Arrived at the hotel in Aberdeen about 9.30pm. Listening to the sound of sea gulls as I write this. A clear night and very cold. Trip up on the trains with the bikes has gone much better than I thought it might have. Hebden Bridge station was great - lots of local characters in the old fashione station cafe where we enjoyed a very tasty bacon buttyand a mug of tea whie waiting for the train. Mum very kindly drove us over to Hebden Bridge with bikes, and waited to wave us off on the two carriage local train from Hebden Bridge to York via Braford and Leeds. An hours wait then on a very drafty York station, my bright fluorescent yellow gloves had their first outing.
A very helpful railway guy told us where to stand with the bikes on the platform and also helped us get the bikes and panniers on board into the guards van area of the train, as we didn't have much time when the train pulled in - we transferred onto the main London to Aberdeen train, via York, Newcastle and Edinburgh - so don't like hanging around. It's hard to be quick with2 bikes, 12 pieces of baggage, a small rucksack, a carrier bag and two helmets. Novel bike rack - you hung the bikes by their front wheel off hooks on the partition.
The train was ram jam packed full of people, took us 15 minutesto get from the guards van area at the front of train to our allotted seats in the middle of the train - caught behind the refreshment trolly for part of the way. Wondered why we were getting so many strange looks - then glanced behind and saw that Roger was wearing his cycle helmet which makes him look just like a horse jockey.
Lovely views on the way up - great evening light - pitch black though by the time we arrived. Pushed our bikes to the hotel - only took 5 mins or so - didn't think it was wise to ride the fully loaded bikes for the first time this trip in the dark, on busy roads in a city we havent visited before.
Amazingly the hotel is fully booked tomorrow, so looks like we will be ctching the ferry to Lerwick, Shetland Isles tomorrow teatime, arriving 7.30am Thursday morning - Rogers birthday. The lady at the station said ithad snowed a bit today - cerainly very cold and a bracing wind.
Am using my new note book to write this - a very annoying keyboard in that many of the keys need a very form press before they register - the worst offenders being the space bar and the a, iand e keys.Very frustrating. Also I havent loaded Office so usedthe basic word processing programme on the notebook to compose myfirst blog on the move - but then discovered that I couldn't copy i tinto this blog posting - so have had to rewrite it, and then the internet connection on my 'dongle' keeps going.So learning the new skills for me ofhaving to learn to go offline as I compose.
Roger snoring away beside me as I type this posting, so time to enjoy the luxury of a bath,which might be the last I have for quite a while now.
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