There is absolutely no doubt that when we come down to our Derbyshire residence we lead a completely different life. And equally there is little doubt that we enjoy doing different things in our retirement. I need the variety, the balance of being in different places, to feel I’m leading a fulfilling retirement. So a place that encourages that difference is always going to be welcome and the whole adventure makes a great topic for this retirement blog.
Because of a fuel spillage on the M1 last Friday we haven’t been to either of our other places for over two weeks. More than enough time for me to feel antsy. I suppose when we’re here we have a slight ‘holiday attitude’ to our stay. Even in a way we don’t when we’re at the barn / vineyard where we often have some kind of work to do or at least we feel as if we should have.
It’s a cosy little house, a simple terrace, that we’ve recreated in our own image so to speak. The fact that we changed it from a place I had grown to hate while my mother was alive into a quirky (estate agent speak) little residence with very little outlay but a world of imagination, gives us considerable pleasure. Although conversely if we ever do have to sell it this ‘re-creation’ will make selling it very difficult indeed.
So, anyway, we do things we wouldn’t allow ourselves to do when we’re at our main house in Leeds. Broadly we go to places and do things we’d almost scoff at back at our real home. There’s no doubt, in my mind at least, that a retired person needs to do things that rest on a continuum from different to positively weird. Well, I do at least.
So today (the Sunday of our delayed visit) is an example of this, an extreme one perhaps but an example none the less. It takes a little describing but it went something like this. It was built around a train journey.
I think I’ve written recently that we’re trying to educate Archie (one of our border collies) into the pleasures of rail travel. And strangely, although the nearest station in Derbyshire is considerably further afield than our local Leeds station, we’re more inclined to set up such adventures here than back home. Go figure.
So today was constructed around driving to Duffield and taking a short journey into Derby itself. We haven’t been to Derby for many months. Partially because of Covid and, I have to admit, partially because it has become a rather shabby place to visit. Covid has turned what was a rather down at heel town into something resembling a ghost town.
A bit harsh perhaps and I say this as for both of us, it’s our home town. I know I’ve said in the past that Nottingham was my home town and so it was but at 18 I went to art college in Derby and Mrs Summerhouse was positively born there, and brought up in Chaddesden (a suburb) to boot. However, that said, choosing to take the train into Derby smacks of a perverse choice.
But this is what we elected to do. The original plan had been to take the train into Derby, check it out after all this time, to see if it had faired any better than Nottingham where we went a few weeks ago. It hadn’t and interestingly we thought Leeds had suffered pandemic-wise but it hadn’t compared with these two cities. So we got there walked around weaving our way along streets with closed shops, half dead marathon runners and groups of Goths who looked strangely at home in the setting.
So we did the tour and then headed back to the station. And because we had time we visited a pub (The Brunswick) that we last visited about 40 years ago for my sister-in-law’s partner’s 40th birthday. Do you know it hadn’t changed a bit and I suspect not since it was first built as a railway pub near the station in the days when the Midland Railway company had its headquarter’s in Derby. Heady days. Not so much now but there was a certain pleasure in an absence of change over the last 180 years. Approx.
The fact that there was only a train every 2 and a half hours meant we didn’t want to miss the chosen one. So theoretically it was a mere 7 minutes back to Duffield (we’d chosen a short journey to see if we could get Archie comfortable with train travel a little bit at a time.
Ha, how wrong could a plan be? We’ve found that making plans in our retirement often goes wrong but this degree of wrongness can only be admired from a distance. Oh and it started to snow – heavily.
We missed the Duffield stop after 7 minutes and, at the recommendation of the ticket inspector (a very nice, understanding man who clearly loved dogs, thank God), we stayed on the train. Otherwise, as he said, you’ll be standing on the platform in the snow for 50 minutes because the next train back is this one. And did I mention it was snowing. Yep, properly snowing. The photo above is from our walk next day along the Cromford canal.
It made the journey to Matlock (the termination / turn around point) and back (to Duffield) a marvellous pleasure. It’s a pretty journey under normal circumstances but in the snow, well, magical is the only word that comes to mind. And it lasted for an hour as against the planned 7 minutes.
Archie was great. True he didn’t like the 60 foot stretches of rail which means there is a lot of rattling as the train goes over the joints and the train itself was pretty rattly without any encouragement. Even the nice conductor told Archie, who had taken to sitting on the seat rather than on the floor, that he didn’t like the sixty footers. He was a remarkably nice chap and he said Archie was the best traveller he’d had on his train all day. That’s nice we thought.
Even so we got off the train at the right station and drove home through some extremely heavy snow fall. The day hadn’t gone according to plan at all. We had thought we would go for Sunday lunch at a pub near the station but a combination of being one hour late and the heavy snow put paid to this idea. And yet, do you know, we’d had a lovely day and an unexpected topic for this retirement blog.