Day 12 - Journey home

05.08.13

We had the rude awakening at 6:45am, which as I said yesterday was actually 5:45am GMT! We got ready, packed the last of our things into the hand luggage and met Sylvia and Hughie for breakfast. We then had to make our way to our disembarkation point, ours was different to Sylvia and Hughie's due to their cabin being further down than ours but we managed to arrange it that they could be with us. There was a bit of waiting around but all in all disembarking seemed to go quite well. We jumped into a taxi across to the station and managed to get the train an hour ahead of our booked train, this was due to the time difference, we weren't aware that the hour would be put straight on when boarding the ship at the beginning! This was good news for us, the only downside was that we didn't have reserved seats but luckily did manage to get seats on both trains, phew! Everything went extremely smoothly until we reached Preston, it seemed we were so near but yet so far! There was flooding north of Tebay and we were grounded in Preston! Nobody knew anything, when we'd be moving, whether we could go to the next stop, Lancaster, our stop or whether the flooding could be passable with care. There was no communication! We decided to price up a taxi, I sensibly took my train ticket and phone, just in case! So as I got back to the train there were indications that we could be moving very soon so we decided to leave the taxi. It then came over the tannoy that we weren't going to be moving in the next 15 minutes!! It was a really bad situation and we were all very tired by this point. It was also at this point that Courtney decided she needed the loo! As we were at the station all toilets had been locked so we had no option but to go onto the platform. Again, I took my ticket and phone. As we came out the guard was about to blow his whistle!! There was a hustle of people trying to get back on the train! Courtney and I managed to jump onto the very last carriage, the train pulled off seconds later, it sounds so dramatic! It wasn't actually, we had a ticket and communication so we would have been ok, it was just the annoyance of the situation. The hour we'd gained earlier in the day we now lost in Preston. Anyway we were able to slowly make our way up the train, yep, everyone was in the furthest away carriage! They thought we hadn't got on. Unfortunately a chap sitting next to us hadn't! His briefcase and coat etc were on board but he wasn't, we'd come from the very back of the train so he'd have been back if he was on board. Mark told me they were literally given a couple of minutes warning that the train was going to set off. We still didn't know if it was going all the way to Lancaster or if we'd be stopped again in some sidings as there was a queue of trains already at Lancaster. Thankfully we did make it all the way and managed to catch the train to Morecambe that we would have caught with our original booking! (and there is no reserved seating on this train, LOL!)
So now we are home I will show you what I was stitching, It's a Margaret Sherry design of 2 mice on a sewing machine. I got a reasonable amount done but you'll have to wait to see the finished design because you can't gauge much from this!

 

and a little bit of cuteness to end my holiday ramblings! The day after we came home Charlie built a dock, complete with giant crane, in his bedroom! The car ferry is our ship!!