Deutsche Bahn looked as though it was going to do its customary impeccable job until halfway between Bonn and Koblenz it was announced that we would be delayed by about 21 minutes because of a diversion.  In some respects this was interesting, in that it took us up the opposite bank of the Rhine to the one which in the past the train has always followed, so we were able to look at a whole new set of castles and tight little towns. However, 21 minutes is a lot longer than DB normally schedules for a connection so we ended up with nearly an hour to spare in Heidelberg. Luckily the station bookstall had the largest selection of magazines, German and international, that I have ever seen so 70 minutes delay at 8pm on a journey that had started in York at 6am was not too great a hardship.

We did a bit of travelling about — using a regional ticket which allows up to 5 people to go anywhere in Baden-Wurrtemberg for a day for 29euros, by train, bus or tram.  Trams here are part of the S-bahn system, and travel really long distances — a sort of inter-urban.  Sitting behind the driver Heilbronn to Karlsruhe brought back the days of the early British Rail DMUs.

Highlight now ! The South German railway museum at Heilbronn.  Ex DB locoshed, nice roundhouse and turntable, fine selectioon of German steam locos, plus a Chapelon Pacific, which is not the one below — a DB P38 I think.

Delightfully, two were in steam, including the massive 2–10-0 below.

We were at an event in the museum until late in the evening — having the two locos simmering in the yard, ready for an excursion in the morning, was highly atmospheric.

Back via Paris, and time for lunch between trains.  Unfortunately the Gare du Nord left luggage still hasn’t learned to cope with the number of Eurostar users wanting  to deposit baggage, so was full, and the streets and cafes around full of travellers lugging their belongings. Fortunately, the cafes seem to have adapted better and were happy to serve around cases, rucsacs and surfboards (the last not ours).

There are lots of different combinations of streets to use between Kings Cross and the British Museum. I always like to include Marchmont Street — one of those small shop-lined streets in London which seems as though real people live there.  At the British Museum we went to the “Treasures of Heaven” exhibition — the cult of relics in the middle ages, and the elaborate and costly containers they were kept in. The relics themselves proved to be extremely small — tiny parcels mostly wrapped in silk with little parchment tags to say what they were and from which deceased saint.  Most visible were a couple of thorns from the crown of thorns which Jesus wore.  Despite all the perhaps predictable cynicism about the trade in relics, fuelled by Chaucer’s pardoner, it was the marvellous craftsmanship put into the receptacles that was really on display.  The whole business started quite early in the first couple of hundred years BC. The last example they showed was the cult of Charles I after his execution, though a little slide show at the end did mention Elvis and Diana.

TYo the London Review of Books book shop for a light lunch — they do a good line in sandwiches, quiches and salads — and cakes. The bookshop is excellent — huge poetry section, amongst other delights. The London shelves were stuffed to bursting with tempting tomes — cities spawn literary lovers.

Bus from Theobalds Road along Holborn to St Pauls.  When I was a kid, the whole area around St Paul’s was a huge bombsite, and the cathedral itself was a filthy grey. Bits of the rebuilt area are OK — I quite like Paternoster Square — and the idea of rescuing Temple Bar from exile in Hertfordshire and re-erecting it here was inspired. St Pauls currently gleams inside and out and has no scaffolding.  The interior is stunning, and the Dean stuns you with a massive entrance fee, for which you get in and also a free audio/visual tour handheld device which serves only to distract from the experience of this wonderful building.  It’s absolutely bizarre to see that the rows of people seated in the nave and under the dome all have headphones on and are dutifully listening to facts about what should be a visceral experience, let alone watching a tiny screen re-living the glory days of Charles and Di’s ill-fated wedding.  We gave our little machines back quickly, and enjoyed the place with our own senses.

Then an amble through the City, past such notable sites as the place where Ian Tomlinson died after being whacked by the Met, to Spitalfields Old Market, where the International craft show, Origins, crouches between the cast pillars and below the pigeon-bearing steel girders.  There’s very little dross here.  The ceramics were varied and imaginative, some of the jewellery exquisite, and there were some quirky objet d’art bits and pieces that were fun to look at, even if one might balk at spending any money on them.  We didn’t actually spend more than a very few quid this time, but had my premium bond come up I would have been tempted by Rachel Eardley’s beautiful pieces of jewellery based on the cut-out motifs from old coins (the wren from the farthing, the ship from the halfpenny etc etc and into coins from round the world). Ursula Hoffman’s multicoloured earrings and necklaces appealed TOO

Evening meal at Giraffe.  It was OK.

And then there is the even smaller and more eccentric “Smoke, a London peculiar” which appears at quite rare intervals but quite accurately describes itself as a love-letter to London, except that it’s not the London most of us who don’t live there think of but the London of night buses, pigeons, scrapyards and marshes, and most unlikely of all, London south of the river.

