My taxi driver is keen to impress and drives us right onto the main station platform to drop me off. There are a few backpackers and locals hanging around, but not always trusting second hand news, I breeze into the station master’s office and enquire about today’s train. I seem to have moved into the mode of speaking loudly in English, as though I will be better understood. It seems to work here. The member of staff with the best English answers my questions and it turns out that the train is already here and ready to go in half an hour. Being a signed up member of the Tufty Club, I’m nervous at walking across tracks, but that’s required here to reach The Balkan, where it lurks on on platform 3 like a rebellious bad boy of a train.

There are no signs, clocks or screens at Topcider. It’s the sort of station that you ask where to go and which train to get on. My options today are simple as there is just one train and two carriages. The one I have a reservation in is a commuter coach and does not look like a comfortable place to be for this 12 hour journey.

Instead I find a seat in the second coach. It doesn’t look like its going to be busy today, and other than a few tourists, no one seems to care about which seat they are supposed to be sitting in.

You may have noticed the distinctive livery of The Balkan, but it’s not an official one. It seems that nearly all trains in Serbia are covered in graffiti. I have seen some so bad that I wonder how the driver can see out the front!

Right on time at 09.06 the driver hoots his horn and we set off down the line with all the doors still open. The rules on this train are in character with its external image. People smoke at the open doorways and the guards seem to view both the open doors and the cigarettes as totally normal. To compensate for this the air-conditioning is switched off and we adjust the climbing temperature by opening up the steamy and grimy windows as best as possible.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about today’s journey across Serbia is the police presence. I couldn’t work it out at first. At nearly every stop a gang of them would get on and question people before leaving. The more this happens the later the train gets and we are soon a couple of hours behind. At one place a plain clothes woman asks to see my passport and actually gets on the phone to someone to discuss my presence onboard. One of her colleagues joins in and asks me where I’m going. “Azerbaijan” I tell him, but I think he misunderstands me and thinks I have said Afghanistan. More police arrive and notes are made about my passport whilst I explain that I’m actually headed to Baku rather than Kabul. Eventually they move on; I’m not what they are looking for. They head down the carriage to interview one of the German hippies.

Later in the day a fresh squad bring a sniffer dog onto the train. All of them are armed with at least an automatic pistol and a baton. They mean business. It would seem you can choose your own gun in the Serbian police force. Most of them go for a Beretta 92F, some fitted with custom wood grips. Someone told me that no one liked the Beretta until Mel Gibson used one in the 1987  film “Lethal Weapon”. Now they all use them.

Speaking with a couple of friendly Brits at the end of the carriage, we conclude that this may be all about the flow of people from the south (Albania) toward the EU border (Bulgaria). It would seem to make sense, and if I’m ever on the run I will know now never to take a Serbian train.

As we reach the south of the country, the broken industrial landscape changes to one of mountains and meadows. Once we have left Nis, the train backs out the way we came in and we take a junction onto a single line that climbs through the mountains. It feels more like Colorado than Serbia to me. Incidentally if you are a steam fan, I noticed a whole graveyard of rusty engines outside the station there.

I chose the right carriage. As the day went on the other one began to small terribly, and I suspect that a major accident might have occurred in the single toilet. As the sun set we reached the Bulgarian border, where we surrendered passports once more. My passport was inspected so many times that I had given up putting it away. The only difference with this border was that the Bulgarian security people inspected the roof of the train and peered into voids with a long snakelike light, presumably looking for people.

I got rather confused by my timetable at this point, as a result of the names of some similar sounding places, like Dimitrovgrad, and the change in time between the two countries. The train was due to arrive at 20.19, but at 21.30 I calculated we were still two to three hours from Sofia. The wonders of the modern world saved me though, back on EU telephone roaming I figured out we were actually much closer, and in the end we arrived at around 22.00.

