On Christmas Eve I went into Ludlow to meet Philippa. We went into De Greys for Afternoon Tea. There was loads! Sandwiches, tea, cakes and scones with jam and butter. Delicious though. I felt like I'd been home about 5 minutes and already it was Christmas. Cheddar cheese, branston pickle, somosas, spaghetti, baked beans, lentil roast on Christmas Day, chocolate, biscuits, mince pies, Christmas cake and umm, more chocolate. On the 28th I went to Shrewsbury on the train - Sale Shopping. When I came home all I needed to buy was a pair of boots, waterproof boots. I bought a pair in Ludlow on the 27th - a pair of ankle boots. Then, on the 28th, I bought a pair of knee high boots, a pair of suede boots and a pair of shoes, amongst other, none-shoe, things. On New Year's Eve I went to Telford, and, amoungst other things, bought another pair of boots... I then spent the remainder of my holiday weighing everything in a somewhat pointless attempt to stay withn RyanAir's ridiculous weight limit of 15kg - something that was always going to be an impossible task.
In the period between Christmas and New Year I booked a train ticket from Birmingham International to Stansted Airport with virgin, direct this time, not changing at Northampton. Then Network Rail decided that it's engineering works were going to overrun. And it was the line I needed to use to get the London that was closed due to the overrunning engineering works. Liverpool Street Station was also closed with no trains to or from it. That meant no Stansted Express. The day before I was due to leave the line was still closed. I went into Ludlow train station and said 'I need to be at Stansted Airport for 14h tomorrow'. The man nearly laughed at me. He told me that despite Network rail saying the line would be open at 5am tomorrow morning that he doubted it. He did however find me another route. A better route, a proper direct route from Birmingham New Street to Stansted Airport, no changing. The trouble was my ticket for my original route was at Birmingham International waiting to be collected. And also, I didn't know whether the line via Rugby would actually be open. If it wasn't I could get a refund on my original ticket, if it wasn't I would lose my money if I didn't go that way. I decided it was better to be safe than sorry and bought a second ticket for the direct train from Birmingham New Street to Stansted Airport. I got a lift to Birmingham International and then collected my tickets - all 6 million of them! I had an abundance of tickets for getting to Stansted going just about every way possible. I then got the train from International to New Street where it became obvious I had massively overestimated the amount of time I would need to get to New Street for the 10h24 train. I had an hour and a half wait. Oh well, better to be early than miss the train. The rest of the journey went smoothly. The flight was on time. We got to Marseille at about 19h and then got the bus and metro. My suitcase weighed over the weight limit and I had to pay for excess weight. Nevermind.
