Yesterday we arrived in London, direct from San Diego (I am still in awe of that direct connection) to a cold, but uncommonly sunny city. We chose to bypass the tube and splurge on a London Taxi ride since it was midday, mid-week and traffic was light and the weather pleasant. It was so easy at Heathrow that I wondered why JFK could not make the same accommodation for weary travelers? All I could think was that it must be some commercial or political purpose that stands in the way. On the way in, the roads and buildings all look so damn familiar to me. I first came to London on my own in 1970 when I flew in from Rome to buy a motorcycle at age 16. I stayed the night in a guest house of my impromptu choosing near Victoria Station. In my adult life I next came in 1979 to tour the banking offices of Europe, staying at the fabled Savoy Hotel on The Strand near Trafalgar Square. I recall being told that taking a cab into The City at 8am was considered “at bit early for offices, hey Governor?!” In the late 80s and early 90s I was in London monthly after Big Bang in 1986 and the city had really changed (I think for the better). No more pub lunches with drinks and kidney pie. It was all Pret e Manger and curried chicken sandwiches.
This time London looked almost the same to me as it had in 1989 when I lived here for 6 months. The buildings looked the same, the traffic looked the same, the crowds on the High Street looked the same. The biggest difference was that I was not alone, as I always tended to be before. I was with Kim, my favorite person (by far) in all the world. We were slumped in the back of the cab with our luggage, wending our way to our hotel near St. Pancras and Kings Cross Stations. It’s a busy spot to say the least, with few of the recognizable London landmarks nearby (other than the BT Tower….which makes me feel like I’m in Berlin or Shanghai). We chose the hotel for its proximity to the station from whence we will depart on our Steam Dreams train ride up along the east coast of the English Midlands to Edinburgh…and the return in three days via a similar train ride down through the western Lakes District and Liverpool route. The location allows us to walk with luggage to and from the station with ease.
This Steam Dreams train trip is a quaint and very British sort of excursion. It plays directly into that nerdy English passion for Trainspotting. The term “trainspotting” typically refers to the hobby of recording details about trains, such as their types, numbers, and schedules. It seems very appropriate for this journey since it started as an activity in the gritty lives of young people in Edinburgh (as per the movie Trainspotting starring Ewan McGregor). I note that we will be having our vintage rail car pulled north by a very specific steam locomotive (we are told that it has been tested for reliability 24 hours before departure) and what would normally be a 5 hour trip on a fast rail system will take us 10 hours as we leisurely meander north. We will be pulled by steam locomotive, 60532 Blue Peter. We will follow the historic Flying Scotsman route from London Kings Cross along the East Coast Main Line to the legendary city of Edinburg. North of York, we will pass through beautiful countryside with stunning views including Durham Cathedral, the Angel of the North, the Tyne Bridges, Holy Island, the Border Bridge, and miles of Scottish coastline. There will be a liveried steward welcoming us aboard the sumptuous vintage carriage, so it should be nice. Interesting that we are traveling First Class, which is the middle grade below Pullman Class.
In 2018 I was CEO of a hydrogen start-up company with its labs based in Dundee Scotland, which is even further north than Edinburgh. One visit I decided for the fun of it to skip the quick plane hop north in favor of taking The Caledonian Express overnight from London. What a bust! I boarded the train in the dark of a Londay evening, was given a sleeper car with a five inch peephole window and arrived in Dundee in the dark at 6am. To add insult to injury, to make it a long enough trip to make sleeping supposedly accommodative, we sat at a rail siding in Manchester for 4 hours to make the timing work. Needless to say, I have bigger expectations for a scenic ride on this Steam Dreams trip…which is taking the Main Line north and leaving the Caledonian Line trip down for the return.
I feel like I may finally see the British countryside I’ve missed in the past. The best part is that the ride will be with Kim and our good friends Frank & Barbara and Gary & Oswaldo. It will be an eclectic blend of personalities that will make the conversation both lively and somewhat unpredictable. Frank and I share an upstate NY heritage as well as a dual degree (bachelors/MBA) from Cornell. Gary did his graduate work in U.S. history at Cornell, but otherwise is a mid-Atlantic boy from Delaware who transplanted to West Hollywood. Frank is a business/entrepreneur type. Gary is an academic. I bridge the two somewhat. Kim is a midwestern/NYC musical theater person. Oswaldo is a Venezuelan who transplanted to West Hollywood via Miami and is a party planner par excellence. And Barbara is an L.A. beach beauty from an Evangelical family who transformed from an Oral Roberts gal to Woodstock Vermont’s best version of Martha Stewart. Is that eclectic enough for you?
We will all be sitting together in Coach G, with our picnic lunch from the station and our hopes for clotted cream and strawberry jam during our afternoon high tea service. The good news is that we are all like-minded politically and while we are unlikely to disagree on much about the state of the world, we do run the risk of winding each other up with one “can you fucking believe …. etc., etc. after another” if we are not judicious. To lighten the mood, I have Thanksgiving party favors to give us a momentary laugh. Then it will be up to us to find more interesting topics to discuss since cell phone usage is specifically discouraged during this Caledonian Christmas Run northbound.