{"id":278,"date":"2005-08-14T19:31:20","date_gmt":"2005-08-15T02:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stardel.com\/eg\/?p=278"},"modified":"2005-08-14T19:31:20","modified_gmt":"2005-08-15T02:31:20","slug":"on-to-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/2005\/08\/on-to-london\/","title":{"rendered":"On to London"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a dark and stormy day that day I left St Andrews. This was the St Andrews I had feared to face. The Force 3 gale winds, rain, and a links course. Fortunately, I was in a cab heading for the train station. One of the train bridges to Edinburgh was under repair<\/a> that week so a bus was coming by to ferry the train passengers to Edinburgh. That didn\u2019t seem to put a crimp into my travel plans so I hopped aboard and tootled on.
\n
\nI got a 4-day rail pass<\/a> that allowed me to travel anywhere on Britrail on any of 4 days within a 2 month period. I even got to select the days and I didn\u2019t have to worry about catching a particular train or reserving a specific seat. Very handy to give you flexibility in you travel plans. For a while, while in St Andrews, I was considering traveling to Cardiff to see my brother play in the Celtic Lacrosse Championship<\/a> (Ireland Won!) but the Old Course opportunity came up and I had to defer. But I had the option. (Good thing I didn’t go, turns out the Championship game was Wednesday, instead of Thursday as I thought, so I would have gotten there after it was all over.)<\/p>\n

Now, I was on my way to visit friends in London town. I left my golf clubs in left luggage in Edinburgh and caught the \u201cNorthern Lights\u201d to King\u2019s Cross. The ride down the east coast through Newcastle, York and Peterborough is a very nice train ride. There was a dining car to snack at and they even provided electrical outlets to power PCs or Ipods.<\/p>\n

From Kings Cross I caught the Hammersmith line straight out to East Ham. As soon as I got out of the train I knew something wasn\u2019t right. The stairs weren\u2019t in the right place. And when I walked out of station the streets weren\u2019t in the right place. (It had been 10 years since I was last there!) I soon realized that I had gone one stop past my goal and went back to the right station. Here, everything looked right and I quickly found myself at Avedon<\/a>\u2019s andRob<\/a>\u2019 s door. I found PNH<\/a> and Avedon ensconced at the dining room table, cruising the web and commenting on blogs and articles they were discovering. This would be the scene for the next four days.<\/p>\n

One of the nice bits of visiting Rob is that he has a rather large comic collection and I can zone out catching up on ten years worth of comics I wouldn\u2019t otherwise have read. Quantum and Woody<\/em><\/a> was particularly good. The Great Lakes Avengers <\/em><\/a>was also another I hadn\u2019t had a chance to appreciate before.<\/p>\n

Saturday, a party was being held for local fans and visiting fans to meet before the Worldcon. I helped pick up the room I was staying in since it would be a sitting room if the weather turned nasty.<\/p>\n

Since I had last been here, Rob had done a bit of work in the back yard, clearing out the rubbish and laying down a paving stone patio. The weather was pleasant enough to sit outside and watch the evening skies. I\u2019ll bet with the wireless LAN, Avendon could sit out there with her PC.<\/p>\n

Moshe and Lise showed up, Damien Warman and Juliette Woods, The GUFF winners were there. Sharee Carton and Randy Byers showed up a bit late. A number of other fans showed up as well, but I don\u2019t remember them all. I will have to check the pictures. The PCs were retired for the party.<\/p>\n

The party went well, the crowd mostly stayed outside or in the dining room so the cleaning of the other rooms was a bit of a waste.<\/p>\n

Rob also showed us tapes of a British Quiz show \u201cHave I Got News For You<\/em><\/a>\u201d where four panelists are supposed to provide their definitions of what is happening in silent news clips. It was Hilarious.<\/p>\n

We also had a chance to see the new Doctor Who<\/em><\/a>. It looks a lot more adult and action-oriented than the previous ones. This doctor, Christopher Eccleston, only lasted for one season before moving on. I didn\u2019t see the latest Doctor.<\/p>\n

Monday, I took the time to go down town and see the Globe Theater<\/a>, the Tate Modern<\/a> and the London Eye<\/a>. I joined Rob and Avedon at Walkers for a special meeting of the regular First Thursday London Fan meeting<\/a>, since most fans would be heading to Glasgow before the regularly scheduled First Thursday meeting on Thursday. Dave Langford was there handing out the latest Ansible<\/a>. I met more London fans and some more incoming Americans. I will need to check the pictures to find out whom. I know Caroline and Brian were there and Chaz Baden stuck me with a sticker to indicate he took my picture.<\/p>\n

Tuesday was a down day for me. I had planned to hit the first day of the Great British Beer Festival in Kensington and then come back and take R&A to dinner, but I discovered that the festival didn\u2019t actually open on the first day until 5 PM (amazing what you can find out reading the adverts on the Tube) and closed at 10:30 and this was just a little too time conflicting, since I wanted to be up reasonably early Wednesday morning to get the train to Glasgow.<\/p>\n

So I relaxed and read. PNH left for Folkestone. We went out to a nearby vegetarian Indian restaurant for dinner, very tasty. I had a chance to visit with Avedon and prepared for the next journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a dark and stormy day that day I left St Andrews. This was the St Andrews I had feared to face. The Force 3 gale winds, rain, and a links course. Fortunately, I was in a cab heading for the train station. One of the train bridges to Edinburgh was under repair that … Continue reading On to London<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,7,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fandom","category-general","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4NpF-4u","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stardel.com\/eg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}