Having arrived in York onboard a Grand Central from Peterborough, leg 2 of my trip to the north-west of England would take me across the Pennines and into the north-west itself. This leg I would be taking the first of two journeys on this trip with TransPennie Express, or TPE, from the Yorkshire capital all the way to Liverpool. I’d be travelling in 1st Class for both my journeys with TPE to see the differences between their different offerings and to hopefully enjoy more relaxed journeys on my two day train marathon across England.

With my AvGeek posts such as ‘Heathrow – Spotting at Myrtle Avenue’ and ‘Luton – Spotting Around the Airport’ performing weirdly well on the blog, the end of June saw me heading out on a two-day trip planned around doing some spotting and writing some more of that type of post. But as well as some AvGeeking, I’d made the most out of this trip, fitting in plenty of rail journeys, starting with this one from Peterborough to York with Grand Central.

Arriving into Helsinki on the Tuesday afternoon, I’d spent the evening settling into my accommodation and exploring some of the local area, and you’ll be able to read about that when my Helsinki post is published in a few weeks’ time. However, before I explored Helsinki proper, I’d decided to also see another part of Finland and so headed to Helsinki Central Station to catch a train to Tampere.

Following an enjoyable and relaxing few days in Glasgow and Corrour, it was time to head home and after making our way back to Glasgow and across to Edinburgh with ScotRail, the final leg of our Scottish adventure awaited. LNER were taking us back south along the East Coast Mainline (ECML) to Peterborough and, as with the trip north, we’d managed to get 1st Class upgrades with Seatfrog.

April saw us starting another trip to Scotland at Peterborough station, waiting for an LNER service to the Scottish capital, Edinburgh. I’ve reviewed the trip to and from Scotland with LNER plenty of times, so you can check out those previous posts on the blog, but this time I’d be travelling with Beth and we’d upgraded via Seatfrog rather than buying 1st class tickets upfront.