This journey was always going to be a bit of a challenge. I did actually find it mainly relaxing, if a little hot during the afternoon. The passengers were all charming, and the train staff and police were pleasant enough. I brought along a days food and 3 litres of water, but had run out of water several hours before we got in to Sofia. So if I was doing this again I would overstock on rations just in case. By taking this route I have broken the back of the mileage to Istanbul, with just a nearly direct night train ahead of me. By contrast the northern route via Bucharest leaves more mileage until its final day.

On arrival in Sofia a few passengers who had booked onto the Istanbul Express missed the connection, and had to get a seat on the 23.00 bus departing out front. The international ticket office closes at 21.00, so the chances are you will need to come back the next morning to sort out onward tickets even if slightly delayed. Sofia station struck me as large, clean and safe – a good place to be, with helpful staff and lots of seating. They have even placed a few steam engines around the building.

Two carriage attendants stand outside scanning the approaching travellers. Most passengers with reservations in the Croatian carriages have rucksacks and wear espadrilles. I’m the only person here without a visible tattoo. I wonder where they are going, perhaps to crew on smart yachts in the Adriatic or to play bongos and breathe fire at late summer music festivals. I seem to be the only long-range rail adventurer here.

Bob (I shall call him ‘Bob’ as I didn’t discover his real name) at first says I’m in compartment eight, then changes his mind to three, then eventually shows me to number six. Inside is a clean and well laid out home for the night, set up for me as the sole occupant – there are two further berths, the top one is incredibly high up. My dreams come true and there is both air conditioning and a fully functional opening window. But I’m roasting and sweaty from manoeuvring all my bags, so I dump them and join the guards back out on the platform to enjoy some cool late evening air.

We eventually set off on time at 11.35, and the carriage feels incredibly smooth. Stealing as many pillows as a dare from spare berths I retire for the night. Before I settle in Bob reminds me twice to lock my door and tells me that we have a border inspection at around 08.00am, so there is time for a reasonable sleep once I have rigged an improvised cover out of duct tape for the night light that seems bright enough to illuminate a small town.

I wake early to the sound of silence. We are sat in a station in Slovenia surrounded by goods wagons. There has been much shunting in the night, and can I remember most of this as the lights and air conditioning switch off each time the engine is uncoupled from the train. Outside there is weird weather. Low clouds drop from the mountains and blanket the valley tops. The sun is blocked from view until it slowly burns through the early morning haze.

The crossing into Croatia is uneventful and Bob serves me a cup of coffee and a long-life croissant in my compartment before we arrive in Zagreb at just after 08.30.

This has been a very comfortable run, only slightly spoiled by feeling a need to wake early in case the train reaches the border whilst you are still in bed. Speaking of beds, this one has been wide compared to other European sleepers and very comfortable. I wouldn’t like to be in the top berth though, unless ropes are provided along with a complimentary course in belay climbing. The only other slight negative has been the two tiny toilets, both of which have been without water and one without electricity.

“Although the temperature outside is now well below zero, I am lying in the snug and sweaty darkness of a seriously overheated Chinese train compartment. After about half an hour tossing and turning I have a bit of a moment and finally lose my self-control in a high-temperature-induced panic. I feel an urgent and desperate need for fresh air. I need to do something, anything, so I grab my tool kit, get out some pliers and begin to remove the bolts around the frame that obviously keeps the window closed. There are eight bolts, and I remove them one by one and put them each carefully on my table like I’m working on an unexploded bomb. My compartment door is locked, so as long as we don’t stop at a station I can continue my work unobserved by Li and Chen, my minders. The bolts are now all out, but the window still won’t open. I push, shove and try and slide it in all directions. Nothing happens. Taking a break, and sitting on my berth I scratch my head and wish that I were a qualified engineer. Why won’t the window open? I realise that I’m going to have to admit defeat to living in a sauna. But then in a horrible single moment of mechanical deduction, the reason it’s not opening finally dawns on me. This window is fixed shut and, unlike the windows in the corri­dor, has no opening part. What I have actually done is to unbolt the entire window and its frame from the carriage. At this moment there is nothing other than ice and grime holding the window onto the rattling and bumping carriage as we sway down the line towards Irkutsk.”

