Railway Boys

"For The Fallen"

On Saturday, the three boys went out for a day on the trains, so I'll let Matt describe.  I stayed at home and caught up on cake orders.  I brought in over £350 of orders so quite a good result for me.

Yes, Saturday was a boys' day out, courtesy of one of Northern Rail's occasional newspaper token days out. It was a foul day, so sitting on trains seemed like as good a way as any to avoid the downpours. Tom, Grandpa and I left Settle around 9.30 and headed to Leeds, where we only had to wait around 15 minutes before our next train, to Manchester via a number of proper old Pennine towns - Halifax, Hebden Bridge, Mytholmroyd ...

Lunch at Umezushi

Manchester Victoria station has recently emerged from a super-expensive multi-year refurbishment, so we were hoping that there might be somewhere pleasant/interesting to have lunch. Fat chance. All we could find was a Starbucks and a formulaic pub that was right down at the bottom of the Trip Advisor rankings. However, the same website indicated that there was a decent Japanese restaurant only a couple of minutes walk away, so off we splashed through the puddles. Well worth the trip. Umezushi was a nice looking place, with pleasant staff and nice yakitori at sensible prices. We ate well.

Thence back through the rain to the station, where we boarded an ancient old all-stations diesel train to Preston, where we tried to avoid a few hundred football fans before heading back east through yet more proper old Pennine towns (Blackburn, Accrington, Burnley...) to Bradford. We had enough time for a quick tea and a bun in Patisserie Valerie, which probably cost more than a full meal for 4 at the Kashmir would have!
Our journey home involved the electric train to Keighley, followed by a "rubbish train" to Giggleswick, where Nik met us with the car. We then dropped Grandpa off at home and had the usual excellent grub at the Harts Head before heading home.

Anyway, it was a nice day out, through some lovely scenery (despite the grim weather), and the Japanese lunch was definitely a bonus.

Assuming Arriva Rail North (the next franchise operator) carried on with these rover tickets, we'll try and go round the Cumbrian coast next time.

On Sunday, we had another quiet day, hoping to recharge Tom after his day out yesterday in time for school on Monday.   It was a horrible day so Tom spent the morning finishing off his thank you cards. We then headed into Settle so he could get a sound chip installed in his new train (birthday present to himself from all his birthday money) and then we headed up to the cafe in Horton-in-Ribblesdale for lunch.  I had a banana and lime pickle toastie (it sounded interesting and it was - not sure if it was sweet or savoury or hot or cold,  don't think I will have it again!)  We then returned home and watched films whilst cuddled up on the sofa.