Crossing the Irish Sea: The Trials, Tribulations and Simple Pleasures of Going Home

While I now live in Coventry, and spend the vast majority of the year in England, I originally come from Bangor, in Northern Ireland. (No, not Bangor in Wales.) For most of my friends, going home usually involves a train journey of perhaps a few hours; but for me, going home means getting across the Irish Sea, either by ferry or by plane.

When I was very young, even up until I was 13, most of our family holidays involved car journeys either to other parts of Ireland, north or south, or across on the ferry to "the mainland" (i.e., Great Britain). From 1996 onwards, our preferred mode of ferry crossing was the Stena HSS, a class of high-speed catamaran capable of carrying up to 1500 passengers and 375 cars, making them the largest high-speed ferries in the world.

Although Stena had grandiose plans, just three examples were ultimately built. The first, the Stena Explorer, went into service in April 1996 sailing between Dun Laoghaire (pronounced Dun Leery), just south of Dublin, and Holyhead, on the north-west coast of Wales. On entering service, it sailed the 62-mile crossing in just 99 minutes, just over half the time that conventional ferries took previously. What's more, the crossing was smoother than ever before thanks to the catamaran hull. When introduced it sailed an impressive five times a day in each direction.

The second HSS, the Stena Voyager, entered service a few months later sailing between Belfast and Stranraer, on the south-western tip of Scotland. The crossing was shorter, at about 50 miles, and a journey time of 85 minutes was initially advertised. However, unlike the Dun Laoghaire-Holyhead route, which is almost entirely in open seas, both Belfast and Stranraer lie at the head of long inlets. As a result, when the HSS first tried running at full speed in Belfast Lough, it caused such huge waves to head towards the shores - in particular, towards Bangor - that for safety reasons they were required to reduce speed in Belfast Lough, and also in Loch Ryan on the approach to Stranraer.

This meant that the journey time for Belfast-Stranraer became 105 minutes, still better than anything else that operated Belfast-Stranraer but comparable to the fastest boats on the Larne-Cairnryan route. Larne is about 20 miles NNE of Belfast in open seas, while Cairnryan is about 5 miles north of Stranraer; thus the Larne-Cairnryan ferries only had to sail 35 miles, nearly all in open seas. For us, though, Larne was the wrong side of Belfast Lough, and involved a 35-mile drive just to get to the port; we were thus more than happy to save the driving and sail from Belfast on the HSS.

A third HSS, the Stena Discoverer, was put into service in 1997 sailing between Harwich and Hoek van Holland, but that was it. While the HSS continued to sail on its three original routes, it was - at least economically speaking - fatally flawed: it was powered not by conventional diesel engines but by gas turbines, like you'd find in jet planes, with no conventional propeller but instead four water jets providing both forward propulsion and directional control. This gave the HSS its speed, but also meant it consumed far more fuel than any other comparable ferry.

High fuel consumption wasn't such a problem in 1996, when oil prices were low and looked set to stay that way indefinitely; however, by 2008 oil prices had soared and so cutbacks had to be made. The number of sailings was gradually cut from five to just one or two round trips per day, and journey times were prolonged in order to save fuel. The Stena Explorer even stopped sailing between Dun Laoghaire and Holyhead altogether between September and May, replaced by conventional ferries. Finally, in order to shorten the journey a little, the dock at Belfast was moved down Belfast Lough by a few miles - saving fuel but prolonging journey times to the port.

Ultimately, however, it wasn't enough to save the HSS. The Stena Discoverer was withdrawn from the Harwich-Hoek van Holland route in January 2007. The other two survived a while longer, but the Stena Voyager was withdrawn from sailing the Belfast-Stranraer route in November 2011. The Stena Explorer faces an uncertain future on the Dun Laoghaire-Holyhead route; whether it will return to service in May, as planned, remains to be seen.

The Stena Voyager was replaced by two conventional-hulled large ferries, Superfast VII and VIII, originally built in 2001 to serve Helsinki-Tallinn. In introducing these two new ferries, Stena decided they needed to upgrade the facilities at their now rather dilapidated port in Stranraer. Here, they decided to do the same as they had done in Belfast and move the port a few miles down Loch Ryan to save fuel - also giving them more space to build a larger terminal building. The new port is now nearer Cairnryan than Stranraer.

The move from Stranraer to Cairnryan makes little difference to car and lorry traffic - which make up the bulk of Stena's throughput - but was a disaster for foot passengers. You see, while Stranraer has a railway station, Cairnryan does not. This thus forces any foot passengers wishing to use the ferries to use a bus to the port. Rather than bussing ferry passengers from Stranraer station to the port, Stena have decided instead to bus passengers from Ayr.

This is mainly down to the nature of the railway line from Ayr to Stranraer: it doesn't pass anywhere near Cairnryan, because instead of following the coast the line curves inland to follow a valley, only rejoining the coast briefly at Girvan. This makes the line slow and winding, making it faster to bus passengers along the A77 from Ayr than rely on the railway to Stranraer.

It also means there is no easy way to provide a station at Cairnryan, without building a new seven-mile connection from the line at Stranraer. As such, the very reason for the existence of the railway line south of Ayr - the connection to ferries to Northern Ireland - has been removed at a stroke. Passenger numbers have fallen through the floor in recent months, with only the towns of Girvan, Barrhill and Stranraer to sustain the line.

At this point I should declare an interest: I can't drive. So the existence of a relatively integrated public transport system in which I can get a train to Stranraer and then a ferry to Belfast is important to me. However, much as I enjoy making the train journey to or from Stranraer, it normally takes at least seven hours from Coventry - about four hours to either Carlisle or Glasgow, and another three hours thence to Stranraer. It was not, to put it mildly, the fastest way of getting home.

It was, however, the cheapest: at £25 single (with a railcard) all the way from Belfast to Leamington, it was an absolute steal. Nonetheless, the fact that it was at best a full twelve-hour journey meant that I only did it once in full, and once more when I was up in Edinburgh and then heading straight home. However, while the fares haven't gone up, they have become less flexible; in theory you used to be able to get those fares on the day, but now you must book in advance; combined with the hassle of getting a bus, I doubt it's an option I'll be availing myself of anytime soon.

To me, most of the time, going home means flying. Cheap short-haul air travel has put a severe dent in the ferry companies' business over the last 20 years by removing the necessity of a long drive through north Wales or southern Scotland. Normally I can book a few weeks in advance and have change from £100 for a return flight home, which while it works out at double the cost, it takes less than half the time to get there.

I almost invariably fly between Birmingham and Belfast City on Flybe, formerly Jersey European, who fly a very large range of domestic flights within the UK as well as some cross-channel flights to Paris and other parts of France. (I've flown with them so many times, I almost know their safety announcement off by heart...) With an average flying time of about 45 minutes, I can reliably get between my house in Coventry and home in Northern Ireland in less than four hours. 

Flying even permits day trips from one island to the other: in 2004/05 when I was looking at different universities I flew over on various day trips for open days; more recently I flew home for a day in November 2010 for a hospital check-up (it was easier to fly home than to rearrange it). Doing so by ferry would be all but impossible nowadays. That said, even up to 1990 there was a daily sleeper train service between Stranraer and London, which would have permitted a 36-hour round-trip on two sleepers, but that's nothing compared to a same-day trip.

However, flying is not really a sustainable mode of transport. It uses much more fuel than a ferry, and given the finite supply of oil in the world there will come a point where short-haul air travel is no longer cheap and available to the masses. When that day comes - be it in ten, a hundred or a thousand years' time - we will rue the day that Stena decided, for short-term commercial reasons, to break the link between ferry and train at Stranraer.

At least for the time being the connection at Holyhead remains, but at the other end one either arrives in Dun Laoghaire and needs a suburban train into Dublin, or one arrives in Dublin Port and has to get a bus to one of Dublin's railway stations. It is that, combined with a slight instinct of distrust towards Irish trains, that has thus far put me off going via Holyhead by train. That said, as a means of getting between Northern Ireland and England by road, Dublin-Holyhead is my family's preferred route as it is shorter overall than Belfast-Stranraer, and doesn't require such sustained periods of driving.

