A Wintry Trip Down South, Walkford, Dorset - 1st February 2019

Nosher's staying at Sean's in Walkford for the funeral of Phil's dad. As the car is away having a water pump fixed, this means getting the train, which turns out to be probably a Good Thing as it starts snowing heavily from Southampton. This also turns the whole thing into something of a major nostalgia trip, as it's probably not been since around 1991 that the once-regular Diss to New Milton journey has even been done by train - back in the era of the cranky old Class 438 EMUs or 432 4-REPs, and not the shiny but soul-less 444s that run on the southern network now. Whilst there, there's a chance to hang out with Sean and Hamish, where we spend some time aimlessly driving around the New Forest - again, just like old times - before a spot of late-lunch at the Cat and Fiddle on the A35 near Hinton Admiral. Later we meet up with Phil and Tania at the Globe in Highcliffe, even though this time Nosher's not even staying at the next-door Premier Inn. On the way back, there are plenty of engineering works, and so the train takes a slow route all the way out via Fareham, plus there's also the joy of bus replacement from Newbury Park up to Ingatestone. Before all of that, Eye Library closes down as it moves across town.

next album: A Night at the Fox Inn, Garboldisham, Norfolk - 9th February 2019
previous album: The G-Unit's Birthday, Brome, Suffolk - 20th January 2019

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The classic 1960s stylings of the old Eye Library

The classic 1960s stylings of the old Eye Library

There's still a bit of stuff waiting to be cleared

The plot is up for sale for housing

The elephant is now in the car park

Snow comes down on the footbridge at New Milton

The station has not changed much since the 1980s

It's snowing in Sean's front garden

Mother's old pad - The Willows - in Bransgore

The road out of Bransgore

People mess around in the snow in the New Forest

Hamish and Sean head into the Cat and Fiddle

Sean pokes around with his cutlery

Sean and Hamish look like gangsters or something

Hamish is driving us around in the Green Machine

The Cat and Fiddle - well-known landmark on the A35

Hamish makes some sort of fancy coffee

Hamish and Sean chat in the kitchen

Hamish and Sean in the lounge

Hamish in the Globe at Highcliffe

The boys mess around with the camera

Hamish does the 'it's this big' thing

Tania, Phil and Hamish

Nosher's Class 444 train pulls in to New Milton

Brockenhurst College from the train

New Forest ponies in the snow

Graffiti on a bridge

More trackside graffiti

Some graffiti near Fareham

A snowy field, somewhere in Hampshire

Guildford railway station

The very thin core of new tower blocks in Guildford

The Seated Man by Sean Henry, at Woking station

More track-side graffiti

A massively-tagged graffiti building

Man! graffiti

Clapham Junction

Liverpool Street's Deam is active here too

Battersea Power station is a forest of cranes

Track-side tenements

The former international terminal at Waterloo

The train arrives at Waterloo

Ransomes and Rapier buffers at Waterloo

The concourse of Waterloo Station

A tube train pulls in at Bank station

Down on the underground at Bank station

Passengers head over to the rail-replacement buses

The concrete brutalism of Newbury Park tube station

There's a lot of drug paraphernalia for sale

The train waits at Ingatestone

A derelict building

More derelict track-side buildings near Chelmsford

Some sort of factory unit with silos

The mud flats of Brantham, near Manningtree

Boats on the mud

There's scaffolding on a derelict building

Derelict buildings at the Wardle-Storey site

A derelict factory building or warehouse

Derelict office block in Brantham

Flooded wasteland at the Xylotol factory

Pipes end in the middle of nowhere

There's some street-art by the river in Ipswich

A truly-ancient parcel van, near Freightliner

Isobel and the boys are coming back from Norwich

Diss railway station in a convex mirror

The upstairs landing

Fred's almost-empty room

The spare room

Boxes on the landing