It would of course have been highly amusing to imagine me trying to explain to the Chinese officials why the window in my compartment was absent from the train in the heart of the Siberian winter. But the two viewpoints of fear and hilarity also made me think about the richness of adventure. When I first started out as a long range rail traveller I tried to plan everything so carefully. The smallest problem stood out as a personal crisis, and I was always worrying about something trivial. It is only over time and with some miles under my belt that I now see most problems as actually generally good things. Not only do they give me something interesting to write about, but they seem to make me a better traveller. So as I have raised my game as a rail adventurer, and now an author, I have actually learned to embrace the odd crisis. I’m also a bit more chilled out now too. By accepting that these things will happen and I will overcome them, I seem to become a more open minded, confident, and a more flexible person.

My first book is about my rediscovery of the joy of long distance train travel. After a longer gestation period than I had planned, it was finally published this week. Trans-Siberian Adventures is based on my first ever journey across Siberia – from Edinburgh to Shanghai.

My original blog has proved to be a useful journal, but the book has allowed me to take my writing to a new place – one that perhaps only two years ago I would not have imagined. I have been able to write about my experiences in much more detail and to provide what I feel is a more real insight into life on the rails. Blogging on the move has become a daily ritual of my travel, but like an artist, this is really just an initial sketch, rather than the full painting.

I feel I should point out that the photo at the top of this post might imply my impending custody in a Korean jail. I have to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. I found Korean policemen to be the nicest law enforcement agency that I have ever encountered. This gives me a closing thought, one that I also mention in the book. It doesn’t matter if you don’t speak a word of the same
language; nearly all people in this world are innately kind and generous to
strangers. Don’t be put off travel by what you read in the newspapers.

I really hope you enjoy my book and that it might inspire you to give long range rail adventure a try. You can read more about Trans-Siberian Adventures on my book page. Please let me know what you think.

First the bad news. Interrail isn’t as simple as it used to be. I would expect it to be more expensive, but it’s also now more complicated than it used to be. The need for reservations and supplements seems now to undermine the freedom that it once gave me. Interrailler’s also seem on occasions to be second class citizens, with limited open reservations on some trains. It used to be great to be able to hop on any train and sort it out with the conductor in the old days, but I’m not convinced that is going to work any more. Add to this that I’m keen for a proper bed on the night trains, and a supplement and reservation is needed for any night trains anyway. The price of these at short notice seems the same with or without an Interrail ticket on some of the trains I need to use. To cut a long story short, I’m going to buy my tickets one by one, as I go along. This will be probably be slightly more expensive, but it gives me ultimate flexibility. I will pay more for those last minute tickets, but it seems like the way to go to feel “free”. Interrail is just not the deal it once was. My 2nd class £150 “all you can eat” for a month student ticket in 1987 now costs £489 (as an over 26 year old) before adding on the reservation supplements, which will be several hundred pounds with the sleepers, and of course the Eurostar, which also isn’t included.

There are some other challenges too. The territorial and political landscape of Europe is quite different in some places to how it looked 30 years ago. Last time I went to Istanbul I travelled through Yugoslavia and on to Greece, crossing from Thessaloniki into Turkey. I had to totally avoid countries behind the Iron Curtain, such as Bulgaria and Hungary. These days there is no longer a rail link between Greece and Turkey, but on the plus side, Eastern Europe is mainly visa free. It’s not an easy time to be travelling in some of these parts, and I have considered my security carefully. There are of course risks, but to me they are acceptable.

I have packed my train kit up this week. I’m trying to carry far less than I normally do for the Siberian winter. I have just a single big bag, and if my scales are right, it only weighs 13kg. Add to this my mobile office – a shoulder camera bag, and its the most “alpinist” I have ever been on my rail adventures so far. In case you were wondering, the Iban shield is staying at home, it just lives in my hallway!
I was thinking over breakfast yesterday about my experiences from all that time ago, and what advice my 21 year old self would now give my 49 year old self getting back on the rails of Southern Europe. As a student I might have had little money, but I also had few worries and no real perception of possible dangers or what might go wrong. Young people might not have great life experience, but they are mainly positive and optimistic. Taking chances and being unorganised are all part of the Interrail spirit of adventure. These days I tend to over plan (is there such a thing?) and work through endless scenarios of disaster before setting off. So I think my student self would probably tell me to “chill out”, relax, and have fun. Being a happy Interrailer is all about living in the moment and not worrying about the past or the future. My 49 year old self would probably encourage my younger self to engage better with local people, avoid McDonalds at all costs, and to try and speak a few words of local lingo.

