Sunday 31st December 2017

It is easy during the Christmas and New Year break to sit at home during the shortest days of the year, just vegetating every day living on sausage rolls, mince pies and Christmas Cake. We have done quite a lot of that to be honest, but we both have been using the cross trainer on a few occasions, and we have already tripled the time we were doing a week ago. Early days of course, but everything has to start.

Bear with me: for the past two decades work has been going on in London, planning, digging and fitting out a new cross-city railway line, this is Crossrail. As part of the final work, the new tunnels and stations have to be joined with the existing network, requiring some major junctions and stations to be closed. Some of this was done over the summer, but the biggest part was done these past two weeks, with no trains to London Bridge, Cannon Street, Blackfriars, Waterloo East and Charing Cross. Ostead, some trains would be going to Waterloo instead, and this would be the last time such diversions from Dover would happen.

Why bother? Well, for one, getting a train from Orpington to Waterloo is possible, but means taking a route seldom covered by a passenger train, or one for the whole distance. It means, for someone like me who loves looking out of the window, seeing new parts of London, new stations, and just be entertained. And then when the train reached its destination, the chance to photograph Southeastern trains in the old Eurostar platforms; all curvy and photogenic.

All we had to do was get to Dover Priory by nine, get our tickets and climb over the footbridge to the waiting Electrostar. In order to do this, we left the heating on the timer, it firing up at half six being our alarm clock. There is time for coffee, feeding the cats and a snatched breakfast.

We park in Priory Gate Road, walk in the drizzle to the station to get the tickets. The buffet is not yet open, so no coffee for the journey, just the sight of the girl working there cooking the sausage rolls to be ready to open up just as our train departs. There will be food in London I suspect.

We are the only customers in the last carriage, so pick a seat with a table, and settle down for the long and leisurely ride into London.

The first part we know well, along the cast to Folkestone, then inland to Ashford, but from there the line is between the downs, through Pluckley, Headcorn to Sevenoaks and to Orpington. This was the final stop before Waterloo, but from there is was taking branchline, tight corners and avoiding lines until we came to Peckham and Brixton. The train wasn't full, but lots of families on board, looking to do some new yeary stuff in London. Children excited, parents sounding weary.

We are back on the line to Victoria now, but as the tracks neared Battersea Power Station, or what is left of it, we take the freight line down onto the SW main line passing below, then from there it was a trundle through Vauxhall to Waterloo, onto the lines leading to the old international platforms, and we had arrived.

The plan had been to go up, stay for an hour and a half, then take a train back home, but there was 45 minutes before the next one, and I thought I could get my shots done in that time, Jols said she would go on a pasty hunt, so all was set.

I took shots of the curving platforms, then walked out into the station concourse, snapped that, met Jools coming back, so we ambled back to platform 22, going up the temporary slope, although our train wasn't there, we go through the barriers so I can snap it some more, and record the moment when our train cem in.

Once it had arrived and the passengers disembarked, we get on, sitting at another table and eating our pasties. The train was almost empty, at least the first carriage of the train, so I whiled away the time looking out the other side of the train as we retraced our route back to Orpington. Yes, it was slow and not on a single piece of straight track, but I found something interesting to look at. Most interesting is the work on the old power station, now being turned into expensive flats and accommodation, to allow more rich people to live in the city whilst poor people are forced to live in the suburbs and travel.

As we left suburban London behind, it began to rain, turning what had been a bright day into an afternoon of semi-darkness.

At Ashford the train filled up with people going to Folkestone for parties, the three young people opposite from us talking about the tabs of E and lines of cocaine they were going to do that night. They could have been making stuff up, but the one chap sitting on his own just giggled as the other two took turns in hitting him. It was a relief when they got off.

We arrived back in Dover, walked back to the car, and from there just a 5 minute drive up Jubilee Way to home. We would not go out again that year.

That morning before we left, I had prepared steak for our dinner, so come five in the afternoon, we were hungry, so I fried up some baked potatoes, fried some garlic mushrooms and griddled the steaks. It was a great meal, worthy of the last dinner of the year, we toasted our fortune to have survived it and our good luck to have found each other.

And that was it, the end of the year. I fond the Minions film to watch in the evening, then Piano Blokey on BBC2. Beth Ditto was one, singing her lungs out, and what a talent she is.

At midnight, we switch over to BBC1 to see the fireworks from London. The fireworks not really matching the music, but impressive.