A Collaborator On The Road Again – Day 1

This was our second mini break in February and the excuse for this was much the same. I had a ticket for Collabro’s cathedral tour. This time the venue was Norwich Cathedral. As this is infinitely further than Lichfield, we made a weekend out of this. I had to work until 17:00 and then I headed to the station. There was a little snag with this. When we had originally started planning this, we had no idea that this was over a time period when next to no trains would run through Manchester due to some extensive engineering works just outside the main station. This meant that trains heading south started at Stockport, the next big town along this line. I took an Uber from work to the station and arranged to meet Graham there. I had not been to that station in years. It had not even occurred to me to arrange a meeting spot.

I had a quick look around the area where the rail replacement services arrived, but I could not see Graham. I then decided to check out the lay of the land inside the station so that I could figure out what would be the best place to wait for Graham. As soon as I entered the main part of the station, I could see Graham on the upper level. I went to join him. We stayed there until our train was listed. Then we headed towards our platform. We still had some time. There is a Starbucks on that platform, and I had planned to get some coffee. However, the line was crazy long, and I soon gave up on this idea. Our train arrived quite early as it started at this station. We got on and found a seat. I started reading. We had a nice clear run to Sheffield where we had to change trains.

We had plenty of time to make the change, which was just as well as the distance between the two platforms involved were about as far from each other as you could get. We had time to use the bathroom. Our onward train arrived pretty early again and we found some seats. Graham slept for a chunk of the journey, but I read for the whole distance. When we were getting close to Norwich, I consulted Google Maps to work out where the hotel was in relation to the station. This looked straightforward enough.

We arrived pretty much on time and headed for the exit. As soon as we crossed the station car park, I spotted the street we needed. About 5 minutes later, we spotted our hotel. This time round, we stayed at a Travelodge. The location was great and the price was fair. We went to check in and then headed for our room. This time the bed was bigger, which was a relief. We got ready for bed. I read a couple of pages and then went to sleep.