Day 20 - the finest sight a Scotsman can behold

Literary readers will know that it was Dr Johnson (we have met him before in these pages) who said that "The noblest prospect which a Scotsman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England". He said a few other scathing things about the Scots. Johnson - who you will know, of course, as the creator of the "first" English dictionary (it wasn't in fact the first) - travelled to Scotland in 1773 when he was 63. His friend James Boswell who was much younger at 32 went with him. Both wrote accounts of their travels and Johnson's account is peppered with pithy observations (not only about the Scots it must be said). Boswell - who is known best for his life of Johnson - was a bit of rake. I read some years ago Peter Martin's "A Life of James Boswell" (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1999) and found it fascinating.

But at any rate we are today to take the high road to England. It is not the high road that Johnson would have known. We travel by train from Edinburgh Waverley to London Kings Cross.

We left our accommodation at Randolph Crescent by taxi to the station. As I mentioned yesterday the Randolph Crescent building was constructed in 1728. the 18th century was a great period in British architecture. The political union of Scotland and England in 1707 meant that Scottish politicians tended to spend most of their time in London where political decisions were then made; the tendency was that these individuals became very wealthy. The new political stability made possible by the Act of Union allowed for greater prosperity in Scotland which led to a spate of new building, both public and private, during the whole of the 1700s and into the following century. Randolph Crescent is fairly early evidence of the new confidence in Scotland.

Our brief home at Randolph Crescent

Edinburgh Waverley is like any other station. The only thing of note is that Scotland has gone continental as evidenced by the presence of female cleaners in the men's toilets. This is something that the French have been comfortable with for years but I reckon it would completely faze the Americans!! We found our train which departed on time.

Edinburgh Waverley station - platform 2 and our train ready to roll

You can leave your luggage in the Guard's van

The journey time is about 3½ hours and takes one through Berwick-on-Tweed, Newcastle, Darlington, York and then into London. I paused to reflect for a while at Darlington. Years ago - in the 1970s - when I worked for ICI we always caught the train when we needed to go to London. A car would pick me up and take me to the station and pick me up and deposit me home when I returned. Nowadays one would fly from Teesside Airport I suppose.

Beautiful coastal views just before Berwick-on-Tweed. Look at that blue sky!

The Castle Hotel at Berwick. Clearly once a famous railwayside hostelry

A second cause of my reflection was because today is the 27 September. The Stockton and Darlington Railway (S&DR) was a railway company that operated in north-east England from 1825 to 1863. It was the world's first public railway to use steam locomotives its first line connected collieries near Shildon with Stockton-on-Tees and Darlington, and was officially opened on 27 September 1825. I know this because my birthday is the anniversary of nearly anything that is particularly interesting.

The railway also runs along the coast for several miles between Berwick-on-Tweed and Newcastle

York Station adorned with thousands of bicycles

The English country side in middle England

More of the English countryside - the harvest is in

The Emirate Stadium from the train. the home of Arsenal Football Club. With a capacity of 60,272, the Emirates Stadium is the third-largest football stadium in England after Wembley and Old Trafford.

A taxi from Kings Cross took us to the Hertz place on Edgeware Road. They clearly wanted to move a Mercedes from there to Heathrow and they thought that we were just to people that they could do a deal with to take a Mercedes CLS350 instead of whatever it was we had actually booked. We're not sure if we've been duped but, well it's my birthday, and I am never one to return down the chance to buy a flashy car.

Readers will remember my commitment to The G that never again will I hire a car without satnav and this car has satnav. So far so good. The G can operate the satnav - which is also good - but we cannot work out how to turn off the radio. It has what IT professionals call a "functionally rich" on board computer system. "Functionally rich" in my experience usually means that the system will do everything that would expect it to do but also that you can never work out how to do it. And such is the case. I would assume that the iPhone would play through the sound system but that seems to be beyond me to figure out.

We drove north out of London through Kilburn and other exciting places. Our pace was slowed by Saturday afternoon shopping frenzies taking pace around us but once on the M1 we found Grendon where we are staying. Well, we nearly found it. The satnav isn't quite accurate and told us we had arrived when we were in fact some 5 miles away from where we needed to be!!

Our home for the next three nights is Pastures Farm which is a real farm and sports various creatures including Alice the Pig who is pictured below.

Alice the Pig

Conincidentally our host's Father is in exactly the same sheltered housing development as my parents - even in the same block (he is number 1 and they are number 13). Amazed at this coincidence our hostess called her Father. He called back to say he had spoken to my parents and that my Mother had complained that I had not called. I called immediately!! But what a small world!!

Because it is my birthday we had wanted to go out to dinner and our hosts had booked us somewhere which then fell through. She went to an enormous amount of trouble but booked us in at the Rose and Crown (www.roseandcrownbistro.co.uk) in a village called Yardley Hastings. We had a very nice meal there - it was so warm that we took our pre-dinner drinks in the beer garden. There was not a breath of wind. 

The Rose and Crown and, to the right, the very table at which we took our pre-dinner drinks

The birthday menu. I started with the black pudding warm salad and The G took the crispy rabbit. I followed this with the partridge and The G had the belly pork. We rounded off with the cheese (the Wodehill Blue, Cobbler Nibble and the Tunworth). i washed this down with an Abbot Ale and The G took a glass of a very nice Spanish rioja

These cartoons adorned the wall of the gents'