Great Western Coffee Shop

First trip out after lockdown - an appointment that had to be personally attended in Trowbridge and would have been allowed even over the last months had it become due.  Out by train, back by bus (would have been a 2 hour wait for a train when I finished).   Couldn't help contrasting the train from a while back and the train today:

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/mtge24.jpg)

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/mtge28.jpg)

Grabbed a quick cup of takeaway coffee from the new Melksham Hub Cafe which, as per instructions, I enjoyed on the train.

(http://www.wellho.net/pix/mtge29.jpg)

Cafe open, Monday to Saturday, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m; Hire bicycles there and now available.

Had my first trip on a bus today since November. Only a short ride from Worle into Weston and back.  Didn't feel at all unsafe.

My environmental tasks have resumed, with appropriate social distancing, sanitising of implements and so on. About twenty of us turned out today to clear bramble from a long hedge bordering a field soon to be populated by sheep and lambs. All of us were retired from work, of a certain age or more, and presumably had had the first jab.

I was one of those who looked a bit dubious when a tractor-drawn trailer turned up to transport us and our equipment the 800 yards or so between the car-park and the field. The trailer had seats down either side, a roof and open sides, but I was one of those who started fumbling for a mask. In the event, nearly of us set off to walk to the site, leaving just four to clamber aboard the trailer.

Went for a walk on the Mendips today.  The car parks at the popular places were very busy, where we parked we saw very few people.

I went to Sainsburys, for the first time in a year, yesterday. It was spookily quiet. After a year of having everything brought round by Ocado, Waitrose, Amazon and a dozen or so other services, it was really good to be able to flit like a butterfly through the brightly-coloured packages, dropping actual items into a real trolley! Another plus was that I was able to recycle a year's worth of plastic bags which, with the best will in the world, accumulate.

My daughter has become fully plant-powered during this past year, so I was on the lookout for vegan goodies. I wasn't disappointed. The rest of our family probably wouldn't describe ourselves as vegan, but going meat and dairy free has become the path of least resistance for us. Nonetheless it came as a real shock to me how stinky and vile the aisle full of chopped-up animal parts was!

I'm out on my first railway journey in a while. A leisure jolly. Up bright and early. My first train, from Templecombe, is very quiet, as expected. More so for my chosen seating area - I'm treating myself to 1st Class.

The Govt. advice is to only travel if necessary. Is a leisure jolly to another part of the south west necessary? I did ask myself that. For me I've concluded it is. I've been under NHS house arrest for nearly 2 months. That hasn't helped my mental health. So today is mostly about mental stimulation. Doing activities I enjoy - riding trains and photographing them and the railway environment. Templecombe is lovely to walk around, but it gets dull quickly when it's the only place you can exercise.

Oh, and damn annoyed that the village Co-op was doing a stock take this morning and hadn't bothered to inform the community it serves. Should have been open from 6am. Really wanted that coffee!

I won't say where I'm going/I've been. There may well be a picture quiz later!

I've just been to Morrisons, to get some oranges......................"spookily quiet" it 'aint !! Absolute chaos in the store. Every aisle leading to an open checkout was more than half occupied by a queue of trolleys. Social distancing was nigh on impossible, as was trying to buy anything in those aisles.  I even had to queue to pay for my oranges at the self serve checkouts.  Funnily enough, no one seemed to be buying toilet rolls................

I went to Tesco yesterday morning, which has become my habitual weekly slot. It is usually pretty quiet, especially by noon. But yesterday it was noticeably busier, though still tailing off for lunchtime.

And yesterday's Times had an explanation, at least in part, in this headline: "Vaccinated over-65s are a shot in the arm for in-store sales". Their source was this Kantar research:
 (https://www.kantar.com/uki/inspiration/fmcg/2021-wp-tentative-first-steps-back-to-the-shops-on-lockdown-anniversary)

Or were the extra customers, like me, getting their shopping done before the bigger rush immediately before the Bank Hol?

Normally I would have done the Big Shop today, having enough left in the larder, as it were, and to fulfil the shopping list given me by my Support Bubble in anticipation of her visiting me today and cooking for me. But I reckoned Waitrose would be busier than usual, so I nipped down yesterday at 0730 when there still seemed to be 20% more customers than usual for that time in the week.

I have just been out for a work trip to Exbury Gardens and Steam Railway, Train from Hinton Admiral to Beaulieu Road, with the electric bike for the 8 miles from station to Exbury.
All good trains on time, a few pasengers though not empty by any means, a fair few students from Bockenhurst college on the return trip, but again plenty of space, the face covering is OK when sat down and relaxed. Can't have been too bad as after getting the bike and I home, went out to do some shopping on the train again. So thats my 13 months away from the train ended.

Perranwell <> Falmouth Town today, was a good feeling.

On Wednesday I went into Reading by train (for a couple of routine medical appointments) for the first time in seven or eight months. Just six people boarding the 0927(the first off-peak service) at Tileshurst, four of whom were young. Just four people boarded the return service at 1323. Everyone seemed to be behaving sensibly, though on the return journey a young woman was sitting in a seat with "Not in use" above it and on the window - for social-distancing reasons. Likewise a couple of ticket machines on the Reading concourse were out of use.

Not very much activity in Reading town centre. I popped into W H Smith's and overheard a customer complaining to a sales assistant about the size of the signage advising that the Friar Street entrance/exit was closed; she explained that it was to stop people using Smith's as a public path from Friar Street to Broad Street. His point seemed to be that disabled people might belatedly discover the door locked and would have trouble with the extra distance involved in retracing their steps. The assistant dealt with the situation very sensibly and politely, prompting me to congratulate her after the man had left. It turned out that she was relying on a crutch to get around...

I have used the train a lot recently in Cornwall but today for the first time ever I got off the train and used the bus at Redruth. From Penzance a three car 255 was very fairly busy with what seemed like no air con. It felt like a hot Covid breeding ground so abandoned it, never thought I would ever do that.