No trains today. It was a strike day on the trains in the UK. To some extent I follow the news from the UK so this wasn’t a surprise to me (and to some extent parts of our trip were planned with this in mind. I’m not sure how much this kind of thing would be easy to find information on for someone who wasn’t aware of the current industrial action.)
Instead my brother and his family came down to visit and we had an excellent day picnicking, chatting, playing cricket, and laughing.
I did discover an old falling apart copy of the Thomas Cook European train map and started using it to think about the next leg of the trip
This map also proved to illustrate the route my brother took when he did interrail as a student about 30 years ago. It was, as you will see, a hardcore route, managing to take in Norway and Greece as well as many points in between. I also heard for the first time some new interrail tales, such as the time they were chased around Brindisi by youths on scooters.
Sadly, as ever, there isn’t really the chance to take too much time off interrailing because you have to be thinking about your next move. Like a physical but fairly stupid chess player. Or something. Once again we are stymied by the lack of spaces on trains across the Channel, and we have to get over the water by boat, which again is hard work. Though the hardest bit is getting through England to actually get to the sea – dealing with strikes and bizarre delays…
To which end, the next post I put on this blog threatens to be very long indeed, as I write this from the middle of the travelpocalypse that represents Day 19…
Low-cost midlife crisis 
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