Between issues
Short things that will not wait six months for an issue. Corrections, reopenings, closures, and the occasional timetable nobody else seems to have noticed.
17 February
Four trains a day on the inland narrow-gauge, restored after two years of closure, and as of this week none of the international journey planners know it exists. If you search for it you will be routed onto a replacement bus that no longer runs. Buy at the station.
3 January
Three of the four huts we mentioned in issue twelve have taken their winter availability offline and are now telephone-only until the end of March. They are open. The booking platform simply shows nothing. A reader lost a weekend to this and we would rather nobody else did.
11 December
A reader writes to say that our Hebrides feature undersold how strange it is to be the sole occupant of a twelve-room hotel, and that the strangeness is mostly on the proprietor's side. She is right. If you are the only guest, eat in the dining room rather than taking a tray upstairs. It is not for you.
22 November
Issue thirteen stated that the coastal service does not run on Sundays outside July and August. It does, hourly, and has since the timetable change two years ago. We took the information from a printed leaflet at the bus station, which was itself out of date. Our apologies to the two readers who planned around it.
9 October
The last working coal boat on the Kennet and Avon has had its licence renewed for a further five years, which was in genuine doubt over the summer. It delivers to moorings between Bath and Devizes and it is the only remaining commercial traffic on that water.
28 August
Both routes have moved to a summer-only operating pattern without announcing it, and in both cases the operator's own website still shows year-round sailings. We are not naming them until we have had a reply, which we have now been waiting six weeks for.
14 July
From a hut warden in Norway, offered unprompted and passed on without improvement: newspaper dries a boot overnight, a radiator ruins it in three nights, and a boot dried on a radiator will let water in for the rest of its life.
2 June
Anecdotally, and we would like to hear whether readers see the same thing: the quiet fortnight we used to rely on in late May has largely gone in southern Europe, and the equivalent gap now falls in the second half of June. Several places we have used for years are now busiest in the month we chose them to avoid.
19 April
Because we were asked directly: a print subscription is nine pounds an issue, of which roughly four goes on printing and postage, four on paying contributors, and one on everything else. Nobody here draws a salary from it. The shortfall is covered by the two of us who have other work.