Harrogate is now on our 'return to' list but we will also visit nearby Knaresborough as being less than ten minutes away by train it too looked worthy of a visit. Harrogate seems a well to do sort of place with some higher end shops, plenty of nice looking bars and restaurants, pleasant parks and some lovely architecture as well. There was certainly too much to see and do during our hastily planned visit to this historic spa town. Our journey from Derby to Harrog...

Whitby is not the easiest place to get to by train however the long journey is well worth the effort, whether for a fish and chip lunch, the attractive town itself or the scenery that you can admire en-route. This was also the first time that we have arrived into Whitby by train. Our journey from Derby started on the 07.13 CrossCountry service to Darlington, where we then changed for a Northern service to Middlesbrough before taking the 10.28 departure to Whitby...

I am not sure where the River Thames finishes and the North Sea really starts, but I think it may actually be slightly beyond Southend. The map on the world famous pleasure pier even shows the water as being the River Thames so I guess that 'on-Sea' is a little bit of poetic licence and from a marketing point of view it sounds much better than Southend-on-Thames Estuary. Southend is about an hour's train journey from central London and you have a couple of optio...

Having whizzed past St Albans many times on the train and looked across to see the massive cathedral on the hill it was a welcome visit to somewhere new that we did with our good friends John and Rita. We arrived at St Albans City railway station which is about a half a mile walk from the centre and conveniently provides good connections for trains from Derby. Our Wednesday visit coincided with market day so the centre was busy with people, but a walk around t...

This is the first Christmas/New Year period where there has not been the need to think about how to best use those very precious annual leave days. Taking Christmas Eve as a day off always seemed a waste as did the days between Boxing Day and New Years Day as there would be very few people in work and invariably it would be used as a time to catch up on e-mails, filing and tidying up ready for the start of the next year. It was so nice not to have to worry about ...