And we're off!!

Exeter to Reading 

Sunday 04:05 (BST) - Reading

Its 4:00 a.m. or 8:30 a.m  India time and i'm wide awake, the switching to India time before we fly seems to have worked. Sarah who is still on UK time is trying to sleep but not having much luck, not to sure why, the bed was ok. She has just mumbled something sounded like "cupid hat" and "f***ing browsing the web at 4 in the morning". Her eyes are shut so i expect she is dreaming or  having a nightmare.

The journey from Okehampton by train was ok, and hopefully the most uncomfortable part of the trip. There was less leg room than on a Ryan Air Airbus Cram-em-in 320. As they say we "Let train take the strain" rather than driving, what they don't tell you is if you're 6ft 3 you get the back and neck ache instead, but we got here in roughly one piece which was good.

We had decided to make the most of our joint 138 kg baggage allowance,  after all we are going to be in India for 5 months. So the 6 cases (plus two carry on bags another 30 kgs) were packed with such essentials as 4 kgs of coffee, two full size memory foam pillows, and a wall safe with 4 tubes each of epoxy resin and hardener to stick it down on arrival. The safe actually weighed less than the coffee.

So how heavy is 168 kgs? Its the same as two grown men plus a small child. We had to abandon the idea of Tom taking us to the railway station as we couldn't fit it and us in his Audi A3 but fortunately a neighbor offered to take us and we managed to cram all the bags and us into or his Discovery (just).

All was good at Exeter St David's, Sarah managed to bag a trolley to get us from the car to platform 3 and then to platform 5 as Sarah had misread the board, "What a silly sausage!!" I happily joshed, so what if we had to run? "dearie me!!" I said, or some such words,  How i laughed as i pushed the equivalent of 2 dead bodies at break neck speed back into the lift to get to the other side of the station, scattering other passengers who skipped joyously out of my way as we made our dash to get there before the train disappeared. (Look, its my blog and I'll tell it how i want to OK? There was no blood, or broken bones and we got on the train by wedging the door open and throwing the cases into the train).

Once we were finally on board Sarah sat in her seat grinning, "That was fun, and you know what? I did exactly the same thing last time I was going to London" I thought it best not to comment, actually I couldn't as I was still trying to get my breath back.  Probably for the best

Reading is in the process of urban renewal and actually looks quite nice .now i.e it looks clean and the same as every other Shopping Mall. As part of this the station is getting a make over, it will be nice when its finished but that did cause us another problem as we hurled our two dead body weight cases onto the platform. There were no trolleys. So we carried them, all of them up and across the tracks to the main entrance. Half way we took a break, right next to two railway workers who were having a chat, one about 25 the other nearer 50. Both looked at us, and could see we where struggling the younger chap walked towards and then past us through a door marked private - staff only. On on the back of his Hi-Vis jacket were two words Customer Service. I was just about to knock on the door and shake him warmly by the throat when the older chap came over, picked up two of our cases and asked where we were trying to get to, he carried them all the way to the taxi and disappeared before we could even think about tipping him.

Ok so its now 5:00 Sarah has resorted to putting on her noise cancelling earphones, must be the air-con keeping her awake. Anyway, back to typing.

Our overnight Hotel is fine, clean, modern nothing to comment on here really. We decided to pop out for something to eat and after a couple of hiccups (Waggamoma's was queuing out the door, the latin american place was too load and busy) we went to All-Bar-One. I had a really good burger and chips (unless we go up to Bangalore and go to the Hard Rock Cafe burger is off the menu for 5 months, even McDonald's is cow free in India) Sarah had Tapas i.e bits of stuff, chicken, halumi, prawns. It was good, we stopped off for coffee and hot chocolate at Cafe Nero on the way back and I was fast asleep before Strictly was over.

Time for another coffee, maybe I should wake Sarah and ask if she wants a cup of tea, its 5:30. Nope I'll let her sleep on, for some reason she appears to have had a restless night.

Kev