The Travel Dogs obviously love us lots and lots and lots

One other advantage that Jury's Inn has is that it is a mere five minutes walk from the Hatton Cross Tube Station, which is on the Piccadilly line and decants you directly to Kings Cross.  Which is where we wanted to go.

Mindful that it was a bank holiday Monday and that even the Australian press had suggested that there might be enormous travel chaos on the underground, we left nice and early.

The only disruption to our travel was that our train stopped at a station it would normally pass through. Other lines were in chaos.  The Piccadilly line was not.

There is not a lot to do at Kings Cross Station when you have 2.5 hours to wait for your train.  So we ambled over to St Pancras and moved into the Betjeman Arms and had coffee and then a pint.  And then a glass of wine each at a price which positively made our eyes water!!

And onto the train from King's Cross to Retford where we were changing for the train to Sheffield.  I have to say - if we lived in Sheffield, this would be an excellent way to travel.  The train was lovely (We had first class tickets which I booked months ago, almost the second tickets were released for May 3rd).  It worked out about £2.50 cheaper to buy a bottle of wine to share than it would have done to buy two glasses of the same wine, so we did that.  We had a pleasant conversation with the two people bound for Edinburgh sat opposite us.  The trip from Retford to Sheffield, always excepting the route march from the platform we alighted onto to the platform for the Sheffield train, was perfectly nice.  It seemed to me to be quite a bit quicker than taking the train from St Pancras to Sheffield.  It probably wouldn't have been quicker had we gone on to Chesterfield, but Tabitha and Gareth happened to be in Sheffield and met us there.  There were no delays, no confusions, no chaos.  It was as nice a trip back home from London as you could possibly wish for. 

And so back to Tupton for local roast lamb, Jersey Royal potatoes, English asparagus, and braised cabbage from the garden.

Tabitha and Gareth have headed back to Cambridge on the train.  Must get on and tidy something