Nearing the End of the Line

It's been a great holiday, some might even say 'the holiday of a lifetime', but as neither has been completed it would be a foolish statement to make. I've often wondered about those glossy travel adverts in Sunday supplements that lure the unwary with wild claims such as that. Maybe I'm thinking too much into it, but what recourse do you have if, at the end of life, you take stock and decide that the month you spent trecking in the Himalayas wasn't the holiday of a lifetime. Could you sue? Could you care? 

Then look at from the point of view of the travel agent. What if they succeed and do actually deliver on their promises? What then? Is the rest of your life redundant? Should you never go on holiday again? They are certainly limiting their market - there is absolutely no point in going back on them if you've already had your 'lifetime' experience. Or if you do and they try to flog you another 'holiday of a lifetime' can you get a refund on the first one? It's a minefield. It really is. 

I think to err on the side of caution they should promise no more than 'We'll sell you a really good holiday', 'You'll have a great time' or 'Well it's better than being in work'. Easy as.

And so back to my first point, or at least I think I am, which was that we're having a really good holiday. Almost.

A Stanton/Davies holiday experience, lifetime or not, has to contain set activities before it can be classed as such. If you care to indulge me I'll explain what they are;

Firstly, ham and cheese sandwiches. I can't stress how important these are to our enjoyment of travel. Wherever we go we like nothing more than to buy a loaf of bread, some ham and cheese and sit in a park and make butties. And eat them of course. There really is no better meal.... well actually there is but we're too tight to pay for it! So cheese and ham sandwiches it is. Admittedly by the time the holiday is complete either of us is likely to run screaming to the hills in terror at the mere sight of a Craft cheese slice. You might say it's a severe case of lactose intolerance. You can imagine our faces when Sarah's mum, after two weeks in Switzerland, fed us with grilled cheese and ham sandwiches after we were collected from the airport. I've digressed.

The second essential item, again food based, is to have a holiday ice cream. Quite a simple request one would think but sometimes it's quite difficult to achieve in practice. I still don't understand why we couldn't get a decent ice cream in the Scottish Highlands in February. We got nothing but blank stares whenever we asked for such a thing. Madness.

The third and final essential holiday ingredient is a trip on an historic railway. Now that might seem an unreasonable request - what if the place we're visiting doesn't have such a thing. Well we're not fussy. A trolley bus or tram would suffice. It's not that we're particularly fond of trains, trams or buses. Besides, admission to such a thing would be devastating for my uber-cool credentials and I'd never be able to look any one in the face at the local history club if word of that got out! It's just that we're Engineers so like to see how things work. Or worked. Or didn't work. 

Anyway the trip to NZ was severely lacking in the historic transport department. Not even a faint whiff of a 4-4-2 bogey arrangement or Victorian buffett car.... until today. Today we took a four hour trip on the Taieri Gorge Scenic Railway. Two hours up the line and two hours back, passing through one of the most scenic lines outside Yorkshire. Even better than the line between Garforth and Leeds. Yes that good! Snacking on fruit, tea and cake whilst gorgeous gorge scenery passes by is surely a great way to spend the morning.

The return leg was less eventful as we both fell asleep and missed the last quarter of the trip. Well it was warm, we were full of cherries and plums and were on a train. It's one of the immutable laws of travel that you can't stay awake on a train in the afternoon. I'd even go as far as to say that if Isaac Newton had survived long enough to see train travel then there would be a fourth law of motion. Something like the power of sleep is the distance travelled squared regardless of how stunning the scenery is. 

On the plus side, we arrived back into Dunedin fully refreshed and raring to go and, apart from a few dribbles on my t-shirt, you'd never have known I'd been asleep. Next stop the transport section of the city's museum - I hear they've got a collection of trams, trolley buses and home built caravans...... but that's a story for another time!