Getting to the Beginning: Baltimore to London to Penzance

 

We were "only" going to be gone for 3 months this season, rather than almost 6 months last year, so we didn't plan to rent out our apartment. We still had to put everything away because friends were going to be staying there for a couple of weeks while their boat was being worked on. We also wanted to take everything off our boat so nothing could spoil or explode in the summer heat. We'd use it as an opportunity to do a deep clean and clutter reset when we got back in the autumn. Our own choice, but it was still a lot of scramble in the couple of weeks we had available after our stint with Adventurer before we left for El Galeon.

This chaotic wreck looks like a food-hoarder home! But it’s just our Eastport apartment, now that we’ve moved everything off the boat to put it to bed for the summer heat while we’re gone adventuring on El Galeon.

We had an overnight flight on lovely British Airways nonstop from Baltimore. The route was so far north that it was only dark for a couple of hours. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of trusting Siri to populate our calendar with the flight information. The app didn't account for the change in time zones, so we scheduled a driver to meet us at the airport at 05:00 AM when we arrived. Fortunately our wonderful agent Sydney figured out that our arrival time was 05:00 Eastern time, which corresponded to a much more civilized 10:00 AM London time before we paid the night hours premium or lost the ride completely when the driver had to wait for us for 5 hours!

Our Uber driver thought we had very little luggage for 3 months; I thought it was a lot! We had our pirate garb, and El Galeon uniform t and polo shirts, and full sailing foul weather gear in addition to what we would carry if it was just regular travel. This trip was literally "planes, trains, and automobiles" to get to the ship, and lugging the luggage was awkward! The large wheeled duffles were just under the airlines weight limits of 23 kg, and only that because we carefully moved the heaviest items into our backpacks.

We had about 4 hours to wait between the time our plane landed at Heathrow, and our train to Penzance left from Reading. We wandered the streets of the town.

More of Reading -- Industrial Era facades.

And even more of Reading.

My first read on this was “doorstops” and I wondered if it was loaves of bread that didn’t bake properly and could only be used as bricks. Didn’t have time to find out what they really were, at the time. Later learned they are thick slices of bread used for making sandwiches.

Surprisingly tasty outdoor restaurant next to the train station where we found excellent veggie curry burgers after our 6 hour flight and before our 5 hour train ride. In general it would prove to be quite easy to find vegetarian options in English restaurants.

Once we struggled to stow the luggage, the train trip was quite pleasant. I got a short nap so missed some of the voyage, (not by choice; I love looking out the window normally but after the overnight flight the motion of the train was so relaxing that I just could not keep my eyes open) but woke up in time for this view of a typical field with hedgerows.

View from the train window of St Austell

Could be anywhere in the Cornwall countryside, in this case it was Truro

The walk from the train station to the hotel was short, but very steep, especially dragging those suitcases. The hydrangea-lined alley was a cheerful treat toward the end.

Dan coincidentally wore a shirt that matched the hotel room. Our travel agent Sydney's superpower is finding these wonderful boutique hotels everywhere we need to be. Looking forward to a good night's sleep before we got to the ship to begin work in the morning.

View from our hotel window. Live music from somewhere, and our favourite Spanish tall ship! It was so tempting to explore the town, but we were way too exhausted from travel.