Of all the places I was on my trip — airplanes, trains, hotels, concert halls, train stations, shops, walking from place to place, a majority was spent on trains and in train stations.

Besides the concerts each day, considerable time was spent planning the route to the hotel, the route to the venue and back, and later, the route back to the trains

So my days went like this: charge phone as much as possible, plan routes while charging phone, ride train to the right city (charge phone on train) go to concert with a fully charged phone, go to sleep and let the phone charge, sleep as late as possible, wake up and plan transport for today, ride train, etc. Make sure phone is charged.

Route planning got easier as the week went on until the last concert when I had to avail myself of multiple modes of transportation. Each day, I spent some time sitting in the open air stations. The morning I took these photos, the air was crisp with a light layer of fog covering everything as the morning commuters waited for their trains.

The trains are a way of life in England. My experience of the train system was that it is a unifier for the country. Nothing’s perfect, and there are train stoppages and routes that are truncated or cancelled owing to staffing issues, but the staff were always so helpful in guiding passengers to alternate routes to get to their destination.

I found this poem by Brian Bilston (@brian_bilston) on Twitter after I’d already posted this blog but it’s too perfect not to include.

We are a much larger nation with many more people but I wonder what is possible to create that would make transportation more possible for people, especially people who cannot afford the costs of owning and maintaining a car. Seems like a good project for one of our multi-billionaires to tackle! Just imagine!