In the meantime, I expect that most of my trips home will involve flying. Yes, government responses to successive terrorist threats have made it more difficult to retain one's sense of dignity as we pass through security. Yes, you can't take a bottle of water onto the plane unless you buy it at the airport. Yes, my ears don't always pressurise quite right when we descend. And yes, eventually we will run out of oil and future generations may despise us for using up two billion years' worth of accumulated energy from the sun.

But - and it is a huge but - for a modest sum of money, not only do I get to soar above the clouds and see the world from above like our forefathers could only dream of, I get to go home - a distance of some 400 miles as the crow (though not the aeroplane) flies - in just a few hours. And until the day comes that short-haul air travel is commercially unviable and we are forced to use what ferries and trains are left, I shall continue to enjoy the simple pleasures of flying home.

My first steam train: the Winter Cumbrian Mountain Express

Somehow, in spite of having loved trains for many years, I had never been on a steam train - until yesterday. On Saturday 18th February, six of us went to Carlisle and back on the "Winter Cumbrian Mountain Express", a steam train run by the Railway Touring Company, combining the glorious scenery of the Lake District with the sights, sounds and smells of steam engines. It was, undoubtedly, the best train journey I've ever done.

Of course, you can't just buy a ticket and jump on a steam train anywhere these days. There are basically two kinds of steam train available these days: the first is to go along to one of the many "preserved railways" in the country - mostly old branch lines, long closed to normal traffic, but kept running by volunteers and enthusiasts to run trains on for fun.

I've been to one in Northern Ireland - the Downpatrick and County Down Railway - and I've been on the Ffestiniog Railway in Wales, but neither are standard gauge; all railways in Ireland have the rails 5ft 3in (1600mm) apart, while the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways are narrow-gauge railways with the rails 1ft 11½in (597mm) apart. There aren't, however, any heritage railways which are particularly near to Coventry, and thus I haven't yet been on any such lines in England.

While travelling on heritage branch lines has its charm, it's a far cry from the days of steam trains on the main line. Various companies try and recreate those days by running special charter services, usually known as railtours, over the main lines, often hauled by steam engines (though there are also railtours hauled by diesel engines). And thus it was that six of us embarked upon the Winter Cumbrian Mountain Express, from London to Carlisle and back.

There are two important rail arteries running through Cumbria: one is the West Coast Main Line, which is roughly parallel to the M6 over the summit of Shap, and the other is the Settle and Carlisle Line, with its famous Ribblehead viaduct at Blea Moor, and the summit at Ais Gill. Both offer spectacular mountain scenery, and our train undertook a circular tour of them both, heading north over Shap to Carlisle, before returning south via Ais Gill and Settle.

On a journey of 300 miles from London to Carlisle, it would take too long to do the entire trip there and back by steam today; for a variety of reasons steam locomotives are now restricted to just 60mph on the main line. So for the journey between London and Preston we were hauled by an electric locomotive, with steam taking us on our round-trip through Cumbria.

Our train in this case was a rake of 12 Mark 1 coaches, dating from the 1950s but carefully maintained and lovingly restored, which had great visibility and lovely springy seats. On this kind of journey, the visibility is vital: the scenery through Cumbria is magnificent, and having only ever sped over Shap in a Pendolino with tiny windows I was looking forward to being able to see the Lake District in the way you can from the M6. There were three classes onboard: Premier, First and Standard; we were in coach H, the third of four standard class coaches.

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For Matt, James, James and Ben, the day began by getting to London Euston for the 07:09 departure time of our railtour; Ian joined the party at Milton Keynes at 07:58, and finally I joined at Rugby at 08:28. Our electric locomotive, number 86259, was painted in so-called "electric blue" livery, the original colour they were painted when introduced to the newly-electrified WCML in the 1960s. While nowadays Class 86 locomotives are confined to freight trains and occasional railtours, in their heyday they hauled crack express services all the way from London to Glasgow.

In spite of being nearly 50 years old, the Class 86 locomotive easily hauled us at its top speed of 100mph. In order to be able to use this speed, we were routed mostly on the fast lines of the WCML, sharing tracks with Pendolinos. Of course, given that the Pendolinos have a top speed of 125mph, we had to be carefully threaded between them; the train had an eleven-minute stand at Milton Keynes to let three Pendolinos speed through, with a fourth overtaking us while we stopped at Rugby.

Unfortunately our timings were a little optimistic - I believe the train had been timed for 10 coaches rather than 12, and so being a bit heavier meant we were a little more sluggish - and so all four of those Pendolinos were delayed by a few minutes. Fortunately, in spite of our being five minutes late leaving Rugby and Nuneaton, we caught the time up by Colwich Junction, and the next Pendolino (which took a different route at Colwich Junction) was not delayed.

We enjoyed a clear, fast run as far as Stafford, where we were checked to about 30mph through the station (possibly due to a slightly delayed train in front) and then gradually accelerated again. Unlike modern locomotives, the class 86s are fairly slow to accelerate and decelerate, which made for an interesting race through Stafford: on approaching the station we'd passed a stationary container train hauled by 90045, a much more modern electric locomotive from the 1980s, and it overtook us on the slow lines just north of the station; but our higher top speed (100mph vs. 75mph maximum for freight trains) meant he never completely passed us again and we slowly overhauled him for a clear run to Crewe.

We crossed over to the slow lines at Basford Hall Junction, just south of Crewe, to clear the way for another Pendolino to go through to Liverpool, and stopped in platform 6 to pick up passengers; we arrived three minutes early, and so stood for seven minutes to await our 09:46 departure time. On departure from Crewe we ran non-stop to Preston; it's fairly uncommon to run non-stop through Warrington and Wigan, but non-stopping meant we could keep up sufficient speed to stay in front of the next London-Glasgow Pendolino which was due through Crewe 13 minutes behind us.

Between Crewe and Preston the predicted bad weather crossed our path: a cold front was moving southbound over the UK, but fortunately it brought only a narrow band of rain and moved fairly quickly, so that the rain, which started while we were approaching Crewe, had turned to sunshine by the time we got to Preston.

After a brief stop at Preston, we left at 10:30 for the final leg behind our electric locomotive, to Carnforth, just north of Lancaster. At Lancaster, we passed a local train from Morecambe to Leeds, waiting for us to pass so it could come into the station and reverse, in spite of the fact that it was due to arrive before we were due to pass. Here we see our main problem of the day: not being a regular passenger service, nor a freight train, we were at the whim of the signallers as to when we got to go. Some treated us like we were radioactive - "get it out of here, now!" - while some held us back to ensure regular service trains got priority.

A few minutes north of Lancaster, we pulled into no. 2 goods loop at Carnforth at 10:57, where our electric locomotive was detached. As a special celebration of the late George Hinchcliffe, the man responsible for saving Flying Scotsman from the scrapheap in San Francisco, not one but two steam locomotives were now attached: 'Black Fives' numbers 44932 (leading) and 45305, both classic LMS steam engines dating from the late 1930s, painted all in black.

"Double-heading" is very rare in passenger service, especially with steam trains; the primary purpose is to be able to go faster without having more powerful locomotives. While very heavy freight trains are still sometimes hauled by two locomotives, using two diesel or electric locomotives is fairly easy because they can usually be connected together so that one driver can control both from one set of controls.

With steam double-heading, however, this is impossible, and so there were two drivers controlling the two locomotives, who were faced with the exceedingly difficult task of keeping their acceleration roughly the same so that one locomotive didn't end up exerting more power than the other and damaging one or both. This requires careful coordination, which was done with the very simple but effective system of the drivers sticking their heads out and shouting between the two locomotives!

