Back in April we had a week off work together and had decided to head down and visit a part of England we hadn’t explored much before, Somerset. Both of us had visited as children, mostly enroute to Devon and Cornwall, but neither of us had really spent any time exploring the county, other than the city of Bath, during adulthood. However, because it made complete sense, our route from Cambridgeshire to Somerset would take us via West Sussex to visit friends.
After a wintery couple of days to start our mini-break in North Yorkshire, day 3 dawned much clearer and warmer, and we were optimistic for a less dramatic attempt at reaching Whitby than the day before. We had decided that rather than risk train cancellations again that we would drive directly to Whitby, which would also allow to stop off at other places on the way back if we wanted.
Back in early January, with the Christmas and New Year chaos over and done with, we decided to have a few days away from home somewhere in the UK. North Yorkshire ended up being our destination, with a little cottage on the edge of the North York Moors National Park being our home for a few nights. As it turned out, the start of our mini break coincided with a snowstorm hitting the UK and so on the morning we were driving north, we woke up to a blanket of snow covering large parts of the UK.
On Sunday 2nd June 2024 the newest part of Scotland’s railway opened to scheduled passenger services, with the eight-mile Levenmouth branch line from the ‘Fife Circle’ to Leven re-opening to passengers after a 55-year hiatus. Just over three months later, on Tuesday 3rd September, I made my way to Edinburgh’s Haymarket station to start my own journey to visit the line and tick off Scotland’s two newest stations.
And so its here, the final part of Exploring the East Coast, my series where I’ve visited every station on the East Coast Mainline (ECML). From the major stations of London Kings Cross, York and Newcastle, to the small rarely used stations of Acklington, Chathill, Pegswood and Widdrington, there were just two stations left to tick off and in this post we’ll visit both. Unlike the majority of the other posts where I’ve visited the stations on the same day, or at least with only a short gap, life meant that I visited the first of these two stations in February 2024 and the final station of the series in September 2024.
Back in August, we headed south to Tonbridge one Friday after finishing work to stay a couple of nights in the Kentish market town. Despite the town having plenty to see and do in the vicinity, we weren’t staying in Kent to do any of that, we were staying to enable us to get an early start and leave the Garden of England by way of doing something a bit different. Saturday 17th August was the day in 2024 when old London buses took over the town of Warminster and the nearby Salisbury plain and so we were heading to Imber, by Hastings!
Flights & Times 