W-1 Getting to St Bees

I suppose many of you wonder where is St Bees ? It's on the coast by the Irish Sea and is the local base for the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority: it also has a sandstone quarry too btw. Population small but if our B&B is anything to go by it is full of walkers awaiting to start the Coast to Coast. Amazingly it has a railway station but probably only because Doctor Beeching didn't know it existed in the 1960's when he chopped the branch line network in the UK :-)

It has taken 8 hours to get here, with a taxi to Northampton station plus a train change at Birmingham and Carlisle. We didn't see Birmingham New Street station... alas we changed at Birmingham International..... an architectural delight ? I will let you decide

The last 43 miles, including a cancelled train (but a nice wait in a coffee lounge with good scones and cherry cake), took 3 hours ! So 3 rail companies later, two of which didn't believe in luggage racks, and we are ready to go. The only debate is what size of breakfast tomorrow - full English with cereal or a light sporty one.