Upon leaving Carnforth at 11:33 (11 minutes late) behind our two steam engines, the need for having two locomotives became immediately obvious: the ascent up to the summit at Shap is one of the steepest and twistiest bits of the WCML. With our locomotives going at full steam we managed a respectable speed as far as Tebay; up to then the maximum gradient was two miles at 1 in 106. After Tebay, however, comes a solid five-mile climb at 1 in 75, and while we were probably doing 50mph through Tebay, by the time we hit Shap summit we were probably doing little more than 30mph.

Until you've experienced a ride behind a steam engine, little prepares you for the sensory experience of steam engines at maximum power: the sight, sound and smell of the steam and smoke make climbing a hill like Shap into an event. I'd previously been over Shap four times, but only one of those was northbound, where the uphill gradient is 1 in 75 (compared with just 1 in 125 uphill going southbound), and that was in a Pendolino which has considerably more power; the Pendo made mincemeat of the hill, but even with two Black Fives it was a genuine struggle.

Moreover, Mark 1 coaches have much better visibility than a Pendolino, and our lack of speed actually enhanced the views; rather than flashing by at 90mph, we were able to see all the wonderful scenery of the Lake District, with bright sunshine all the way from Kendal to Penrith. It still doesn't quite beat the view from the parallel M6 (thanks to the lack of forward visibility) but this came much closer than any Pendolino ever could.

Having crested the summit at about 12:15, about ten minutes late, it was downhill all the way to Carlisle, and our two Black Fives ate up the miles fairly well. While officially restricted to 60mph, it felt like we were going just a little faster in an attempt to make up time; the locos were certainly capable of a little more speed.

After a squally shower darkened the skies between Penrith and Carlisle, it brightened up for our arrival into Carlisle at 12:49, just nine minutes late. The journey from Euston had taken over five and a half hours (with a half-hour stop at Carnforth); three minutes behind us, the 09:30 Pendolino from Euston to Glasgow pulled into the opposite platform having taken not much over three hours (though we had delayed it by a few minutes).

At Carlisle, we got the first sight of our two steam locomotives, still shrouding themselves in steam even now they were stopped in the platform. Practically everyone ran to the front of the train to get shots of the locomotives; I had to fight my way through but got some nice photos in the end. After a few minutes, the two locos and the support coach were detached to be turned round: unlike modern diesel and electric locomotives, steam engines have a definite "front" and "back", so they used a triangle of tracks at the south end of Carlisle station to turn the locomotives, before refilling the water tanks.

With nearly two hours' break in Carlisle, we headed into the city centre to get some food; James and I headed to KFC, while the other four headed to McDonalds, reconvening after we'd eaten to look briefly around the city. After an hour or so we headed back to the station, in time to see them bringing the locomotives back in to reattach them to the other end of the train. From now on, we were heading south.

At 14:39, a couple of minutes late, we left Carlisle, immediately diverging from our inbound route to take us up the Settle and Carlisle. The S&C was the third major north-south route to Scotland; it was deliberately built as a mainline railway, with the maximum gradient limited to 1 in 100 throughout. From Carlisle to Appleby, the line climbs the Eden Valley at a fairly gentle pace, and we reached Appleby in just under 50 minutes, where we stopped for about 15 minutes for more water. By this time, the weather had closed in slightly, and we were treated - briefly - to snow on the Settle and Carlisle!

On departure from Appleby at 15:41, we began the climb up "the long drag": in order to keep to the maximum gradient of 1 in 100, the builders of the line from Settle Junction to Appleby ended up creating a continuous 15-mile uphill gradient of 1 in 100 in both directions, with about ten miles approximately flat between Blea Moor and Ais Gill, at 1156ft (352m) and 1169ft (356m) above sea level respectively. Unlike modern coal trains, which even with a good run-up are doing 23mph by the time they get to the top, our Black Fives performed admirably and we made very good time up the long drag, running three minutes faster than timetabled to Ais Gill.

At Blea Moor, we passed over the infamous Ribblehead viaduct, where we were able to see the front of the train snaking over the horseshoe-shaped viaduct out of our left-hand window, with clouds of steam puffing from our two locomotives. From here on in, it was downhill for 15 miles at 1 in 100, and we made good time as far as Hellifield, where we got stopped briefly at a signal before pulling into the goods loop for our final water stop.

At 17:06, we left Hellifield in bright evening sunshine and said goodbye to the Settle and Carlisle; we headed south over the Ribble Valley line to Blackburn. From Hellifield to Clitheroe, there are few passenger services (just two in each direction on summer Sundays, designed for ramblers); the line remains for use by freight and diverted passenger trains, and counts as "rare track" which, in my quest to travel on every British railway line, is all-important - it's no good saying "I've been on every line except X, Y and Z..."

With the sun setting, we made it to Daisyfield Junction outside Blackburn a full seven minutes early; with the line between Hellifield and Clitheroe being hardly used, our timings were deliberately a bit slack. Here, Preston signal box held us for ten minutes, so that not one but two passenger services to pass over Daisyfield Junction in front of us; we were timetabled between the two but the signaller clearly thought better of it. Having thus been seven minutes early, we arrived in Blackburn six minutes late, where we dropped passengers who had boarded at Preston, because we weren't going back via Preston.

No, we were being much more cunning than that: there is a little used curve between the WCML and the Preston-Blackburn line - from Lostock Hall Junction to Farington Junction - which permitted us to go through onto the WCML without reversing. And with this curve being wired, we were timetabled to stop on the curve to change locomotives.

The curve itself is little used by freight and very rarely used indeed by passenger services; loco changes on the curve are even rarer, with the last recorded loco change happening there in 2003. However, while we'd been allowed half an hour at Carnforth, here we had just 15 minutes to change locomotives. And now that we were a few minutes late, it was going to be difficult to keep to our path back up the WCML to London.

We stopped on the curve at Farington Junction at 18:21, three minutes later than booked; we bade a fond farewell to our two steam locomotives, which passed us before heading back to the steam works at Carnforth. Our electric locomotive was then reunited with us; but even though everything appeared to go smoothly, we were stopped for 22 minutes, and left at 18:44, 11 minutes late.

Now we were once again at the mercy of the signallers controlling the WCML. We expected that the next Pendolino from Liverpool, which was booked to join the main line at Weaver Junction twelve minutes behind us, would be given priority at Weaver Junction. But we got closer and closer to Weaver Junction and we didn't slow down; even once we'd gone through the junction we were uncertain if we were behind it or in front of it.

But as we were approaching Crewe, a peek out the window confirmed that the Pendo was behind us. Right behind us. So close we could see the headlights. We were then sent into platform 11, which meant crawling across lots of pointwork to get over to the far side of the station; before we were even stationary in the platform, the Pendo ran through, by now a full nine minutes late. After setting down passengers at Crewe, we left at 19:31, still 11 minutes late, but we were now running on the slow lines; as such we were held to a maximum speed of 75mph.

We remained on the slow lines through Stafford, where we had been booked to cross to the fast lines; we crossed instead at Whitehouse Junction, but not before slowing right down to a 5mph crawl to let two Pendolinos cross in front of us. At Colwich Junction, where the brief section of double track widens once more to four, we were routed once again onto the slow lines, in spite of the trains that we had been booked to pass while on the slow lines already having gone through; this meant we were still limited to 75mph and any hope of making up time on the run to Nuneaton was dashed.

We spent much of the run to Rugby trying to figure out what order the trains would end up in on the way into Euston: it being late on a Saturday night, the line south of Rugby would be limited to two of the four tracks, with the other two closed for maintenance; thus, the order we left Rugby in was crucial. We used live departure boards and working timetables to try and figure out what would happen.

While we were doing this, one of our fellow passengers came up to us and thanked us; the most enjoyable part of his day had, he said, been seeing us up and about, peeking out windows, trying to figure out what was going on; it reminded him of himself, many years ago. I have to admit that, had we just sat around enjoying the scenery, it wouldn't have been half as interesting: but by keeping a log of our times, and then trying to figure out where all the other trains were - in effect, trying to second-guess the signallers - it made the journey all the more fun.