I know the route I’m planning to take now, at least as far as Istanbul. After some research on the original route of the Orient Express, I realise that there are several routes, and none can be achieved exactly in the modern world as they were in the last century. I’m going to travel from Paris to Munich, Munich to Budapest, Budapest to Bucharest, then try my luck at the train and bus routing from Bucharest to Istanbul. The engineering works on the railway lines in and out of Turkey have made train travel all the way impossible for several years now. I had been waiting for this to be fixed, but my impatience has got the better of me – I’m going for it,  train or no train for the last leg from the Turkish border into Istanbul. I’m planning to exit Turkey via Sofia, and then decide if I’m going south to Greece, or north to the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

The interweb has of course made planning such a journey much easier than it was in the 1980’s. I won’t carry a printed timetable with me this trip. A combination of Seat 61, and the DB navigator app give me almost all that is needed. Just add TripAdvisor for some ideas on accommodation and what to see, and I have nearly all that I need. You would think it would be easier to book tickets too, but I have found this quite hard so far, in the end buying some of my tickets over the phone. Many can only be purchased cost effectively at the station in the local country. I had the most luck with Voyages SNCF.

I shall update as the journey progresses. Its not too late to join in!

There was some excitement at expedition HQ this week when a package arrived from from the team behind the European Rail Timetable. I last held “The Bible” back in 1988 and it was an immediate trip of nostalgia into past European rail adventures. Back then it was produced by Thomas Cook who had been printing the “continental” timetable since 1873. Today it still produced in the familiar format, and is now run independently since Thomas Cook discontinued their involvement in 2013.

In today’s world to some it would perhaps be inconceivable that there was a time when there were no smartphones, and the only way to plan a trip was using a paper timetable. Yet on my trips around Europe in the 1980’s the guide was probably the second most important possession that I carried after my trusty blue coloured British passport. But it was more than just something that told you how to get from A to B. It had a certain spiritual and comforting quality about it. When the chips were down it could always be called upon to provide a solution. As disciples we studied the special language of notes and symbols. It became indispensable. I had not realised how much of a devotee I had become until I lost it.

I remember the day well. I was on Nice station platform with two school friends, feeling rather smug at having just completed the run down to Marrakech and back without too many problems. The supermarket supply run had been completed, and we were concentrating on securing our own compartment on the night train to Rome. Bagging a compartment back then involved either sending one person in at each end of the carriage in a pincer movement, or sometimes even bundling one person through the window in middle of the carriage.

My role on this occasion was the easy one – to look after the bags whilst the compartment was grabbed in our well rehearsed tactical manoeuvre. The guide was right next to me on a bench as this went on. At this point I was distracted by a couple of rather easy on the eye ladies on the opposite platform. I must have been day dreaming, as the next thing I remember was looking back and seeing the train slowly gliding away from me. Rowan Atkinson has rather stolen this sketch from me in his “Mr Bean’s Holiday” movie. I needed to run for it, but that wouldn’t look very cool, so I kind of casually walked backwards a few steps towards the train before turning and jumping on. I made it to the carriage behind the one I needed – I should mention that the train wasn’t speeding, just going at a walking pace and there were no locking doors back then.

Whilst this was a thankful outcome for me, it left two problems. The immediate one was that I was in a couchette carriage and it was locked at both ends, and the less immediate but far more serious was that I was guilty of leaving our trusty and semi religious rail timetable on the platform bench. The rest of that trip we felt somewhat listless and without a properly planned route. The lack of our own timetable meant we could make it from A to B, but had no idea where C was going to be until we got to B, or that it might have been more interesting to go via D.

