fog | Insight

It’s back on the train heading to Helsinki.

I had not reserved a seat. The train conductor pointed out that the train was going to get very full. She found a seat with a cancelled booking for me.

Some of the trees are heavily laden with snow.

Some pretty houses on the way.

Its then on to a tram to go to the ferry.

It’s warmed up in Helsinki do the snow is getting slightly slushy.

We get sightings of the different waterways from the tram.

Some interesting buildings on the way.

The tram arrives at the ferry terminal

Checking in and going through passport control is fast and straightforward.

Off to find my cabin which is on the fifth deck, the level we entered on.

The sun is setting as we leave Helsinki giving some magical views.

How close !

A wander round the boat, some food, then to bed. There is live music on board and a massive dinner buffet. However I got up for the breakfast buffet. Again with a view.

Then it’s a trip with a bus and underground to the Central Station.

Temperatures have risen since my previous visit.

A little walk to the central station.

The snow is reducing.

I changed to a regional train at Lund. No pictures as I spotted a train leaving before my planned connection so did a rapid change. Now I was 35 minutes ahead of schedule.

The sky is grey with very low cloud.

Malmo sky

Disappointingly the crossing on the bridge from Sweden to Denmark is very foggy.

The bridge crossing.

Modern buildings not far from Copenhagen Airport

Back to Birchwood, the leaves have been cleared.

The train is delayed by trespassers.

The delay meant I could not get a decent lunch.

A short ride between Warrington train stations

The train to Edinburgh was delayed due to trespassers. However there was plenty of leeway to catch the connecting train, especially if I changed at Haymarket.

As we headed north the delayed train lost time rather than catching up.

We arrived at Haymarket. As I got off the train. I heard the Inverness train leaving. That added another hour to the journey. Why can’t the trains cooperate to avoid these problems. It was minutes. And why was the Edinburgh train continually slowed down.

Time to kill so time to grab food.

Now this is when things got crazy.

I was looking at the display times for the trains on platform four. A man stumbled down the stairs grabbed hold of one my belt loops, span round out of control, falling off the platform, onto the train track. At that point my thoughts were , was a train coming, how do we get this man off the tracks, going down onto the tracks was not an option, too risky. We coaxed the man to his feet, and four complete strangers hauled the man onto the platform.. We restrained the man to stop a further incident.

I thought that the next train was mine, got on discovered it wasn’t. After getting on the correct train I realised just how traumatic I had found the incident.