All Aboard the Flying Scotsman

  

It was a long journey to the Bluebell Railway at Sheffield Park in Sussex. It started well over a year ago, but the celebrity visiting engine we'd booked to see, at the request of Son the Elder, developed a fault and the 'experience' was put off for twelve months. 

And then Son the Younger, belatedly reading his messages, said actually he'd have wanted to join us if he'd realised the rest of the family was going, and so I banished to the back of my mind the not inconsiderable amount I'd already paid, bought him a ticket, upgraded the four existing footplate viewing tickets, and reckoned my father would be really pleased we all had tickets to ride on the Flying Scotsman.

Getting my lot together is like herding proverbial cats at the best of times. Throw Covid into the mix and it's like herding wildcats with rabies, but my daughter tested negative three days beforehand and her partner, who'd had to go to hospital for a scan and a lumbar puncture, having suffered a thunderclap headache - virus-related, as it turned out - finally tested negative on the morning in question, so we were set to go.

To board the train, we had to cross to the other platform and show the really rather inauthentic email that constituted our tickets ...

... and we were off! 

Our journey lasted an hour and three-quarters, from Sheffield Park station to East Grinstead and back. It's a rural route, but many of the fields, and all the stations en route, were lined with people waving, many with unfeasibly large-lensed cameras set up on tripods. I think it was the first time in my life that I hadn't been the wistful onlooker, but part of the gilded company on the inside.  

The excitement got a bit too much for my companions. 

Back at Sheffield Park we watched some shunting ... 

... and stuck around for a bit to get a good look at the Flying Scotsman, because of course you don't actually see it/her/him while you're in a carriage being pulled by it, you just get looked at. Next time when I'm on the outside, I'll remember it's the onlookers that get the best view. 

A visit to Standen and the sea

'Hello,' said the NT volunteer at the lodge in the car park, 'have you been to Standen before?' 

'Yes,' I answered, 'about 28 years ago.'  

I didn't add that I was marshalling three children under five at the time, two of whom would be diagnosed autistic the following year. Needless to say, the visit was brief. 

I was unencumbered on this visit, apart from a need to be down on the coast by 6pm, which didn't give me masses of time, but it's possible to get a lot seen in a short while if you're on a mission, which I was. 

bee on salvia

I saw a tortoiseshell butterfly the other day that was faded and a bit ragged. This butterfly, on the other hand, is a National Trust tortoiseshell and accordingly immaculate. 

Standen was built from 1891 to 1894 by the architect Philip Webb, who'd built William Morris's Red House thirty years earlier, and is furnished largely with Morris & Co designs, which makes it a joy for lovers of the Arts and Crafts Movement, me included. I was so pleased to reacquaint myself with the rooms I loved, and in one instance, attempted to recreate, all those years ago. 

There are lots of guidebooks and websites with great photos of Standen, though, so I'll just post a few details that caught my eye. 

And if you think I was the only visitor, I wasn't, it's just clever angles and biding my time till I'm momentarily on my own.

Here's the second-hand bookshop, with a magnificent till. I didn't get to put any money in there, though, as if there were any poetry books (apart from Norton's anthology), I couldn't find them.

And then it was down to the coast and a little sit on the beach as the sun started to set, which was almost too much beauty for one pair of eyes.