As it was, we steadily lost a little bit of time, and so we called at Nuneaton about 14 minutes late. We were unexpectedly crossed back to the fast lines just south of Nuneaton, but by Rugby we were 16 minutes late. At Rugby, I said goodbye to the others and disembarked at 20:47 to head back to Coventry; I then saw another Pendolino pass slowly through Rugby behind us, and clearly the train had been slotted in between two Pendolinos when it was meant to be in front of both of them.

That did mean, however, that with an eight-minute stand at Milton Keynes to let the Pendolino back in front, the railtour didn't need its booked 12-minute stop at Tring to let the two Pendolinos in question back through, and having been 16 minutes late into Milton Keynes, the rest of the party arrived back in London Euston just three minutes late, at 22:09, exactly 15 hours after they left.

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My first steam train didn't disappoint: to get not one but two steam locomotives was a rare treat, and because we had two locomotives we were able to experience the steep ascent of Shap. In most modern trains, you just don't appreciate the gradients unless they're really extreme; and where there are extreme gradients such as Shap, trains have evolved to cope with them. Thus, to turn the clock back sixty years and see what it was like to climb Shap and Ais Gill with steam locomotives - an everyday occurence right up till the mid-1960s - was eye-opening.

It was also my first railtour, and I think that was perhaps the aspect of the day I enjoyed most: this wasn't just another Pendolino speeding up and down the WCML between Coventry and London, this was a train going on a scenic excursion to probably the most beautiful lines in England, unconstrained by punctuality statistics and profit margins. Many of the onboard staff were volunteers, who give up their time to help run these tours, and get free trips on such wonderful lines as their just reward; my thanks to all the staff at the Railway Touring Company, and at the West Coast Railway Company (who supplied the locomotives and coaches), for making all this possible.

Doing it as a group of six worked especially well: just two or three people would have been an altogether quieter, more subdued affair, but with six of us we kept each other going, and the whole thing was a really satisfying day out. Once it got dark, and we got delayed, we were all trying to second-guess the signallers, which somehow made it even more fun. Most satisfying of all, our train managed to delay, by my count, 14 service trains (though each by no more than a few minutes).

I had long been sceptical of railtours in general - not least because of their relatively high cost - but at £69 a head, this Winter Cumbrian Mountain Express felt like a bargain. To have the romance and beauty of being hauled by two steam locomotives - real machines doing mechanical work, unlike all these modern electric and diesel trains where everything is just pushing buttons - on such beautiful lines was simply magical.

The only question now is, what's next?

Short term vs. long term: why Britain should say Yes to HS2

Two years ago, when the initial plans for HS2 were announced, I wrote a blog post trying to make the case for High Speed 2, or HS2 as it is now universally referred to. Today, it is being reported that a Network Rail review has concluded that the main alternatives could not generate the required capacity.

First of all, let's clear up one common misconception. The Daily Mail article on Saturday led off with "The biggest rail project in over a century will cut the journey time between Britain’s two biggest cities from one hour 24 minutes to just 49 minutes." Yes, it's true, but that's not the point!

The point of HS2 is not speed, it's capacity. Simply put, the railways are very rapidly running out of capacity. The West Coast Main Line (WCML) between London and Rugby is particularly bad, and will be completely out of capacity by the mid-2020s unless something is done.

So, what should be done? HS2 involves building a new high-speed railway line from London to Birmingham and Lichfield, so that all the long-distance services on the WCML can be diverted onto the new high-speed tracks, leaving the existing tracks free for more commuter services, meaning more capacity for everyone. While a price tag of £17bn seems like a lot, we're already spending £16bn building Crossrail, and another £6bn rebuilding Thameslink; and HS2 would have an impact across the country, rather than on "just" commuter services in the south-east.

Nonetheless, there is a significant amount of opposition, and various alternatives have been proposed. In particular, the HS2 report published two years ago examined in detail a range of incremental upgrades to the existing network which would deliver comparable capacity increases. Since the Network Rail report hasn't been published yet, I'm going to try and explain why such incremental upgrades won't be enough.

Option 1: longer trains. Fortunately, Virgin Trains are way ahead of you: they're already lengthening the Pendolinos from 9 carriages to 11. Any longer, and the trains won't fit into Liverpool Lime Street station; even if you disregard Liverpool, there are very few platforms that can cope with trains longer than 12 carriages. So lengthening trains any more all of a sudden comes with a huge disruptive price tag of having to lengthen platforms.

Lengthening platforms sounds easy, but it betrays the complexity of the network. For example, at the end of the platform there may be some points or signals, meaning that in order to extend the platforms you have to move the points and the signals too. The line may be on a curve, and thus extending the platforms requires curved platforms, which means a gap between train and platform, and more inconvenience (and I don't believe curved platforms are allowed any more).

Option 2: faster trains to Northampton. This sounds slightly counter-intuitive at first, so bear with me. There are two kinds of train on the fast lines out of Euston: Virgin Pendolinos, which can do 125mph, and London Midland Desiros, which (for the time being) can only manage 100mph. Each hour (off-peak), there are nine Pendolinos and two Desiros on the fast lines. Because the Desiros run slower, there has to be a gap behind them so that the next Pendolino doesn't catch them up; this means that you end up with fewer trains than you could in theory have.

The solution to this is to make all the trains the same speed. In theory, it doesn't actually matter whether you speed up the Desiros or slow down the Pendolinos; but slowing down the Pendolinos would be political suicide for Virgin and would significantly increase the journey times out to Birmingham and Manchester. So, the Desiros ought to be speeded up to 125mph.

Well, good news! The Desiros are currently being speeded up, but only to 110mph (they're not physically capable of any faster). This will mean a gain of at least one extra train per hour on the fast lines. In an ideal world, the Desiros would be supplemented (or replaced) by more 125mph trains to serve Northampton; while that would gain you some capacity, one starts to run into problems with running basically InterCity trains on commuter journeys to Northampton, such as it taking longer to get people on and off the train, which starts to negate some of the benefit.

Option 3: grade separation at Ledburn Junction. Ledburn Junction, between Tring and Leighton Buzzard, is the junction where the London Midland Desiros turn off the fast lines onto the slow lines, to get out of the way of the Virgin Pendolinos through Milton Keynes. Because of the arrangement of the tracks and the layout of the junction, trains crossing from fast to slow or vice versa block the junction to trains in the other direction.

It's like having a right-turning lane in the middle of a dual-carriageway: you have to wait for the traffic to clear before you can turn right. Because trains can't run on line-of-sight, and have to be signalled, it's usually the other way round: it's like the traffic stopping at traffic lights just so you can turn right. That slows lots of people (trains) down for only one person (train) to turn right. Much better would be to have a motorway junction, where you go up a ramp, and over the offending traffic. Which is a great idea, but it's fairly expensive to build. More importantly, it's disruptive: imagine trying to drive through the junction while they're in the middle of building the ramp.

Option 4: four-track Birmingham to Coventry. Or, more accurately, Stechford to Berkswell, since Birmingham to Stechford is too tight to fit any more tracks, and there's a tunnel just east of Berkswell that would be impossible to widen (to say nothing of trying to fit two extra tracks through western Coventry without demolishing several streets). The Birmingham-Coventry corridor is one of the most congested railway lines in the Midlands, with fast trains between Birmingham and London having to share track with stopping services calling at local stations.

Prior to 2008, the stopping services called at all the stations, every half-hour. But in order to fit the new every-20-minutes London to Birmingham service from Virgin in, the local trains have had to become every 20 minutes and only call at about 2/3 of the stops each. So at Canley, my nearest station in western Coventry, only two of the three stopping trains actually calls; one runs through non-stop. This means that, rather than an easily memorable half-hourly pattern, trains to Birmingham leave at 14 and 33 minutes past the hour (the third should be at 53, but runs through non-stop), and trains to Coventry leave at 17 and 44 minutes past the hour (where the third should be at 57).