Today it clear to see how we have become conditioned to search for what we think we need online. Rail operators suggest routes that they think we are looking for, but little known alternatives and options can be hidden from the results. The conditioning effect is that you start to imagine that they don’t exist or are not possible on the dates you type into your screen.

The first thing that crossed my mind on consulting my new Bible was that if I am to recreate the correct route of Orient Express, I should consider the “boat train” to Paris. Many of us will forget that before we dug the Channel Tunnel this was the norm, but today jumping on the Eurostar is the default choice. The printed timetable shows me the ferry connections to take me from London to Paris together with connecting trains. I can also see a much wider variety of routes across South Eastern Europe. I have become too reliant on following the online route suggestions of others, sometimes in isolation of the alternatives.

The remaining winter nights will fly by as I create routes and connections of my own by carefully scanning the pages and relearning the codes and conventions of the European rail timetable. Of course I will still use this in conjunction with online timetables, but like going walking in the mountains with just a GPS, I shall have a map and compass (aka the Bible) with me as well.

Anyway fortune smiled on me at hotel’s check the in desk, something about being an Elite member, a junior suite, and the 38th floor was all I really recall hearing, oh and also mention of free drinks in the Executive Lounge. It must be spiritual payback for all the fun and games in Germany!

Although all I really wanted to do was to lie down, I dropped my bags off and headed out for a feast in a restaurant I know in the “old town”. For “old town” please read as something tastefully rebuilt after 1945. Lunch consisted of Russian dumplings followed by a pork escalope served with sourkraut, all washed down with a cold Zyivitz beer. I didn’t achieve much else that day, as by the time I got back to the hotel I was a spent force having had no real sleep in three days. The amazing views out the window were a bit wasted on me as I was fast asleep!

I had saved the most important mission until the next day. A visit to the Polish Armed Forces Museum to view their Enigma machines. If like me you have recently seen “The Imitation Game” then you might have done some reading on the subject. I had not previously not known about the work of the Polish mathematicians and the French intelligence gathering. The Poles had virtually cracked the code in 1939 before the Nazis added another rotor to the machine.

They shared everything with the British and their work at Bletchley Park. Today the museum has two machines, one “commercial” machine and one Kreigsmarine machine donated by Great Britain to Poland in the 1980’s.

The rain has cleared up today and been replaced by a biting wind from the east. It is a reminder that the weather will not be mild where I am headed for much longer. Time now to pack and prepare for the next leg. It’s going to get all “Cold War” tonight, so I hope my papers are in order!

The EN447 “Jan Kiepura” is a good train (note – seemingly now also being called the “Berlin – Warsaw Express”). It bashes through Germany in the middle of the night with the minimum of fuss and tooting. I have reviewed the journey on this blog before if you want to look back under the “Poland” label to the right of this page.

Last night after not getting on the train until after midnight, I found it hard to settle down. A cold can of pilsner helped, and my routine was quickly in place, including a “pillow raid” using my secret rail key.

The problem was about the quality of my sleep. Carriage 180 is a proper old school blue painted wagon-lit, and I can’t fault it. I have been on it several times before and It is in fact the type of compartment I would happily have on any train if there were a choice. Everything on board is spotlessly clean, safe, and works well. The WARS conductor is always super friendly. But yet I found sleep elusive even though I was pretty tired. Firstly there is the noise of wind ripping past the window, the vacuum of the tunnels and the random banging and clattering in the corridor. Secondly, there is the insane roller coaster feel of movement in all directions as the train tucks in and out of the suburban sprawl of Germany at some pace on what feel like banked corners. Thirdly, there is the bed itself. It’s quite firm and great if you sleep on your back, but not so good if you prefer other positions, having little room on either side and no “give”. I tried a few new train positions in an attempt to nod off – “the stork”, “the angry fireman”, and “the bricklayer”. All I need is a good illustrator and I might have the idea for a tastefully done new best seller.. It’s the title of this blog.

