A travelling month - cars, boats, buses, trains but no planes.
Reporting Days: 30
Locations: Shetland, Oxford, Bristol, London, Turin and Boario
Distance Walked: 290 km
Distance Driven: 1320 km
Distance Trained: 1320 km (yes, really)
Starting in Shetland
April started much as March had ended with me hanging over the walls at Sumburgh Head hoping that the puffins would put in an early appearance before I had to jump into the car and head for Lerwick and the Northlink boat south. And of course they did. Both the razorbills and puffins were, for a few early season days at least, plentiful and active with the traditional auk activities.
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| Talkative Auk (Razorbill) |
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| Returning Puffins |
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| Puffin settling in for the Summer |
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| Razorbills renewing bonds |
In southern England
Having faced the busy-ness of both the boat and the motorway network it was good to get to the Oxford to-do list. That did still leave a wee bit of time to hang out in the parks and gardens (and hospitals!) in Oxford, Bristol and London.
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| Spring in Bury Knowle Park, Oxford |
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| Oxford Botanic Garden |
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| Radcliffe Camera |
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| H H Wills Physics Lab, Bristol |
On to Italy
My pattern (and I am definitely a creature of habit!) is to spend a bit of time at the REGEN therapy centre each Spring and Autumn, and to travel there and back by train.
This Spring's travel plan involved a night in London (just beside St Pancras), then an early Eurostar to Paris and a Frecciarossa from Paris to Turin. It makes for a lot of travel hours in one day but with the bonus of a lazy day to be a tourist in Turin the next day.
And having decided which red car I wanted from the Museo Automobile, I completed the journey from Turin (via Milan, Brescia and Marone-Zone) to Boario. That final days travelling required three trains and a rail-replacement bus - Boario has a perfectly serviceable train station, but at the moment no trains as the line is in the process of being updated to have experimental hydrogen-fuelled trains.
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| The canals of St Pancras |
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| Cisitalia 202 (from 1948) at the Museo Automobile in Turin |
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| Back at the REGEN centre in Boario Terme |
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| Old Montecchio bridge over the Oglio in Boario |
Next Month
Current plan is for May to be April in reverse - time in Italy, then southern England and finishing up on Shetland (train, bus, boat and car permitting).
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