Saturday 30 April 2011

All I Ask Is A Comfort Break...

I recently undertook an eight hour coach journey. Irritatingly, it was not one of those that people on Radio 4 or The Guardian witter on about, travelling in some far flung part of the globe in order to go and patronise some poor people and make their lives in a small, and yet significant, way ever so slightly worse. No, this was a journey from Newcastle to Birmingham (insert own joke here) via Leicester and Nottingham. I was obliged to go this longer way owing to the increasingly insane cost of rail travel in this fair and royalist land. £100 Richard Branson wanted from me and for that amount I expect luxury on a scale that would Louis XIV of France, the Sun King himself, mutter ‘Steady on old boy.’.

Actually, it was a rather pleasant journey. Certainly nicer than the overcrowded hell that is Virgin cross-country these days. Not only was there room for your luggage, there was even room to stretch out your legs and even turn a page of your book without nudging your neighbour, none of which is possible on Beardie’s trains.

It’s not the longest single journey I’ve undertaken in my time. That would be the thirty-two hour ferry crossing from Ireland to France I undertook in 1985 during which I tasted frogs’ legs for the only time, found out that members of the US Marine Corps are obliged to shave their legs* and saw the first Police Academy film.

Those were the golden days of travel.

Incidentally, I will not divulge the name of the coach company with which I travelled. This blog is not for hire. Meanwhile, here’s a song for you:

*’You want waxing? You can’t handle waxing!’


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