Great Western Coffee Shop

1. Portsmouth Arms to Stromeferry?

2. Bruton Station to this photograph of Iona Abbey:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3295/3110937464_9a24648a63.jpg

3. Great Bend, Ontario to a certain Wiltshire Town - but only from 10th to 12th July this year

At risk of being pedantic, should that be Grand Bend, ON? The only Great Bend i can find is in Kansas (insert Dorothy joke of your choice here).

At the risk of appering careless in my original post - sorry, yes.   Grand Bend, Ontario.

My answers (in no particular order) are I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, Jazz Festival, and 1,012.

1012 is correct - would you care to explain to the other members?   

A Jazz festival might indeed link one of the other pairs, but it wasn't the link I researched when setting the question ... so again, if you could elucidate, that would be great.   

And I'm at a loss as to whether your answer of "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue" relates to a radio program or your state of mind.  Judging by the cApItAlIsAtIoN your used, and your reputation for accuracy in such things, I think you mean the radio program ... and once again it would appear that you have found a link that I hadn't.  I don't think that Iona is a valid destination on Mornington Crescent unless you're playing the third diagonal obfurscated rule, and of course in that case Bruton would be invalid in the same round as anywhere north of the border.

Well 1012 is the number of passenger journeys recorded at both Portsmouth Arms and Stromeferry for 2007/8 according to National Rail, still working on the other two!

RTS has just saved me that job :)

It's probably wrong, but the Marlborough Jazz Festival ran from 10th to 12th July, and Grand Bend sounds like it might be a bit jazzy (http://www.millan.net/minimations/smileys/jazzybass.gif) (http://www.millan.net)


State of mind: it was three in the morning, and I really had no idea! I did consider igneous schist, but only because it sounds a bit rude (http://www.millan.net/minimations/smileys/evilgrin.gif) (http://www.millan.net)

1,012 ... yes ... DfT Passengers.  Grand Bend isn't a folk festival ... but you are indeed looking at some sort of event there.  Bruton and this Iona are linked by a date.

Bruton station opened in 1856.  The photo of iona abbey which hangs in the Scottish National gallery was taken (or at least first displayed) in 1856 also

Correcy ... and you'll find it's the same day of the year too.

1 September...

Still puzzled about Grand Bend, ON...only event I can find on their website for July 10-11 was a race-for-life-type event to raise funds for cancer research.

 ???

Oh hang on.

 :)

There was one in Corsham the same weekend... God bless the Interweb.

Did I win...?  :D

I may have been a bit obtuse ... the link I had / have was in an abbreviation. xxx is an innovative field at the intersection of mathematics, computer science, library science, and scientific publishing ...

From a search I have just done ... I have learned than "Iona" may be found within "exceptional".   And Iona is, truly an exceptional place to visit.  I visited Iona in - it must have been - the early 1970s - a day trip from Oban as a late teenager, taking my Grandmother on The King George V (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TS_King_George_V) from Oban, sailing around Mull into the bay at Balamory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balamory), close to Staffa to see  Fingal'a Cave (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingal%27s_Cave) and then to be landed by tender onto Iona (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iona) where we had a brief couple of hours to see the Abbey and enjoy the gentleness / quietness / atmosphere of the island.

A much more recent visit, taking Waverley from Oban, was a lovely day out ... but we were frustrated from landing because the swell meant that they wouldn't risk the transfer into the tenders to get ashore.  Ruefully I though back 30 or 40 years; there was a swell then too, but a more relaxed attitude.  I remember saying to Gran (in the 80s at the time, but game for an outing) "don't worry - there will be a couple of burley sailors to help you down" and her repost afterwards of "the one on the left wasn't all that burley".

Iona is one of those places on my "bucket list" to get back to.

Researching something else, I came across a proposal from early 2016 in the Oban Times (https://www.obantimes.co.uk/2016/04/01/13093/) for a railway to link Craignure (where the Isle of Mull railway once terminated) to Fionnphort for the Ferry to Iona:


More a dream than anything that was ever likely to become reality, but I would love to take a ride on that train. And yet - many a word written in jest has a seed or three of sense.