Honeymoon Page

Here you'll find all the details of our very mad honeymoon that we will be zooming off on, early on Sunday morning. Far too early... :-(

The honeymoon will last one week, and, despite one of the first pieces of advice we were given about planning the honey moon being "move your honeymoon to Switzerland", we will be doing a whistlestop tour of England, Wales and a bit of Scotland, all by rail. Not content with just going everywhere by train, we will be taking in scenic railway locations, railway museums, and preserved railways too! We really are mad!!

Here is the rough plan, but, as you will no doubt appreciate if you know us well, all our plans are mostly fluid until the moment we actually do them, so what we do in reality is virtually guaranteed to be a bit different to this plan!

We will be leaving from Pool Meadow Bus station in the town centre at 09.10 on the Sunday morning. If anyone fancies getting up early to see us off, please do! We'd love to have a few people waving us off!

• The morning will start in a rather unusual fashion, and hopefully one that is not to continue: With a bus! The railway line from Coventry to Birmingham (and indeed most of the West Coast Main Line anywhere near Coventry) is closed for engineering works, meaning that Coventry station will be shut! (The Nuneaton line and the Leamington line will be closed too!) Thus, we will be taking a National Express coach to Birmingham, (taking 40 mins and travelling at a reasonable time as opposed to the rail replacement bus that takes 1h 30m, goes round all the houses, and gets us there with an hour to kill...)

From there, we will walk to Birmingham Snow Hill, and catch the 10.38 "Shakespeare Express" departure down to Stratford upon Avon, arriving at 11.38. This is a steam-hauled train, with Pullman carriages. We will be travelling in Premier class in both directions, having free tea/coffee on the way to Stratford. A very brief look at Stratford station follows while the train is turned, and then we depart at 12.02, back to whence we came, up to Birmingham, arriving into Snow Hill at 12.56. This time, however, we shall be served a full roast lunch on board with all the trimmings! We think it will be well worth the £70 we paid, and even the getting out of bed early! Have a look at The Vintage Trains website

After that, it's something of an anti-climax as we walk back over to Birmingham New Street, and take a slightly newer Virgin Train all the way down to Dawlish Warren (~3.5-4 hours).

"Where's Dawlish Warren and what's so special about it?", we hear you say. Well, it's a section of track down south near Exmouth that runs along side the cliffs and features in most of the photos of steam and modern trains with waves dashing up round the train. Have a look at the Dawlish Warren site. Dawlish Warren is actually at the eastern end of the most spectacular part of the coastal section. Thus, we shall continue along to Teignmouth (or we may decide to go all the way to Newton Abbot) to see all of it. We'll then turn around and go back along it all to Starcross, where we shall be staying in Chimneys Hotel. Dawlish Warren itself apparently has very little in the way of, well, anything, unless you have a tent or run a stall in a fun-fair...

• Lots of nice, fresh, sea air, not much booze as we may still be feeling a bit woozy from the reception, maybe a bit of swimming in the sea, then back to the hotel for some, er, 'sleep'...

Leave Dawlish etc, and head back up the country to Newport (~3hrs). We've been told Newport has little to offer, apart from a very fun looking Transporter bridge so we'll probably just stretch our legs a bit, have a nose at the bridge, then carry on up the country. Ludlow was suggested as a nice place but we really want to get to Shrewbury for a look around so we went there for a random day out just for the fun of it instead on 23rd June - Jo took the day off work, we jumped on a train and away we went. We are mad!

• Continue upwards to Shrewsbury. Look around and have an evening meal there. We were warned about the National Eisteddfod Of Wales occuring nearby (Link to the official 2003 page no longer works so here is a BBC report of the event instead), so we have booked this nights stay in a nice looking B&B near to the station called The Lucroft Hotel Bed and Breakfast.

The following few days activities, until we get round to Crewe on Thursday morning,
are based on The Cambrian rail cruise created by Dave Sallery.

• Go to Welshpool, which is "a reasonably-sized and quite attractive market town" (apparently, according to someone who's actually been there!). Visit to Welshpool and Llanfair Light Railway. Have a look at it, go on it if we like the look of it (it's been recommended) but maybe not. Welshpool also has Powys Castle (want some pictures of it?), which may be worth a visit.

• Once we've got bored of Welshpool, we get back onto a more modern train and continue along the tour until Tywyn. Have lunch, and have a nose at the Talyllyn Railway (steam, preserved line), maybe going on if we like the look of it and if we think we've got time. Exhaust all interesting things to do in Tywyn. (We've been told there is very little interesting to do there apart from a good chippie!)

My good friend and best man, Tom, at the Talyllyn railway, during our railtour holiday together in 1997.