Anyway, I decided to get up and on with the day just after 08.00am with a stiff back, neck and shoulders after a night of tossing and turning. There is a really good restaurant carriage that gets attached to this train at the Polish border, but I’m saving myself for a cabbage and dead animal based feast at lunchtime. I am however enjoying what I rate to be one of the world’s finer onboard cups of coffee..that is until I get out my portable espresso machine (seriously!). The train is due into Warsaw in a little under three hours and then I’m on a 24 hour R&R to recharge my batteries before heading further east. I’m going to spend some time on the trail of the Polish Enigma story.

I’m actually really pleased to have been hit by a minor train based crisis today. I needed something to rebase my reactions to a relatively minor travel problem in the grand plan. The experience has instantly given me back my train mojo. I’m not a religious person, but it has also given me a great lesson in having faith, both in myself and in those around me.

My journey started off auspiciously enough in Amsterdam, when my ICE 227 train whirred out of the station and whizzed down the line in the direction of Frankfurt (carriage 29, seat 71 for the record). My first destination was due to be Oberhausen, the new start point for the cut back EN447 “Jan Kiepura” service to Warsaw.

So I settled in and relaxed, knowing I had a 76 minute layover between the two trains. About 90 minutes into the two hour trip all the connecting passengers were summoned to the Bordbistro (bar car), towards the middle of the train. The guards have a neat little office there. It turns out the overhead electrification had totally failed at Emmerich (close to the German border) and we were going to be stranded. What was the plan..? “Go back to your seat, we are working on it” was the loose translation, so I did as I was told. About half an hour later I was summoned again (and this time told to bring my luggage) along with all the passengers connecting east to Berlin, Prague, Vienna and Warsaw. Organised chaos, with lots of luggage.

Clearly no one was too impressed by the situation, but no one was complaining either. What you could see in the bar were four DB Bahn employees working on a cunning plan – several in fact.. The first wasn’t actually that cunning – get the connecting passengers separated from the others and sneak them quickly off on a bus to our destination, maybe half an hour away, where we could possibly still make our original connections. Cutting a long story short, the bus didn’t turn up fast enough and we were not going to make it.

Much discussion in three languages on the wet and windy platform (now at Wessel) and plan C was hastily devised – take a bus from Wessel to Dortmund where we might be able to catch the now missed connection to Warsaw and Prague. At this point I didn’t have a map, but I remember the rather circuitous route of the train that went from Arnhem to Cologne and then back towards Dortmund in a “v” shaped journey south then doubling back to the north east. I didn’t hold out much hope, but had little option than to go with the flow. Once we were all on the bus, I booted up my Google map and lo and behold, it did seem possible with some luck. My train that had left Oberhausen at 21.30 didn’t leave Dortmund until 23.56. It felt a bit like a “Top Gear Challenge” – Matthew in the bus, Jurgen in the train, who will get to Dortmund Hbf first?

I was ready for a bit of a panic stricken arrival at Dortmund, but in the end we actually arrived there with more than 20 minutes in hand – so I got to make my first ever “Silver Streak” connection – it’s the one where you miss your train but catch it up by other means, and manage to get back on it. It’s worth 1000 points in your I-Spy book of international rail travel..!

A brief reflection on the experience. Firstly there was my poor reaction to a problem that I couldn’t control. I have given myself a good talking too, as there is just absolutely no point in thinking negatively – I should take solace that I didn’t get at all angry about it though. Secondly the black comedy. There was a moment when I realised a functional toilet might be hours away and had to get back on the train with my luggage out on the platform. At which point whilst doing my business, I thought the train was about to leave the station. This resulted in an emergency evacuation before the doors were closed! Thirdly the camaraderie of my fellow passengers, who were all brilliant at translating for each other and helping each other with luggage. Fourthly, the leadership and professionalism of the DB guards who donned fluorescent bibs, got their phones out, fixed our problem and took us like refugees to Dortmund. I’m not sure that would ever happen in the UK.

Let’s hope this will be the only glitch in this year’s mission!

