In my blog notes yesterday I said we had decided to go with Northern Trains today in the hope of a couple of slow and relaxing train trips. In retrospect this may not have been the best decision - we got the slow, but the relaxing sort of escaped us. We had an Anytime Day Return for today, so there was no need to rush to catch any particular train, and once we got to the station there was a train due soon. However, we waited, and waited, but it didn't come. Then the next Leeds train came but the Northern Rail guy on the platform said it wasn't the Leeds train - even though the sign on the train said it was. Then he asked the driver who also didn't seem sure, which was just a bit disconcerting. Finally though he called someone who said that yes, it's the Leeds train, so we jumped onboard. Of course it was a bit more crowded than we expected because of the one that had gone missing, but we got seats and settled in for the trip.
Eventually we got to Leeds and found our way to the Museum, of course after a small delay for coffee :-)
We spent about 3 hours looking at the exhibits - mostly they're behind glass so photography is a lost cause, but we did have a really good look around. Here are a couple of photos anyway:
Battle armour for an elephant. It take three staff members just to lift the headpiece.
The obligatory photo of Paul with guns.
This museum always gets favourable reviews, and I can see why - there's a huge range of items on display and they're all explained well. There are also other displays of course - movies and models and screen based information. I did two separate computer based 'tests' where they explain to you the background of a battle and then offer you some simple options about what decision the commander who ultimately lost should make at a particular point. I'm pleased to say that at both Isandlwana and the Battle of Pavia I got better results than the original 'man in charge'! The only major disappointment was a huge model of the battlefield at Waterloo that seemed to have been set up so that lights over it would come on in conjunction with a video display, but the lights weren't working.
Here are a couple of other photos of Leeds:
Statue of the Black Prince
Interesting bridge over the canal / river
Due to our late start and delayed train, once we had finished in the museum it was basically time to go back to Manchester but this trip was even more problematic than the trip to Leeds. There were four trains due to go to Manchester in the next hour and all but one of them was showing as delayed, or probably delayed, because of an accident earlier in the day.
"Delays" wouldn't normally throw me, but these particular delays included having to catch a bus for a segment of the trip and I wasn't really comfortable with that idea, given that we don't know the problem area (Halifax / Bradford) at all.
So, we decided to catch the one that wasn't delayed (it didn't go to those stations), only to have that train completely vanish from the monitors. OK, I thought, we may as well catch the earlier 'delayed' one so we got on what we hoped was the right train, although we weren't at all sure. Eventually the guard made an announcement that it was the train we thought it was, and that the line had now been re-opened and there was no need for bus transfers.
All good, but then part-way through the trip they announced that we would now be stopping at about 8 or 9 more stations than originally planned :-)
Anyway, we eventually got back to Manchester, only 20 minutes or so late. Not a huge drama for us of course, we're on holiday, but on both trips there were a lot of disgruntled passengers muttering not so quietly about missed appointments and hopeless train companies ....
I'm also not going to pretend to understand how they decide whether or not to check the tickets on a train. On the way to Leeds they checked the tickets twice, and both times I got caught out and had to hunt for my ticket in my purse. On the way back I held it in my hand the whole way and they didn't check once......
We only have one more big train trip now - the trip to London on Thursday. It's with Virgin Trains which still makes me nervous, so we'll just have to see how it goes.
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