The Road To Southwold Pier
Jun. 14th, 2009 11:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
millionreasonsSaturday was the start of bike week and to celebrate this, we cycled to Southwold. Well, Dave cycled, I caught the train to Darsham. Well, Dave caught the train to Sudbury. Heck, it's a long way.
I thought Southwold was going to be some kind of Stoke Newington-on-Sea, but it's pretty much like Aldeburgh which we visited in February: a sweet little seaside town that smells of salt and sun oil, with the requisite ice-cream shop (nutmeg and gingerbread flavours), bad overpriced English cafes (specifically Munchies who doused their "Greek style" salad in what tasted like malt vinegar), a lighthouse, beach-huts, and a pier, the latter with small bronze plaques paid for by families enjoying the area, very odd machines whereby you could, for 40p, watch a mannequin pick its nose, go on a dog walking simulator, view a fake television, get an instant eclipse, become a human fly, get your everyday objects declared art (or not), have a pretend wolf try to pretend bite you, or watch while your brain is washed. It's all terrribly English. Talking of which, if you walk to the top of the high street, you can see where George Orwell used to live, next to the fish 'n' chip shop. I was hoping that the chippie would be called something like Nineteen Hake-ty Four, or Keep The Sea Bass Frying, or, um, Homage to Saveloys (sorry), but it isn't. Punning chip shops are not really Southwold's style.
We leave to catch the 17.38 train which, when we get to the railway station, is cancelled. This is not a question of a half hour wait, however, the next train is in 2 (two) hours. The station is unstaffed so there is no-one to ask about alternative routes, indeed National Express have rung up the station's taxi firm to come and tell the waitingpassengers customers that there is no train until 19.38. When David rings up the premium rate phone number advertised on the timetable, it has changed, and we don't have a pen to write down the new one.
I sit and rant for half an hour about the appallingness of modern life, the fact that NX have taken over many new routes, but, whilst they've put up the prices (and it turns out we can't even claim a refund because we bought advance tickets) they haven't invested in new rolling stock, that these trains taking people into Essex and Suffolk are always 3 carriages long without enough room (especially for bikes - there were 5 piled up together on the way here), that everything now is run as a profit making exercise and that's seen as the norm, that the idea of a service for the public is totally gone, that all effort seems to be put into promoting things rather than putting in place the mechanisms to make a service work (e.g. many letters from the NHS telling me to have a smear, but the impossibility of getting that smear), that corporate firms are taking over running the welfare state, that even schools now have to attract corporate money and we're all going to hell in a handcart and I'm moving to Germany or Sweden right now, goodbye, until David suggests we find a pub; the first one we get to is shut (of course) but the second, The Griffin, has a charming landlady who welcomes us and gives us some free potatoes with our brie tarts to make up for the fact it's only a starter (no vegetarian main courses). We sit in the quiet beer garden with glasses of Adnams, and look at the church. I suppose it's better than being stuck in Dalston with no train.
I thought Southwold was going to be some kind of Stoke Newington-on-Sea, but it's pretty much like Aldeburgh which we visited in February: a sweet little seaside town that smells of salt and sun oil, with the requisite ice-cream shop (nutmeg and gingerbread flavours), bad overpriced English cafes (specifically Munchies who doused their "Greek style" salad in what tasted like malt vinegar), a lighthouse, beach-huts, and a pier, the latter with small bronze plaques paid for by families enjoying the area, very odd machines whereby you could, for 40p, watch a mannequin pick its nose, go on a dog walking simulator, view a fake television, get an instant eclipse, become a human fly, get your everyday objects declared art (or not), have a pretend wolf try to pretend bite you, or watch while your brain is washed. It's all terrribly English. Talking of which, if you walk to the top of the high street, you can see where George Orwell used to live, next to the fish 'n' chip shop. I was hoping that the chippie would be called something like Nineteen Hake-ty Four, or Keep The Sea Bass Frying, or, um, Homage to Saveloys (sorry), but it isn't. Punning chip shops are not really Southwold's style.
We leave to catch the 17.38 train which, when we get to the railway station, is cancelled. This is not a question of a half hour wait, however, the next train is in 2 (two) hours. The station is unstaffed so there is no-one to ask about alternative routes, indeed National Express have rung up the station's taxi firm to come and tell the waiting
I sit and rant for half an hour about the appallingness of modern life, the fact that NX have taken over many new routes, but, whilst they've put up the prices (and it turns out we can't even claim a refund because we bought advance tickets) they haven't invested in new rolling stock, that these trains taking people into Essex and Suffolk are always 3 carriages long without enough room (especially for bikes - there were 5 piled up together on the way here), that everything now is run as a profit making exercise and that's seen as the norm, that the idea of a service for the public is totally gone, that all effort seems to be put into promoting things rather than putting in place the mechanisms to make a service work (e.g. many letters from the NHS telling me to have a smear, but the impossibility of getting that smear), that corporate firms are taking over running the welfare state, that even schools now have to attract corporate money and we're all going to hell in a handcart and I'm moving to Germany or Sweden right now, goodbye, until David suggests we find a pub; the first one we get to is shut (of course) but the second, The Griffin, has a charming landlady who welcomes us and gives us some free potatoes with our brie tarts to make up for the fact it's only a starter (no vegetarian main courses). We sit in the quiet beer garden with glasses of Adnams, and look at the church. I suppose it's better than being stuck in Dalston with no train.