Four-tracking between Stechford and Berkswell, then, would permit local trains to be overtaken by fast trains, and remove the risk inherent in the current timetable: the line has so little slack in it that one stopping train being just 3 minutes late can delay up to four or five trains behind it. Were it not for the huge disruption it would require to construct, and the enormous cost of £900 million, I would be entirely in favour of four-tracking Birmingham-Coventry.

Unfortunately, to deal with the capacity problems on the WCML, we don't just need one of options 1, 2, 3 and 4 above, we'd need all four of them, and many more besides such as extra platforms in London and in Manchester as well as speed improvements around Stafford and Northampton. The so-called "Rail Package 2" proposed by the DfT as an alternative to HS2 would cost £4.2 billion, including all the above track upgrades and new rolling stock.

Admittedly, it does represent good value for money; indeed, in the way the DfT has calculated it may even be better value for money than HS2. But looking at the number of calories will tell you that a bag of sweets is better than a hot meal, since it will give you more energy; it won't tell you that an hour after eating the bag of sweets you'll be hungry again.

Rail Package 2 undoubtedly has the ability to deliver a significant increase in capacity, but it provides a trickle of incremental benefits rather than one huge step-change, something I believe can only be delivered with long stretches of new track rather than quick fixes to bottlenecks and extra bits of track bolted on here and there.

It would also be horrendously disruptive to deliver Rail Package 2. Some of you probably think I'm over-egging the disruption that upgrades cause; my earlier blog post showed my experiences of the right way to do engineering works, diverting trains instead of replacing them with buses. However, that doesn't hide the fact that what should have been a four-and-a-half hour journey from Coventry to Edinburgh became six hours - a third longer - though at least the disruption was confined to one bank holiday weekend.

Imagine having to spend a third longer on your commute to work every day. A 2003 study put our average commuting time at 45 minutes each way; suppose instead that that went up to an hour each way. That's an extra half an hour of your day wasted on travelling; half an hour less with your family; half an hour less to relax and unwind. Imagine doing that every day for a year - or maybe even five years - and you begin to get some idea of the disruption caused by an upgrade on the required scale.

The worst thing, however, about Rail Package 2 is that we've been here before. All the anti-HS2 campaigners seem to have incredibly short memories: for eight years during the West Coast Route Modernisation, between 2000 and 2008, the whole WCML was left with a mediocre, sub-standard service, particularly at weekends, while they closed half the track to rebuild it all. I, for one, do not want an upgrade of that scale to happen again.

HS2, by contrast, would require minimal disruption to existing journey patterns; of course it will cause significant disruption to the countryside it runs through, but except for a few towns there aren't actually very many people living near the route. Were the Birmingham-Coventry line to be four-tracked as part of any alternative to HS2, I have no doubt that the very large number of people living alongside that line would far outweigh the number of people disrupted by building HS2 in the Chilterns.

The leading article in Saturday's Independent advocates against HS2, as follows: "The most convincing argument in favour of HS2 is that it will act as a much-needed bypass, easing the congestion that bedevils the West Coast Main Line. But to plump for an all-new high-speed rail link, rather than dealing with the bottlenecks in the existing network, runs counter to the advice of the most recent review of Britain's transport infrastructure and relies on passenger numbers soaring at an unprecedented rate to balance the sums."

True, the Eddington Report in 2006 did indeed shy away from recommending high-speed rail as a solution to our transport problems. But this was in an era when oil cost just $60 a barrel, rather than the current $110 or more; and with no prospect of the oil price going down any time soon, the economics of transport have changed dramatically in the last five years.

The rate of increase in passenger numbers is hardly unprecedented either: today the rail network is booming in a way that no-one expected even five years ago. Between 2005/6 and 2010/11, the total number of rail journeys increased by just over 25%, and now stands at 1.35 billion passenger journeys per year. Indeed, that represents nearly a doubling since the early 1990s, when there were fewer than 750 million journeys per year.

Fifteen years ago, the incremental, disruptive, West Coast Route Modernisation - which cost a whopping £9 billion - was touted as the long-term solution to the capacity problems then facing the WCML. Given that, just four years after its completion, we're even discussing such solutions as Rail Package 2 or HS2, it's clear that it wasn't. The modernisation of the last decade was much-needed and is very welcome, but it came at a huge cost of disruption and only solved the problem in the short term.

Once again, we are faced between the choice of a short-term sticking-plaster, in the form of Rail Package 2, or a long-term cure, in the form of High Speed 2. We are often told that we never learn from history; let this not be one of those occasions. If we reject HS2 it would prove that Britain has become incapable of thinking beyond the short-term.

Let us learn from our mistakes. Let us plan for the long-term. Let us endorse HS2.

California, Days 7-11

My apologies for the delay to this blog: unfortunately, sometime between getting off the plane in Heathrow and arriving back in Coventry, I lost my iPod Touch on which I had been writing the blog entries from California, and until now I haven't had time to reconstruct my movements and write up what I did in Los Angeles and Pasadena. Here, then, is a reasonably detailed summary of what I did for the four days I was in LA, and of the journey home.

On Friday 23rd September (Day 7), I spent the day exploring Pasadena on foot. After a brief visit to Tim's office on Caltech campus, I walked west into the centre of Pasadena. It was a pretty hot day, with temperatures peaking at 33C, but thanks to the desert climate of the area the humidity was relatively low, and so the temperature, while relatively uncomfortable, was much more bearable than anything I experienced in Japan last June, where even 28C was enough to force me indoors.

Nonetheless, after lunch in Subway, I headed indoors to escape the peak of the heat, to the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena's (and one of southern California's) best art museums. The museum houses European paintings ranging from the 14th century right up to the 20th century: some of its more notable exhibits include a self-portrait by Rembrandt, Dujardin's Denial of Peter, and Rubens's David Slaying Goliath.

The museum is also home to a large collection of south and south-east Asian art, with a number of incredible vast sculptures in stone and in bronze. Outside, in the courtyard garden, there are also a number of modern sculptures dotted around the gardens. I enjoyed a snack of pitta and houmous from the café while sitting outside in the shade.

After looking round the Norton Simon Museum, I wandered around the western part of Pasadena, chancing upon Gamble House, built by Charles and Henry Greene at the beginning of the 20th century, and one of the finest examples of understated yet elegant architecture in the city. Eventually I headed back through Memorial Park and past City Hall to Caltech campus, from where Tim and I headed back to his apartment for dinner and a quiet evening watching more Coupling.

On Saturday 24th (Day 8), Tim and I headed to the western side of LA to the Getty Center; like most of southern California, the easiest access is by road, so we headed west on the 134 freeway, continuing onto the 101, before heading south on the 405. The 405 runs across a mountain pass, connecting Santa Monica to Van Nuys, and is such a key artery that, not only does it already have five lanes in each direction, it is being widened to six - clearly needed as even mid-morning on a Saturday there were traffic jams!

The Getty Center is a vast, sprawling campus home to (part of) the J. Paul Getty Museum. The campus itself is set upon a hilltop overlooking Los Angeles to the south; parking is in an underground car park just off the freeway, with six levels underground, from which a cable-drawn tram took us up to the campus. In clear weather the campus features incredible views of the city; unfortunately coastal fog conspired to rob us of the best views, but it was still pretty incredible.

We spent most of the day there, looking round the vast collection of pre-20th century art, including paintings, sculptures, and illuminated manuscripts, spread across four buildings. The buildings are surrounded by wonderful gardens which are host to a wide variety of flowers in a circular field with a stream and waterfall running through the middle.

After nearly six hours on the campus, we headed back to Pasadena; instead of retracing our steps, we headed south on the 405, east on the 10 - literally through downtown LA - and then north along the aborted stub of the 710. The 710 was originally meant to connect Pasadena and the 210 to East LA and Long Beach; but one key section through South Pasadena would have involved demolishing hundreds of houses in one of the most affluent areas of southern California, and the plans have been on indefinite hold for over 40 years.