Or “A to B” the magazine of folding and electric bikes and general encouragement to sensible travel. Tends to go on a bit, entertainingly and justifiably, about how difficult sensible travel is made by the suits who run things.  Bits of it are so technical about engineering modifications you can make to obscure bikes that one suspects that only a couple of readers get to the end but the reviews of bikes are great, as are the polemics. They also like to reproduce, with mock-horror, any bike advertisments which feature semi-naked young women deriving pleasure from twining round a bike. Fortunately such lapses are rare.

Or “Blithe Spirit” the magazine of the British Haiku Society, which also publishes tanka and renga and other anglo-japanese specialities, plus erudite reviews. I like the haiku best — sometimes they capture a moment, a feeling, to utter perfection.

Finally, there’s “Railwatch” the magazine of Railfutures, which campaigns for improvements to Britain’s betrayed railways (Beeching, Tories, New Labour, privatisation).  Nothing like supporting an organisation banging its head on the brick wall of greed, blame culture and incompetence which characterises the very top echelons of rail ownership, leasing, and governance.

Then on to “The Crown” which does Sam’s fine ales, and a nice selection of luncheon grub.

This was from the  undulating road between Bagby and Kilburn.  Later, a much neglected byway (though nonetheless part of National Cycle Route 65) gave a wonderful view of Coxwold Church and the White Horse.

After Easingwold (where the Co-op on the Market Square opens on Sundays and sells a better class of bottled drink) it’s all flat. The back lane between Youlton and Linton was new to me, and more interesting than the roads.

Small wonder, then, that one of my favourite books of all time, which I have just re-read, should be “Summer Saturdays in the West” by David St. John Thomas and Simon Rocksborough Smith.  It sets out the amazing efforts made by staff to cope with the demand for travel on summer Saturdays in the 50s, with lots of operating detail on how locomotives and coaches were provided, the bottlenecks, the problems, the contingency plans, the reaction to delays.  Then in the second part, it looks at what happened on 27th July 1957, probably the busiest day ever, when just about everything went wrong, with every train arriving at Newton Abbot from the east that afternoon at least 2 hours late.

This is a shot (not mine) which shows the sort of majestic sights we enjoyed back then

Not for us, however, as we set off up the path to Goathland, where 825 soon overtook us.

A severe drizzle then began, so we were very glad to drop into the Birch Hall pub at Beck Hole where a glass of Black Sheep and a cup of tea (respectively) cheered us up and allowed the rain to pass over.  Great to see how successful this tiny pub now is, being chosen by the local CAMRA branch as pub of the year two years running.  Before we left Beck hole 92214 stormed past up the challenging climb to Goathland.

We took the longer route into Goathland, over the hills towards Mallyan Spout.

At Goathland, 825 came storming up from Grosmont and delivered us on time at Pickering, running into the far platform and allowing this shot as she ran forward to run round.  A good day out.

But also an amble round Islington — some very posh bits there,

and the surprising (to me) discovery that the Regents Canal goes right under Islington High Street in a tunnel.

Lambs Conduit Street is always a delight, calling in this time at the ever-inspiring Persephone Books, and The Lamb pub for a nice glass of Young’s bitter and an adequate lunch  (perhaps not quite as good as The Perseverance a few doors down on the other side).

Boris bikes much in evidence in their racks, less so on the streets, though we did see a pair hurtling round Russell Square, and a lorry refilling a rack near King’s Cross.

The “Slightly Foxed” bookshop on Gloucester Road surprised me by being mostly second-hand (I hadn’t been concentrating) but did have a most comprehensive selection in many categories (not all properly sorted, unfortunately). But it did put me in mind of the splendid “Richmond [on Thames] Bookshop” I used to frequent 45 years ago and whence I would return to Hounslow laden with fascinating finds.

I’d forgotten too, quite how crowded the Tube can get at rush-hours — Leeds commuters don’t know what they are missing.  Our decision to use buses in London wherever possible very wise, unless of course it’s a long distance or one is in a hurry and it involves Oxford Street.

There’s a mural just off Carnaby Street which has a delightful tribute to Soho Jazz in one of its panels.

The Neckar is the most intimate, the Rhine the international superhighway, yet with wonderful sights — castles which are medieval in origin with the paraphenalia of the modern world.

The photo below is from my favourite campsite (if I have to camp at all, which I hope not to do).  On either side of the river is a double track railway line, with a constant procession of freight, international and local passenger trains, complementing the river freight.

The best of Schwabian food accompanied the trip — plus wheat beer — but into Holland the rain and wind set in — Holland has an intimate relationship with water, and mud.  Camping in something the colour and consistency of chocolate soya.