2023 Scotland – 2

More on London, the Tower and Kings Cross Station

We are headed to Scotland today via the highspeed train. I’m looking forward to seeing the landscape. But in the meantime, I wanted to elaborate more about yesterdays adventures.

While at the Tower, Julie found a plaquard that talked about the grounds. Besides the usual lawns and shurbs, in 2022 several areas in the moat were planted with wildflowers and native plants to create a Superbloom. This created a haven for pollinators and local birds. This has continued, and it’s interesting to see the some of the hillsides looking stunning, and a little less manicured. You can read more about this in the Historic Royal Palaces website under the Tower of London Superbloom.

The moat itself is no longer filled with water, and is a deep, grassy field. There are gardens in places, but it just served to remind me of it’s defensive purposes. Across the street from the moat, and in a fenced in area as you come up from the Tube (the underground train system), there was an excavation of stone. The plaquard said it was the old postern gate. It’s just astonishing how old some of these areas are. The Tower of London is over 950 years old! They place the date at 1027 for the White Tower in the center. You can go in many of the towers and you sense the great age. I also took a picture of Traitor’s Gate. Seeing the real thing after I’ve read about it so often, makes some of the horrors (heads on the gate) become real, and it’s terrifying to realize how barbaric we can be as a people

We slept well at our hotel. However, we watched the TV to get the weather, and when we wanted to go to sleep, the TV wouldn’t turn off. Julie wondered where her husband was when she needed him! We couldn’t get behind it to unplug it (mounted incredibly securely on the wall – nobody was going to steal that thing!) so Julie threw a towel over it. All night we could see the white sign telling us that there was no signal through the towel. But the beds were comfortable and we were rested.

We have discovered that you can get just about anything you need at Kings Cross Station, including a trip to Hogwarts via Platform 9 3/4, except maybe a garbage can. Trash receptical, rubbish bin, not matter what you want to call it – there aren’t any. Security I suppose, but there are benches either, so I’m not really sure what that means. They are however, advertising the coronation with gusto!

For foodtuffs, they have a little bit over everything. The M&S Market has anything you could want in premade salads, sandwiches, fruit and packaged meals. You are funnelled through it like a maze, ending up at the cash register. The ‘Real Food Market’ stalls outside on the plaza offer fresh cheeses, rolls, wraps, and just about anything you could think of.

Inside, an open stall offered several kinds of Bacclava, Turkish Delight, nuts and dehydrated chips. I could just eat my way through the train station.

Once we had our breakfasts of choice, we planted ourselves in front of the big board waiting to hear what platform our train was on. It took forever, then we heard a message saying that service to the north on our trains (LUMO) was cancelled. More information came in. There was an incident on the tracks near York, and the tracks were blocked. Pretty soon, all 3 other trains going to Edinburgh (except ours) showed cancelled. We found out that ours was still going. The conductor filled us in later that the three other trains were up north, and would be on runs to London, Then they were to turn around and go back. But because they couldn’t get past the track blockage, the return runs were cancelled. Our train, however, was already in London.

They loaded us up, and anybody else they could fit onto it and we headed off. I was was stacked in by the window with all of our carryon luggage. Julie wedged her suitcase into the footwell of her seat and sat sideways with her feet in the aisle. We were the lucky ones. We had reserved seats. Other people were sitting three to two seats, standing in the aisles, sitting on luggage, and planted generally anywhere there was space. The conductor commented that everything seemed fine, and there hadn’t been any fights so far.

The conductor told us that a body had been found on the tracks under suspicious circumstances so they had to have a crime scene team out. It sounded like our train left London with the hope of a wing and a prayer that the track would be open by the time we got there. Thank heavens, it was and we arrived in Edinburgh on time.

More to follow. It’s been quite the day!