Instead, the 710 dumps all its traffic onto surface streets at Valley Boulevard, and so we wended our way through the streets of Pasadena. There are ambitious plans to complete the missing section with a huge 4.5 mile tunnel, but such plans have not yet got off the drawing board.

This "South Pasadena Gap" means there are no north-south freeways between the 5, running through downtown LA, and the 605, running along the San Gabriel River valley. Although the east-west distance between the 5 and the 605 is only 12 miles, that 12 miles is in one of the most densely populated areas of the US; that said, pro- and anti-completion lobbies have long argued about whether completing the 710 would alleviate or aggravate the notorious traffic congestion in LA.

In the evening, we watched Heat, an epic three-hour crime thriller set (appropriately) in downtown LA, written and directed by Michael Mann and starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro; with some incredible action scenes I was literally on the edge of my seat.

Sunday 25th (Day 9) brought a fairly quiet day: Tim went to the dojo in the morning, after which we headed for lunch in Pasadena, before heading onto campus and discussing some maths. Caltech campus is beautiful: while more urban than Warwick campus, being integrated into the city blocks of Pasadena, the architecture and the landscape provides a wonderful environment in which to do research.

The tallest building on the campus is the Millikan Library, named after Robert Millikan, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who first successfully measured the charge on the electron, and who spent nearly 25 years as chairman of Caltech's executive council. The building stands ten floors high, and from the top floor one can see the San Gabriel Mountains to the north (though they were a little hazy on Sunday).

After a quiet Sunday evening, on Monday 26th (Day 10) I again spent the morning on Caltech campus; Tim had arranged for me to meet with Dennis Kochmann, another postdoctoral researcher, who has similar research interests to me, and we discussed a number of interesting mathematical questions. After lunch on campus, I headed into Pasadena to attempt the seemingly impossible: use public transport in southern California.

I walked to the north side of Pasadena to catch the Metro Gold Line from Lake station as far as Union Station in central downtown LA. They call them trains, and treat them like an underground metro system, but in reality they're what we would call trams, with the ability to run on tracks on streets as well as on dedicated tracks. The Gold Line between downtown LA and Pasadena opened in 2003, and runs every 12 minutes during the day (more at peak times, and less in the evenings), with the journey from Lake to Union Station taking just under 30 minutes.

Union Station itself is something of a timewarp, much like the Amtrak network as a whole: a throwback to what rail travel used to be like in Britain 50 years ago, with just one train a day to big destinations, and an apparent inability to just get a ticket and get on a train. Unfortunately I didn't get the opportunity to try Amtrak at all; all the more reason to go back, I guess!

I spent a couple of hours wandering around the centre of downtown LA: my first port of call was to City Hall, where there's an observation deck on the 28th floor where you can get a 360-degree panorama of the city. The views were very good, clearer than they had been from the Getty Center, although not being as high up meant some of the skyscrapers in the financial district towered over us.

I searched in vain for a bookshop, before heading towards Disney Hall, one of the most stunning pieces of modern architecture I've ever seen: home to LA's finest concert hall, designed by Frank Gehry, and opened in 2003, the building is an array of odd angles and sweeping curves covered in metal.

Finally, I headed back towards Union Station, passing over one of the bridges over the I-10 freeway. The 10 literally threads itself through downtown Los Angeles; lessons learned from ghettos created under freeways which were elevated through urban areas led to later freeways being sunk into cuttings through cities, such as the 10 through LA. It was quite odd to stand over a highway with four lanes in each direction with the skyscrapers of downtown LA almost in spitting distance.

My return trip from LA to Pasadena was during rush hour - I left Union Station at about 5:15pm - and I'm pleased to report that the train was pretty much full. So full that I was standing the whole way, which I didn't object to at all since I bagged a spot to stand at the front, looking into the driver's cab and out onto the track in front. The train thinned out gradually, and I got a seat for the last couple of stops.

I headed back to Caltech campus to meet Tim, before heading into the centre of Pasadena for dinner in Zono Sushi, a Japanese restaurant, and then back to Tim's apartment for the last time.

Tuesday 27th (Day 11) was my final day in California; after a quiet morning catching up on blog, followed by lunch on Caltech campus again, I got a SuperShuttle - basically a pre-booked shared taxi - from Caltech to the airport, since Tim had a meeting.

After checking in at about 3pm, I wandered over from Terminal 7, the United terminal from which I was due to depart, to the Tom Bradley International Terminal, in seach of some shops. I succeeded, finding some interesting maps which I'd been looking for, as well as a muffin and a drink. Once back in Terminal 7, I made my way through security - experiencing the back-scatter X-ray scanners for the first time - and relaxed, waiting for my flight home:

Flight UA934: 1755 Los Angeles T7 to London Heathrow T1, arr 1215 (+1)
Operated by United Airlines using a Boeing 777, seat 37B
Pushback: 1750, takeoff 1801, landing 1219, on stand 1225

My flight home lasted just over ten hours. We pushed back early, and were airborne just a few minutes after our departure time. We were served dinner, a beef brisket with mushrooms, an hour or so after takeoff, and a brunch of a bread roll, a yogurt, a banana and a Danish-style pastry about an hour before landing at 11am British time.

I tried to sleep on the plane, but just as I was getting off to sleep about five hours into the flight, we hit a solid five-minute patch of turbulence, and I was wide awake once more. I dozed for another half an hour or so, but I didn't exactly land well-rested.

Our route took us due north-east out of LA, over Las Vegas and the Rocky Mountains, crossing the Canadian border about Winnipeg, skirting the southern end of Hudson Bay, south of Greenland, hitting land once more on the western coast of Ireland about Sligo.

At this point the approach became spookily familiar: we headed east over Ireland, joining the standard eastbound track just north of the north coast of Wales, before turning south-east over the Wirral and heading towards London; from the north coast of Wales, all very similar to the usual approach from Belfast into Birmingham or London.

In spite of the prompt departure from LA, we landed a few minutes late at Heathrow, mostly due to traffic congestion on approach. We were placed in the infamous Bovingdon Stack, the holding pattern over the Hertfordshire village of Bovingdon, which is used for all flights arriving from the north west of London. We entered at 10,000 feet, and exited after five 180-degree turns - not the most pleasant of things when they're right-hand turns and you're sat one seat from the left-hand window - and headed south-west to line up for final approach to runway 09L.

On landing we taxied back to the stand from which I had departed ten days previously - gate 49 of terminal 1 - and after a few minutes embarked on the seemingly interminable walk to the terminal proper. Gate 49 is one of the stands which will form part of the first satellite building of the new Heathrow East terminal, and as such it is rather a long way from the main building so that they can fit planes all the way round it.

With no queue at immigration I breezed through and picked up my bag, and headed for the Heathrow Express:

1303 Heathrow Express, Heathrow Central to Paddington arr 1319

After a brief wait outside Paddington for a platform, we arrived on time, and I stepped off the train into an unseasonably warm 27C. Unfortunately, unlike LA, it was horribly humid, and I found myself rather sweaty in short order. After grabbing some magazines and some lunch, I headed for the tube and went back to Euston the same way I'd arrived:

Bakerloo line, Paddington to Oxford Circus
Victoria line, Oxford Circus to Euston

I arrived in Euston a few minutes too late to catch the 1343, so I waited for the 1403. Normally I avoid the xx03 departures from Euston, since they call at Rugby and deprive you of the giddy sensation of going over the junction at Rugby at 125mph; on this occasion, however, I was too shattered to care, and just wanted to get home.

1403 Euston to Coventry, arr 1502

After the familiar trip up the West Coast Main Line - fortunately event-free, unlike the previous few times, though still five or six minutes late into Coventry for no apparent reason - I grabbed a bus for the short journey to my house, and arrived home at about 15:30, having been up for nearly 24 hours.

Obviously, not wanting to go to bed at 4pm - since that would have completely ruined what little semblance of a sleeping pattern I have - I decided to go to campus, and finished my day in the office catching up on what I'd missed over the five weeks in which I'd been in Edinburgh, Northern Ireland, Guildford, and California.