In passing there is a very high profile campaign at the moment warning visitors about the dangers of buying drugs on the street. As I understand, it’s a batch of dodgy white heroin as a substitute for cocaine. Even my bus driver tells me to go to a coffee shop for my drugs. If only she were to know that the purpose of my visit to Amsterdam was in fact Trans-Siberian exploration…

I spent much of the day on a few fairly mundane housekeeping tasks. These included using my new VPN app on the iPad to download the penultimate episode of “The Apprentice” (this possibly needs a whole post as much to my amazement, as its a bit of tech that works), uploading various blogs and treating myself to a rather fiery and pimped up Nasi Goreng “Nonya” in my favourite Malay place at the back of the red light district.

Amsterdam has been rebuilding its historic station for a long time now, and from what I can see it’s almost complete. What I discovered today is that it presents its best side to those using platform 2, the line that serves the German high speed trains to Frankfurt. Here you are treated to a choice of nice bars and coffee shops as well as a small but comfy first class lounge, all just a few feet from the platform. Perfect! In fact if you were new to Amsteram CentraaI, I would suggest just you forget about the rest of the station and hang out on platform 2 until your train is due to depart. Elsewhere in the station there is now a piano in the main concourse (which is free for anyone to play) and an ever wider choice of slightly weird Dutch snack foods in plastic boxes.

So just to update you on my progress. I took the East Coast train from Edinburgh down to Newcastle in the morning. A very smooth 90 minute journey. I travelled on the Aberdeen to Kings Cross train (seat 55, coach M for the log book), and there was a fine vista of sea views with a low winter sun peering over the hills behind me once we reached the Borders. Mrs Richards from “Fawtly Towers” would undoubtedly have been impressed, as any train closer to the sea would actually be in the sea.. “Toad in the Hole” was on the 1st Class menu, but I abstained as I was meeting an old friend for lunch in Newcastle.

I headed out to North Shields in the afternoon to catch the overnight DFDS ferry “M.V. King Seaways” to Imjuden. (Just in case you are a ship anorak, it used to be known as “M.V. The King of Scandinavia”). The ship is full of detailed models of the boat and I’m reminded of that scene in “The Spy Who Loved Me” where James Bond (Roger Moore, sans safari suit) suspiciously eyes up Herr Stromberg’s model of his latest supertanker (the one that swallows nuclear submarines). What a film – perhaps my personal favourite, as it is my favourite Bond and favourite Bond car. Don’t get me started, but if you were a small boy in 1977, seeing Q drive the Lotus Esprit off the ferry in Sardinia was pant wettingly exciting.

The boat is pretty comfy and has a mixed bunch of passengers, but on this trip mainly Dutch Christmas shoppers with bags of presents from various slightly dull British high street stores. I wonder how they market Newcastle as a glamourous mini cruise destination in Amsterdam?! Dutch men like a good smoke, and the decks have a gentle fog of rough shag and cheap cigars. No sign of the “Geordie Shore” community today, so they are either asleep in their cabins (unlikely) or out partying in Newcastle. I bet the DFDS marketing analysts have a proper segmentation of who travels when, but of course it’s a secret to you and I. I mention this as this time last year I recall someone actually managed to set fire to one of the cabins in an alcohol fuelled misadventure.

If you are wondering about “The Columbus Club”, sadly it’s not a secret explorers society but the ship’s main nightclub on deck 9. It’s well run and offers the possibility of a freshly made strawberry daiquiri or a half litre of foamy Heineken. I’m really only here to people watch, as this boat has a club within a club – a “deluxe” Commodore Club class with suites and a private lounge. I’m treating myself for not much cash and mindful that my next boat will be Korean, and I’m sharing a dorm room with seven other passengers in third class. I’m getting a bit mean in my old age and the £800 for a very simple private cabin with a mat on the floor felt totally wrong. More of the consequences of this decision to come in a few weeks time!

Finally, just in case I forget, just a note to thank you very much for reading my blog, and especially those who have managed to motivate and inspire me to crack on with this new route. Please do feel free to share it with anyone you think might like it..

(Apologies for some slightly rough formatting here – I’m trying to sort a few things out)