£10 “Northern Only Day Ranger”
Roaming Northern Rail
© Geoff’s Rail Diaries 2019
Geoff’s Rail Diaries
1 July 2019
It cost a little more than that - we had to get to
Crewe, and we decided to use the 9.09 Virgin
Pendolino to give us a flying start, so to speak, from
Lancaster - and by buying “Advance Single 1st” tickets,
we’d get breakfast too. Wonderful - smoked salmon
and scrambled eggs!
We rode our way back to Crewe following an itinerary
which firstly took us to Arnside (for views of the viaduct),
Morecambe (and the Midland Hotel, for mid-afternoon coffee
and cake) and Heysham Port (just one train per day!).
Returning to Lancaster, a pleasantly scenic journey brought us
to Skipton - change here for a direct electric service to
Bradford Forster Square. A welcome leg-stretch then got us to
Bradford Interchange in good time for the 17.03 (well filled,
but no trouble getting seats) to Manchester Victoria - more
enjoyable scenery, through the Calder Valley.
We could have taken the train from Victoria to Piccadilly, but
once again, a leg-stretch was preferred - not least for the
well-earned (we felt!) pint en route (and we wouldn’t have
been home any quicker) Onwards to Crewe - on the 19.01
stopper - tedious, perhaps, but we had to stay on
Northern Rail (or pay extra!).
So far, everything had been on time. At Crewe, the
slightly delayed departure of the Pendolino at platform
5 (had someone lost something critical?) meant our
train home, also due into platform 5, was about 8
minutes late. Nevertheless, it arrived at its ultimate
destination - Fishguard Harbour - a couple of minutes
early, at about 2.30am. We were, of course, home by then and
fast asleep! What a great and varied day out we’d had - on
eleven different trains, of no fewer than eight different types,
from the Pendolino and the brand-new class 195 to the
inevitable 150s and Pacers (which do, at least, allow a decent
view from their windows).
It may seem that spending the day riding around on trains is a
somewhat idle pursuit. Remarkably, our phones (they’re far
too clever for their own good!) insisted that we’d walked
about 14,000 paces.
For more photos from Arnside and Morecambe, see “Northern
Rail to North Lancashire” on Geoffspages Blog