All in all, a busy and enjoyable September.

California, Day 6

On Thursday, I said goodbye to San Francisco; while I now love the city I was heading south to Los Angeles to stay with Tim, another friend of mine, in Pasadena. After packing and saying many goodbyes, I headed for the nearby BART station and caught the train back to San Francisco Airport.

BART, Yellow Line: 1129 Civic Center/UN Plaza to San Francisco International Airport, arr 1158

At the airport, however, I was not heading for international departures; for the first time I was taking a domestic flight in another country. I checked in and joined the line for security, which had been so long it was taking up half the terminal; by the time I got there it was a bit more manageable.

Once through security, I was in the airside part of Terminal 3, the United Airlines domestic terminal. In contrast to every British airport, where departures and arrivals are well-segregated, it seems that the norm for American airports is to have everyone sharing the same terminal space.

Thus, arriving passengers were walking through exactly the same terminal space as those waiting for departures, past the same shops and using the same toilets. I guess when it's only domestic flights it's not so much of a problem from the point of view of preventing illegal immigration, but it is nonetheless odd from a British perspective.

That said, customs rules force any arriving international passengers to go through customs and immigration at their first point of landing in the US, thus making airside connections basically pointless and impossible. At first glance, it appears this is so the Americans don't have to redesign every airport in the country.

I bought a magazine and a copy of the New York Times (which is, de facto, a national newspaper) to read on the plane, and then got some lunch, a cheeseburger from Lori's. After that I headed to the gate.

I was particularly impressed with the amount of information provided by United and by the airport: instead of weasel words and apologies we got exact estimates of delays to planes and the reason for them (usually ATC or late inbound aircraft). It is a very small change that meant everyone knew where they stood and weren't constantly waiting for information over the tannoy; personally I find there's nothing worse than not knowing if you're going to be delayed or not.

Also on display at the gate were lists of passengers waiting for upgrades or on standby for seats, as well as information on the type of aircraft and where it's coming from. We were even told verbally that we might be a couple of minutes late boarding; no British airport would bother to alert people to that short a delay. It put me at ease, and we did indeed board a couple of minutes late:

Flight UA698: 1425 San Francisco T3 to Los Angeles T7, arr 1548
Operated by United Airlines using an Airbus A320, seat 31A
Pushback: 1424, takeoff 1458, landing 1559, on stand 1606

We pushed back on time, but then we queued for takeoff on one of the two east-west runways. From our plane we could quite easily see that both parallel runways were being used for both take-offs and landings, unlike, for example, Heathrow, which uses one runway for landings and the other for takeoffs. In spite of the fact that "mixed mode" is theoretically more efficient, we seemed to wait longer than was really necessary, and it took us nearly half an hour to get airborne.

The flight itself, though, was smooth as silk with some stunning views. I had a left-hand window seat; after taking off from runway 28L, we turned south-east and followed the coastline down to Los Angeles. This afforded us excellent views of the San Francisco Bay; while the Pacific side was covered in thick fog the bay itself was clear as crystal.

In particular, it was quite amazing to be able to look back down at the airport we had just departed from and see, clear as day, the runways we'd used, the queue of planes waiting to take off, and even two planes coming in to land simultaneously (not quite side by side, but they landed within 30 seconds of each other on parallel runways).

Most of the journey was clear, and I had a good view over the mountains and into the desert-like plains of central California. Los Angeles itself and the surrounding area were in the midst of pretty thick coastal fog, and the visibility was relatively poor for the last few minutes of the flight; after descending through cloud over downtown LA, we turned sharply to the right not far from the runway, and landed heading south-west on runway 24L.

On arrival into Los Angeles terminal 7, it was another American domestic terminal with arriving and departing passengers intermingled. I headed for baggage reclaim to another surprise: members of the public are permitted to enter as far as baggage reclaim, and so Tim was there waiting for me; I had expected to have to reclaim my bag, *then* go find him. My bag came pretty soon after I got there, and we headed to Tim's car.

San Francisco is one of the best cities in the USA for using public transport; Los Angeles is not. Indeed, the Los Angeles freeway network was started in the 1930s and fully mapped out in the 1940s, before most of the world had even heard of such roads.

While this blog exists primarily due my love of public transport, I cannot deny a strong interest in road and motorway design as well; indeed, my late grandfather played a part in designing much of the motorway network of Northern Ireland (though due to budget cuts in the 1970s calling it a network today is somewhat optimistic). As such I was actually quite looking forward to being driven on Los Angeles's incredible network of freeways.

Our drive from the airport to Tim's apartment in Pasadena took us east on Interstate 105, before turning north onto the 110. The 110 runs from Long Beach, on the coast south of Los Angeles, through the western part of downtown LA, and then up the Arroyo Seco valley (literally "dry river bed") to Pasadena. The portion between LA and Pasadena was the first freeway constructed in the area, opening in 1940, and does not conform to modern standards for Interstate Highways, thus meaning it is designated merely as a state highway.

It's not difficult to see why: some of the junctions are literally 90-degree right turns that have a rather generous speed limit of 5mph, and some of the on-slips are in fact stop lines where cars are then forced to accelerate to full freeway speed in no distance at all! One particular interchange, that between the 110 and the 5, requires traffic from the 110 northbound going to the 5 northbound to curve sharply left in a tunnel (with a speed limit of 25mph) in one lane. These myriad design features inevitably contribute to LA's infamous traffic problems; I'm almost glad that I can't drive, so that I'm not tempted to try in LA.

We left LAX at just after 4:20pm, and the traffic was just starting to clog up for the evening rush hour. Tim decided to put Beethoven's 9th Symphony on and see if we could get back to his apartment before its completion; we succeeded, but with only 57 seconds to spare. (For the record, it was the performance by the Tbilisi Symphony Orchestra.) That said, had it not been for the carpool lanes on various stretches it would have taken much longer.

Tim is a postdoctoral researcher in mathematics at Caltech (the California Institute of Technology), and after dumping my stuff we headed to his office on the Caltech campus, a short five-minute walk away, so he could do a little more work and check in with the world.

After that we headed back to Tim's apartment, where he cooked dinner for us, before Tim headed to the dojo for an aikido training session while I relaxed and wrote some blog. Later in the evening, Tim introduced me to an hilarious British comedy series from 2000 or so, called Coupling, of which we watched a couple of episodes before retiring to bed.

California, Day 5

My original plan for Wednesday had been to head for a boat tour to Alcatraz, but by the time I got round to actually booking it it was sold out. I decided instead to go for a boat cruise around the San Francisco bay; but given the busy few days I'd had previously I took things easy and was in no rush.

I left the house about 11:30 and headed out to get some lunch, with the intention of going on a boat trip in the afternoon. I decided to head to the Castro for lunch, using the Muni Metro.

However, when I got to the metro station at Civic Center it was clear that not all was going to plan; in 15 minutes only one train went by, but that was going along the N line, and I needed either K, L or M. After 15 minutes an L train turned up, but then they announced they were experiencing "outbound delays due to technical difficulties".

After a couple of minutes of being held in the station, we proceeded to the next station, Van Ness. At Van Ness we sat for a while longer, and I considered going up to street level to catch the F instead to the same destination. After six minutes I finally decided to get off, whereupon my impatience was duly rewarded with the train's immediate departure. That'll teach me. 

So, having gone up to street level, I caught another historic streetcar, this one from Birmingham (I presume it meant Alabama, not the West Midlands); I rode the F from Van Ness to Castro and 17th, the line's terminus.

The Castro is a district of much culture and history; in 1977 it made history by electing Harvey Milk to the board of supervisors (essentially the city council), who thus became the first openly gay man elected to public office anywhere in the United States (and possibly the world). Tragically, he was shot dead a year later, as was Mayor Moscone, by Dan White, one of Milk's fellow supervisors.

The district today is a bastion of local culture, and I enjoyed a lingering lunch in Harvey's, a local restaurant at the intersection of 18th and Castro named in Milk's honour, while watching the world go by.

