Lichfield; Friday, 25 October, 2024

I had a half days leave booked, so after powering down the laptop at lunchtime I headed over to the station to catch the train up to London and over to Euston for my train to the Midlands. It was the half term for some schools, but even so I wasn’t expecting a train just before 2pm on a Friday afternoon to be that busy, but I was very glad I got to Euston early as the train turned out to be packed, pretty much all the way to Tamworth.

One stop later at Lichfield Trent Valley station I hopped off the now almost empty train and headed up onto the bridge to change from the train on the West Coast Mainline to the little Birmingham suburban train on the high-level platform the one stop (and less than 2km) to Lichfield City. The connection could be described as leisurely as I had 22 minutes to make the local train, which runs every 30 minutes…

Into the city and I wandered across town to my hotel for the weekend and checked in, with the drizzle that had started whilst at Lichfield Trent Valley starting to feel like it was settling in for the night.

After unpacking my stuff I headed out of the hotel for a little wander and got round a bit of the city centre before the rain really started to pick up in intensity, so, rather than getting absolutely soaked, I found somewhere for a quick early dinner and then, in a short period of just heavy drizzle rather than pounding rain, headed back to the hotel.

A couple of hours later the rain had pretty much cleared so I was able to head out again and see a bit more of the city at night, but I didn’t stay out long as I wasn’t certain the gap in the rain would hold and after a while I headed back to the hotel and had a quick drink from the bar before turning in for the night.