland trip going anywhere interesting outside of the main cities. Cornwall? shut down for the year. A wildcard idea of visiting Guernsey, Jersey or the Isle of Scilly (or a combination)? almost impossible to get there in a single day from London at that time of year without forking out megabucks for flights. Isle of Man? you can get there, you can stay there, but you can't really roam around there unless you've got your own vehicle at that time of year. So what was possible? it really came down to 3 options - a trip to Snowdonia in Northern Wales; a trip to the city of York; and a trip to Scarborough, which incorporated a visit to York. Sasha has been wanting to go to York - but to actually stay in York was strangely expensive at that time (2 nights), so that's where the Scarborough option came in which was much cheaper (also 2 nights) even though it was the "wrong" time to visit the seaside resort. We've both been wanting to go to Snowdonia - Sasha would love to hike there (as would I), but Snowdonia is also home to most of the "Little Trains of Wales", of which so far I had done a grand total of Zero. We'd discounted the Lakes District, another place we want to go because we'd want to hike there and its not the opportune time for that - Snowdonia was a little bit the same in that regard. Snowdonia is a fairly large region, but I focused the initial trip study on one place - to see if it was possible to base ourselves at Porthmadog, a small Welsh village which also happened to be the base of Snowdonia's most famous little train railways - the Ffestiniog Railway and the Welsh Highland Railway. It actually looked quite possible and actually much easier than other Snowdonian options. I put all of the three options to Sasha and mentioned that I would be happy doing any of the three - but for me, Snowdonia was the one. Sasha agreed to it; we booked it, and then mostly forgot about it until Budapest and Christmas were over! Oh and just so you get your bearings - here's a map.
Day 1 - The March to Porthmadog
The first stop was Birmingham New Street, the main station in Birmingham and the train went from lightly loaded to overflowing - I was glad our tickets had told us to change at the previous stop and not this one! but it got worse, as at each of the following stops (made every 20mins or so) more people seemed to be getting on the train than off. As such the train was full of conversations, but through the din I managed to pick up on one - the boofy-haired guy was talking to an older lady and it sounded like he was involved with some steam train group in Wales (one particularly memorable line from the older lady was "There seems to be quite a bit of interest in that sort of stuff, but its always Men - you never see any Women getting involved"). At Wellington, suddenly the loading eased; and at Shrewsbury, loads more got off. In fact all the passengers got off, including us - we'd been told our train had a signalling fault and couldn't continue up the line beyond Shrewsbury because of it, and so another train would meet us there to change on to. So we went down the platform to where this new train was going to be, along with screeds of others as this train arrived. We hopped on, chose a seat, but then someone said the train was for Birmingham and we weren't sure if we were on the right train so hopped off and walked along the platform (in the process I left my umbrella in the luggage rack, and lost it). Found someone to ask, yes this was the train for Pwllheli or Aberystwyth. Hopped on, sat down and someone again said no this train is going to Birmingham and I could see the display sign which said Birmingham. We hopped off, asked a staff member by the door - this train was going to go to Birmingham but was now going to where we needed to go, and an announcement came over inside the train to that effect. So we finally settled in what turned out to be the lead carriage of 4, not knowing if we were in the right end for Pwllheli or not. We soon learned that our train of 4 cars would be going all the way to Pwllheli, and passengers going to Aberystwyth would have to hop off and change onto another 2-car train at Machynlleth. That made things easy for us - we settled in at our set of seats around the table for the long haul, playing card games as it was dark outside and we couldn't see any scenery. As we got into Wales, it was kind of amusing to hear the names of stations being announced, often bearing little resemblance to the way they were written out on the display or just plain sounding amusing (my favourite was Penrhyndeudraeth, which sounded like "PenguinDayDrive"). Eventually we were deposited at Porthmadog at 8.45pm - at long last, we were there!
It wasn't over yet, of course - we had to get to our accommodation, but more pressing was the desire to eat dinner. We'd eaten lunch at Euston before we'd left (Nando's, in case you were wondering) but hadn't thought to pack any food provisions for our long train journey and it only occurred to us en route that there might not be any supermarkets open by the time we got there, being a Sunday and the UK having stupid opening hours on Sundays. Sure enough, walking down the main street on the way to our accommodation we could see a big Tesco's which was closed. We encountered The Royal Sportsman, a hotel which we'd looked at staying in but had passed over - it had a sign out for its Restaurant, but noted food was being served until 9pm. It was getting pretty close to that! We decided to go for it and went in - the helpful man at reception helped us to the restaurant area (the bar was full unfortunately), we were sat down and we quickly ordered our drinks and food. Sasha got a cider to drink, I ordered the local Purple Moose Brewery's "Snowdonia Ale" and we both got the Short Crust Pie for mains. The food was really good, as was the Ale - it was light coloured like a typical lager, pretty much like Speights but had none of the bitter/chemically aftertaste you get from such things. The atmosphere of the restaurant, and the hotel in general, was something - I can't quite put my finger on it but all the tables were covered in heavy tablecloths, the cutlery was solid, the staff were dressed in white shirts, black pants and black waistcoats and the decor was fresh, but to a dated style - like it was the 1980's or something, or Basil Fawlty's hotel kept spic and span but never updated to the latest decor, style or colours. It was a kind of old-school glimpse into a past that seemed ever so familiarly British from the old TV shows you used to watch, but of course a lot of England and especially London is not like that now. After we'd finished eating (no dessert - there was no room in our stomachs!) we continued on towards our accommodation, the Travelodge which seemed to be located in the industrial area of Porthmadog. The industrial area totals about 3 blocks, for Porthmadog is not a big place at all! however the Travelodge, despite its location was very much a modern establishment and would prove a most suitable place to stay, even if it didn't have the nice quaint old-school charm the rest of the village might.
Day 2 - Traipsing Snowdonia
Day 3 - Workshops and Fake Towns
Day 4 - Porthmadog, and back to London
We settled in for the journey to Birmingham, and there would be about 20mins to change between trains at Birmingham - but for our new Virgin train, we wouldn't have reserved seats and nor would all the others who were supposed to be on our original train from Shrewsbury. Upon arrival at Birmingham, our train pulled into the platform and our carriage just happened to be near one of the staircases up to the concourse. Upon getting there, I noted a few people checking out the times of other Virgin trains going to Euston in the hope of being able to get there sooner - one was just about to leave, but when I glanced over at the train time that was mentioned on our alternative itinerary I notice it already had a platform number and said it was at the platform - something unusual but we quickly made our way to that platform, and sure enough found the Pendolino sitting at the platform and people only starting to hop on. We made a beeline for Car F - the only carriage on Virgin trains that has guaranteed unreserved seating, and managed to secure ourselves some very good seats in a very empty carriage. We'd expected the train to show up just before departure time from somewhere else, with Car F probably already full and with everyone else hunting for unreserved seats we wondered if we might even get a seat to Euston. This was not the case - our train was starting at Birmingham, and over the next 10 minutes people slowly trickled in and then all of a sudden the train quickly became jam-packed in the 5 mins before departure. Those people hopping on in the last 5 minutes found the situation we'd expected to encounter - and I recognised some of them from our previous train, except they now had food or drinks from the concourse with them. Getting food rather than going straight to the train or assuming the train wouldn't show up until just before departure had cost them getting a good seat, or a seat at all. We didn't depart on time, as our driver was still arriving into Birmingham on another delayed train (delayed due to the weather mess) but in due course he arrived and we headed to Euston, where we arrived later than we had originally expected to but given some of the madness with transport around the UK at the time, it could have been much worse!