Onwards along the tour to Barmouth, where will will be staying overnight in an old granary (last room on this page) in Llwyndu Farmhouse Hotel. There seems to be quite a bit to do in Barmouth so we'll explore and maybe spend some time on the beach with Phil staring at topless sunbathers and Jo hitting him for it, unless he can persuade her to be the topless sunbather... :-) After a bit of nude (maybe!) swimming we'll eat in the town and retire back to our nice private room with our nice private bed... :-)

• Continue up through the rest of the small, funny sounding places along the coast up to Porthmadog, maybe getting off for another swim in the sea if we feel like it in some small village somewhere. As if we hadn't seen enough steam railways yet, Porthmadog has two of them! The first is the Welsh Highland Railway (narrow gauge, steam, had to be completely rebuilt along the old trackbed when it was re-opened in 1980) - quite short but you can look around the loco shed too. We may go on this, time permitting. The second we will be going on, as it forms part of the circular railtour, after a walk through the town. This is the Rheilffordd Ffestiniog Preserved Railway (the "Oldest Independent Railway Company in the World", having been in steam for 140 years!) at Porthmadog Harbour station, taking in lunch and any topless sunbathers on the beach en route... :-)
• Take the steam railway up to Blaenau Ffestiniog. Continue upwards on a 'normal' train to (probably) Llandudno.
• We may stop off, time permitting, in Betws-y-coed, which has Conwy Valley Railway Museum on it's platforms apparently! It also has a rather nice sounding "Riverside Chocolate House & Tea Room". Hmmm... :-)
• In Llandudno there is a funicular railway called the Great Orme Tramway which goes up the Great Orme rock outcrop (Random useless fact: "Historians believe that [the Great Orme] gets its name from Viking visitors who called it Horma Hera meaning dragon or sea monster which is what it would have looked like as it loomed up through the sea mist"). Also, here is the Great Orme Mines which could be worth a look! When we get bored/tired, we'll get some random person on the station to suggest a suitable town and stay overnight in Colwyn Bay/Ryhl/unpronouncabledoggg. Just for one night, we are not booking a hotel in advance - it will be fun 'going into the unknown!'

• Travel along the rest of the tour as far as Chester, where we say goodbye to quaint little towns with totally random-sounding names. Then onwards to Crewe (~1hr).

The “Official” Press release photo of the APT

Visit to The Railway Age, to see more railway things and, in particular, the APT! What's the APT? I can see you asking now.. It's the Advanced Passenger Train, a prototype for a tilting train developed in the 1970's and never fully entered into service due to many teething problems, competition from the now-loved (by railway fanatics, not those who travel on them grumbling at late running etc...) HST (High Speed Train) development, and a few other financial factors. Have a look at The APT website. Here we intend to stay until they close and kick us out. (We have developed a strong habit of being the last people to leave museums!)

• Onwards to Leeds (~2hrs), have dinner and stay overnight at the Broomhurst hotel, near where Alison (Jo's sister) lives, (although she's not there at the time)

• Leave early in the morning and travel along the scenic Settle to Carlisle line. Have lunch on the train and get to Edinburgh in time to have a look at Edinburgh castle or anyhting else that takes our fancy. We are planning a railtour of Scotland as a future holiday so we will take in a lot of the museums and things there on the next tour. This will just be a general walk around enjoying the place itself and relaxing, follwed by a nice meal while waiting for the train

• At 11.40PM, we will get on our next train and commence the longest journey of the whole holiday - a whopping 7.5 hours!:
  The Scotrail "Caledonian Sleeper" all the way back down to London Euston.

• Arrival in London will be just after 7AM, then we will probably go and find a nice fried breakfast in a cafe somewhere with the third cup of coffee/tea of the day (the first being on the train and the second being on Euston station!) and then walk around London for a bit.
• We will probably have a tour round St Pancras Chambers. If we have any more time we will do a bit of random wandering around the DLR (Docklands Light Railway), or maybe just sit in a pub for a few hours on the riverside. - we will decide on the day how we are feeling. (Knackered!)
• In the afternoon, at 3PM, we are going to see Mamma Mia.
• Afterwards we will probably have dinner in a nice restaurant - there is a good cheap Chinese buffet in Leicester Square that we like, and have a drink or two. Then, sadly...

• Get on the last train of the tour, away from London and back up to good old, um, Nuneaton...
• Naturally, as it was for the starting sunday, the Coventry section of railway is closed, so it's a delightful "rail replacement bus" from Nuneaton to Coventry!
• Arrive home, go to bed very tired but very happy...

To find out what really happened, have a look at The Honeymoon Diary - (written at the time and put on the website later)

Please note: These pages are being deliberately left virtually as they were at the time of the wedding, to preserve the good website we put together at the time, for posterity more than anything else! Whilst we are endeavouring to keep links etc up to date, if replacements can't be easily found, the link will simply be removed. This is why some things may say they are links but are links no longer. Also, some of the information given here may, therefore, be out of date.

This page is part of Phil and Jo's online madhouse. The links below are what is in the madhouse - please look around.