The longest day

Sometimes we choose a route between our two homes not because of its convenience, but because we want to make it more interesting, or visit somewhere new. Returning to the UK this time was a long route involving a local bus, a French train, two Spanish trains, a flight with Easyjet, an airport bus and shuttle, a train from Gatwick to London, and two London buses... with lunch in Port Bou, a Spanish harbour town we had previously never walked around. Before leaving, I started to crochet a ripple scarf, and thought I'd be able to record how it progressed on the various types of transport - even starting work at the bus stop!

Port Bou

The first two stages - local bus from St Jean Lasseille to Perpignan station (Dali's "Centre of the World") followed by a train to Port Bou - went very smoothly and the scarf grew. At Port Bou we made our way down from the station to the sea front, where the wind was fierce. A walk round the harbour in the bracing weather gave us an appetite for lunch, which was excellent (thanks, TripAdvisor reviewers).

From there we took the longest single stage of the journey - the slow train (over 2½ hours) all the way to Barcelona - plenty of opportunity for scarf growth! From the main station we were able to take another walk in the sunshine - this time without the wind! - before getting on to the airport train. This train is always full, and passengers are always "entertained" by buskers... but I managed to get a seat, and concentrate on the hook and yarn as the buskers passed by.

More progress was made in the airport departure lounge and on the flight (no photo possible) but the fingers had had enough by the time we landed at Gatwick. The aircraft had been directed to a domestic flight gate - which as international passengers we couldn't use - so we were then bussed around the airport, finally got through baggage reclaim and passport control, and took the shuttle to the station only to find that we'd missed the last train to London Bridge (our nearest station to home) - so by the time we had detoured via Victoria and then two London buses, we'd been travelling for 14 hours. The scarf has yet to be finished...