Eventually I headed back towards the waterfront, taking the metro line T from Castro to Embarcadero, from where I took a short walk to catch the F from Ferry Plaza to Fisherman's Wharf.

As I said my original plan had been to take a boat to Alcatraz and look around "The Rock", the infamous prison island dotted in the middle of San Francisco Bay. As it was, partly due to my forgetting and partly due to not being all that fussed about doing it at all, I failed to book in time they had sold out.

This being my last full day in San Francisco, I didn't have another opportunity to go on a boat, so I decided instead to head on a one-hour cruise around the bay with Blue and Gold Ferries. For $25, we were taken under the Golden Gate Bridge, around Alcatraz, and back alongside the Wharf.

The Golden Gate Bridge was, as is quite usual, shrouded in some fog but the visibility was better than Monday and we actually got a pretty good view of the bridge; the southern end was again covered in fog but the view to the northern end was clear enough when we got up close to see quite a lot of Marin County.

On the return from the Golden Gate Bridge we passed Alcatraz, which was originally inhabited in 1858 as a military base overseeing the bay; but the officers hated its remoteness and it was converted first to a military prison and then eventually into a federal penitentiary. There were only about 300 cells on the island, and the prison was reserved for the worst offenders only, eventually closing in 1963.

It's difficult to explain how remote Alcatraz feels, in spite of - or perhaps because? - its position only 1.5 miles offshore. The island is now a national historic landmark, and tours around the jails are apparently very interesting, if rather touristy.

After an hour at sea - where it was pretty windy, but still sunny enough to sunburn my cheeks - we landed back at Pier 39, and I had an ice-cream before heading back to Ferry Plaza on the F, this time on a streetcar from Philadelphia.

By now I'd been on almost all the types of public transport in San Francisco, except one: the trolleybuses. Most of the major bus lines have electric wires overhead, just like trams, and electric buses run along the streets (on normal tyres) powered by their connection to the overhead electric wires.

I thus decided to forgo the F at Ferry Plaza and get a #21 from Ferry Plaza to Market and 7th. It was an odd sensation being on what was quite obviously a bus but without the inevitable diesel engine sounds and smells: the quiet hum sounded so like a tram that it was hard to believe that underneath us were rubber tyres, not steel rails. But tyres they were, and I got off at Market and 7th to head to a shop and get some milk.

In my search for a shop I chanced upon the United Nations Plaza, which forms the centrepoint of the city's municipal buildings. On June 26th, 1945, the treaty establishing the United Nations was signed in San Francisco, and the plaza commemorating this was inaugurated in 1975.

Engraved in the ground is the full text of the preamble to the Charter of the United Nations: "We, the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war... do hereby establish an international organisation to be known as the United Nations."

After a quiet dinner, Robert, Charlie and I watched Rushmore, a 1998 film directed by Wes Anderson, in which an eccentric teenager, Max, and a rich industrialist, Herman (played by Bill Murray), become friends and vie for the love of an elementary school teacher, Rosemary Cross. The film is hilarious and very well-directed, and made for an interesting evening's entertainment. I eventually headed to bed for my last night's sleep in San Francisco, before flying to Los Angeles on Thursday.

California, Day 4

On Tuesday, I went for a tour of San Francisco's art museums. I started with the four-block walk to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. I got there at 11am, just as it opened, and I had to queue for 15 minutes to get in.

The museum houses an impressive collection in a spectacular building: spanning five floors, the building was completed in 1995 and remains one of the most eye-catching buildings in the city. Inside, there are a number of permanent exhibitions as well as a variety of rotating temporary exhibitions; as a result, the fourth floor (i.e., the third floor) was closed for renovation.

The first exhibit I came upon was also the most interesting: it exhibited the work of Dieter Rams, a designer for the electrical company Braun, whose ruthless desire for simplicity and good design have led, directly or indirectly, to some of the most iconic designs of our time: everything from calculators to hairdryers were subjected to unrelenting simplification, and his work has influenced many designers, not least Jonathan Ive at Apple who designed the iMac and the iPhone.

There was an exhibit of portraits and self-portraits: perhaps the most eye-catching exhibit was a pair of sculptures by Janine Antoni, both busts of her head, one in chocolate and one in soap. Another exhibit of photographs, Face of Our Time featured a series of photos by Richard Misrach of houses in New Orleans devastated and looted after Hurricane Katrina. Finally, the Rooftop Garden featured a number of large-scale sculptures.

The museum as a whole was very nice, and exhibits some of the best art west of Chicago; an enjoyable hour and a half, after which I popped into Subway, grabbed some lunch, and walked to Union Square to eat in the shade.

After lunch, I took two buses to head to Lincoln Park, in the north-west of the city. I first took the #38L along Geary Street (which becomes Geary Boulevard further out) from Union Sq to 33rd Avenue, which took nearly half an hour. There, I changed to the #18, from 33rd and Geary up to the Legion of Honor.

The Legion of Honor, a beautiful stone building with mock Greek columns, was given to San Francisco by Alma de Brettville Spreckels on Armistice Day, 1924, to honour the Californians who died in World War I. It is now home to San Francisco's finest collection of art from the renaissance right through to the early 20th century.

Its biggest and most impressive collection is that of the bronze sculptures of Auguste Rodin, with one, The Thinker, standing in the courtyard at the entrance to the museum. Others include The Three Shades and The Severed Head of St John the Baptist; all are exquisite, and the collection befits its impressive surroundings.

The rest of the permanent collection houses an impressive collection of old paintings, including El Greco's St John the Baptist, and Monet's Grand Canal, Venice. One of my favourites, though, was the slightly more obscure painting called Holy Week in Seville by Jose Jimenez y Aranda, depicting a pastor preaching to the assembled crowds outside the cathedral.

There were two temporary exhibitions on: one was of Dutch and Flemish Masters, which was interesting but not especially memorable. The second, though, was of The Mourners, tomb sculptures from the Court of Burgundy in Dijon. The cathedral in Dijon is currently undergoing renovation, permitting these 37 porcelain figurines depicting monks mourning in various manners to be removed for a special exhibition. Rarely is it possible to see them so close up and so intimately; the Mourners are a fascinating study of the continuing human battle with grief.

After nearly two hours in the museum, I headed into the surrounding Lincoln Park. From the museum, it is a short walk to the coastal path; after one or two false starts, I found myself onto the coastal path and headed west round the headland of Point Lobos.

The point of Lands End affords some of the best views of the Golden Gate Bridge: for the first (and only) time, I saw the bridge completely unadorned by fog. A little further west, at Point Lobos, is the westernmost point of San Francisco, with views stretching out over the Pacific Ocean.

On round the coast a little, past the one-time tourist resort of Cliff House, is Ocean Beach: a mile-long stretch of beach on the Pacific coast, busy with beachgoers, sunbathers, surfers, and many others. On this unseasonably warm Tuesday, all the locals were out enjoying some September sunshine.

After an hour and a half meandering round the coast, about 6pm I caught the Muni Metro N line from near the beach, at Judah and 47th, to Civic Center. The Muni Metro is what we would probably call a tram, though in this case it was more like two trams coupled together. Fortunately I was travelling against the peak flow, since the trams in the other direction were full and standing; as it was I was seated comfortably the whole way back to the apartment.

While in the city centre the trams runs underground, like a subway, and the doors have level access to platforms in dedicated underground station. On the surface, though, it runs more like a bus, with the major stops having dedicated wheelchair access ramps, but most being just like bus stops (and sometimes used by buses too); the flat access to the platforms recedes to form a set of steps down to ground level to get on and off the tram.

After getting back to the apartment, we headed for dinner with one of Charlie's friends from Cambridge, Sam, to Bossa Nova, a Brazilian place on 8th Street near the intersection with Mission. We ate tapas-style, all sharing a bunch of really interesting plates of food. I retired quite early, ready for my last full day in San Francisco.