A Stroll to Teignmouth and the Torbay Express at Dawlish

Sixteen Westbury Park Strollers fom Bristol went to Dawlish, Tiegnmouth and Shaldon this Sunday. Half walked on to Newton Abbot up the Etuary . For earlybird Senior Rail card bookers the rail fare was only about £9-00. From the 0ver bridge, we saw another type of day out - the Torbay Express Bristol etc to Torbay on Summer Sundays but NO DISCOUNTS for Ancient Brits, I'm afraid:

Visiting Malta and Sicily by Rail and Ferry?

ENJOY THE STATION -Taomina

Travelling home from Malta by ferry and train through Sicily, I chose to stop off at Taormina-Guardini simply to enjoy the station. In setting and architecture it is arguably the finest in Southern Europe. Approached from the South (from Catania) it springs out after a short tunnel. Approached from the North (Messina), the headland of Taormina first comes into sight, then again after a tunnel the line curves steeply down the cornice, displaying the station with an immediate backdrop of cactus covered cliffs and with the might of Etna, snow topped and smoke plumed behind.
The finest treasures of the station are inside the building, designed by architect Ernesto Basile (1857-1932), who had developed an especially Sicilian

Bristol-Hanoi the post - see page also

February to March 2009 Train Itinerary for David and Diana Bruce.

Stroll with Huskies: another update from David and Di

A stroll in the Urals in winter

Take a beat up old ex-military four-wheel-drive mini bus with seven dogs for 17 miles West back into Europe, then plunge through snow packed roads and forest tracks for 7 miles North; de-bus and wait for dogs to be

REPORT FROM MOSCOW AND YEKATERINBURG FEBRUARY 2009

Escaping the blizzards of Westbury Park with some difficulty, and much help from Barry, we haved passed through six capital cities, stopping briefly in Paris, even more breifly in Berlin and for longer in Moscow. There, we had lunch in GOM/GUM/GYM - the town sized department store, now Broadmead shrinking shopping arcade for designer labels (photo 1 and 2). Its brightly lit front dominates Lenin's now revolving mausoleum (it stops you noticiing him spinning in his grave!) but takes second place to the Kremlin's great red walls across Red Square.
On we went to the Urals and Ekaterinburg, where Di explored the igloo on the site of the Romanovs' Execution (photo 3). We also rehearsed a good walk for the strollers - see next update.
All the very best to friends in strollers and GOM.
David and Di.

A poem from Anne Wellings on the Teignmouth walk

Please click on poem for a more readable version.

David and Di have added a last verse:

.

So hearty thanks we give from one and all

To First Great Western's transport of delight.

Sans leaves, sans waves, sans flood, sans mist or fog,

The strollers all got home before the night.

It was not at all like Keats' 1818 view of Devon while staying in Teignmouth - "a splashy, rainy, misty, snowy, foggy, haily, floody, muddy, slipshod County" ( in the Oxford Literary Guide to the British Isles.)

So we got there! 5th October

Many to Dawlish and the cliff path

we survived the raging sea and met up at Shaldon (but I have no photos of that)