Slack Jawed Babbling

Credit: VisitScotland/Kenny Lam For the Lothian leg of the Seaside Specials, I’m revisiting a blog from 2016 that laid out the bones of a slightly unhinged early Summer return day-trip (sort of) to Perth races from home in Hertfordshire. This was an idea conceived one morning with Tim on the shuttle from Clapham Junction to Esher for the Tingle Creek meeting. I had always fancied a trip to Britain’s most northerly racetrack. Tim was a regular visitor to the June meeting when he and his other half visited her in-laws in nearby Dundee. ‘I’ll join you!” I boldly declared. By the time Spring 2016 arrived, I was still committed to the trip. I had some half-hearted squints at B&Bs and timetables, but I was already fondly recalling my first Caledonian Sleeper journey from a few years previously to Fort William . Eager to recapture something of that virgin experience, I duly booked up the sleeper either side of the Perth meeting, to arrive in Edinburgh early in the morning before the races...

Another sleeper experience. Having introduced the concept on the Night Riviera , and knowing that this series includes another two such journeys, I’ll skip the detail here and save it up for the Fort William piece. I was a Sleeper Virgin then. By the time I visited Ayr I was an old tart (but on new stock). I emerged from the train at silly-o’clock, blinking into Glasgow Central. Time to seek out breakfast and devise a plan. On Gordon Street, apart from a hubbub around the station entrance (featuring a long, ornate canopy below a renaissance style hotel. Neither had the glorious glass and wrought iron canopy of the main hall escaped my attention. It’s never too early to remark on the architectural detail…), the streets were quiet. It was, after all, before 8am on a Tuesday morning. I found the flower boxes and check tablecloths of Barolo on Mitchell Street very appealing and asked the manager who was just sweeping down the little patio area whether I was too early to be fed. I was u...

Is there anywhere finer in England than the Lake District? As a Yorkshire lad, it takes a lot for me to nod such glowing approval towards the west. But without sounding like a tourist office publication, Cumbria pretty much has it all. The region is England’s only genuinely mountainous area. It looked positively Alpine-esque on my first visit here as a callow youth, gazing up at the jags and serrations of Sca Fell Pike, Helvellyn, Great Gable and the like. I soon discovered the equally beautiful, if less dramatic, fells around Ambleside, Coniston and Grasmere; stunning passes into Buttermere and Eskdale; and sparse, squat villages like Elterwater, Boot and Glenridding. And the lakes themselves, of course. Swimming in Derwentwater on a summer evening outside the youth hostel. Stone-skimming on Wastwater under the vast bleakness of Whin Rigg. Throwing up on the shores of Crummock water after eating a rotten chicken breast. It was some while before I fully appreciated the Cumbrian c...

Across the Thames from Essex , east of London and north of Canterbury, this town is built around fishing, tourism and tarmacadum. It is famous for oysters, sunsets and real ale. Where on earth?   Actually, no prizes. The only mystery is why, with a CV like that, it took us so long to get to Whitstable. But eventually, we did. It proved to be an enormously diverting pleasure. The Neppy This was 2013 and we were meeting up again with Mrs A’s good friend Jan and partner Ian after an inexplicable 15 year gap. How does this stuff happen? The intervening period had seen them retire, become grandparents and relocate to this gem of a town in north Kent. Sat by the harbour, Mrs A and Jan had a decade and a half to catch up on, whilst Ian and I admired the refreshing and very obvious mix of real industry rubbing shoulders with assorted retail and leisure opportunities. Fish processing, coal and timber transport businesses were cheek-by-waterside jowl with restaurants, craft and gift s...