Car Shuffle

 Actually this is posted on 31st as other things got in the way . . . 

The car was back at Droitwich Marina so it was the usual combination of walking, bus, train and taxi to retrieve it. Mike booked the train tickets online yesterday so at least that part was reasonably confident.

The next scheduled bus from the stop nearest to Barton Marina was at 10:23, according to Google, but it looked from the map to be a little further to walk than it turned out. As a result there was quite a with with nothing to sit on - grass is till rather damp despite having good sunshine today. At least he could see the service bus going in the other direction towards Burton-on-Trent but it was at least five minutes late.

So, although a little nervous when 10:23 came and went, Mike was not surprised that when it did appear it was perhaps even a little later. However, the new Bus Pass (now issued by Wiltshire not Cornwall) worked. The route is a tour de force for the driver as it wends a very circuitous route around several villages with narrow streets, lots of parked cars and quite a bit of traffic. At one point the bus does a trip around a village and ends up going back the way it had entered before continuing onwards to Lichfield.

The bus dropped Mike at Trent Valley Station and the ticket office was able to print out the tickets from the reference code. Despite the slight late running of the bus there was plenty of time before the train departure. The station has a very small coffee shop - not much difficulty in enforcing social distancing as there is only room for one customer at a time anyway! Still, very friendly and a good cup of coffee.

The train to Birmingham is a service that shuttles between Bromsgrove and Lichfield - an electrified service. It departed and arrived into New Street on time and Mike had sufficient gap to find a place to sit and eat his lunch.

It was then the familiar train to Droitwich and Mike had a short wait for the pre-booked taxi - which also arrived on schedule!

The drive back to Barton was uneventful - a couple of stretches on the M42 were slow, with a Smart Management limit of 40mph at two junctions. The sat nav is welcome as there are a couple of complex intersections, especially the one when leaving the M42 as it seems to have been designed to encourage the unwary to take the M6 Toll unless very careful! Overall the journey time was at least half an hour better than estimated, thanks mainly to the efficient taxi transfer.

Meanwhile, as always, Christine had been slaving over a hot boat (actually in the boat) cleaning and packing.