For my birthday this year Jackie has organised a short trip in the UK. And we are going by train – this is the first time we travel using one of the HST replacement sets – the IETs – from Reading to Bristol – having taken the usual Class 165 from Sandhurst. The good news is that a decent proportion of the route is electrified – but the project was allegedly “paused” a couple of years ago – so it is incomplete and the train switches to diesel power for nearly half the journey – a sad example of incompetence all round. It has to be hoped that ere long someone will bite the bullet and get the job done – additionally they are running class 387s on long distance journeys – inappropriate to say the least but the incomplete project is tantamount to wasting a significant proportion of the money which has been invested so far.
In Bristol we are staying at the Harbour Hotel having had good experience of the chain elsewhere. The hotel is housed in a converted bank so accessing the room seems slightly tortuous. Dinner in the restaurant does not even elevate itself to disappointing so we are not off to a great start.
The main attraction and reason for the trip the following morning is to visit the harbour itself and SS Great Britain – Brunel’s steamship which was a great leap forward when built in 1845, remaining the world’s largest passenger ship until 1853. She was converted to sail propulsion in 1881 (so progress often has backward steps) and having served many different uses she was scuttled off the Falkland Islands in 1937 achieving service of 92 years. In 1970 she was raised (following major contributions from some millionaires) and brought back to Bristol where she was originally constructed and is now very effectively conserved.
Reading the Wikipedia page on the ship it is clear that its unprecedented size meant that it actually undertook very few Transatlantic sailings and encountered a number of groundings which led to reworking and after only a few years to a complete change in usage. However it set a path and as ever someone has to take the first step – although the original owning company became financially distressed as did one of its successors – ownership does not seem to have generated significant returns.
The ship tour, including the ability to walk under the hull together with the adjacent museum dedicated to Brunel are stunning and together make one of the best museum visits ever. On board on the day we were there were costumed individuals explaining various aspects of the ship as originally used and the later changes. The (replacement) steam engines can work but were not doing so on our visit.
During the day we also ascend to the heights of Clifton Village mainly to take a look at the Clifton Suspension Bridge but the weather starts to turn from not particularly nice to far worse and we retreat back.
An excellent dinner in the evening rounds off this particular trip with another IET run back to Reading the following morning. The coaches were electronically lettered and seats reserved so we took the labelled seats. Prior to departure the computers are rebooted to travel in the other direction and the previous lettering of the coaches is reversed for some reason so the reservation labels and coach labels no longer match. One wonders how these things go wrong so easily. However no-one asks to sit in the seats so we stay put and arrive back in Reading without delays.