Plymouth to London

Awoke to a lovely sunny day in Plymouth after two days of low cloud and mist. We couldn’t stay to enjoy it unfortunately.

We had about a forty minute walk from the guest house through Plymouth City Centre to the train station. The centre of Plymouth was destroyed by bombing in WW2 and so all the main shopping/commercial centre is relatively new. There is a long wide pedestrian mall running right through the shopping precinct. Almost every building is designed in what would have been the height of 1950/1960s modernist architecture. Sixty years on it all looks slightly depressing. Every façade is perfectly composed and proportioned, simple geometric shapes, no decoration, little colour, mostly white or grey, refined detailing, the ultimate ‘less is more’. It’s interesting as a snapshot in time but it all looks so serious. I think it desperately needs some whimsey and idiosyncrasy. Some one to poke some fun at the rules.

From Plymouth we took ‘The Cornishman’ Great Western Railway train to Paddington London. About a 230 mile journey in 3 hours twenty minutes. An eight coach train, including a first class coach at the rear and a restaurant car. It was very comfortable, quiet and punctual. Five stops along the way, four near the Plymouth end of the line and the fifth at Reading about half an hour from London. It took about half the time of our bus trip from London to Westward Ho! but then it cost a bit more than twice as much.

We had booked and paid for train tickets before leaving home but had to collect the tickets at the train station. This involved inserting the same debit/credit card used to pay for the tickets into a machine, typing in a seven digit code that had been emailed to us, and hey presto out popped our tickets. And we got the credit card back!

After five and a half weeks away we are back at the Shakespeare Hotel in Norfolk Square. A different room, this time on the first floor. A room that makes us smile. The largest dimension is the height! It is tiny but we love it as it has large French doors onto our own little balcony overlooking the trees and gardens in the square. We can still imagine we are out in the English countryside not in the heart of one of the biggest cities in the world.