Once again the sky looked a bit grey until about 8am. It was probably more high mist than cloud, and once the sun was high enough it quickly burnt away. The latest revision to the forecast shows only sunny spells for 9am, but the rest of the day is shown as non stop sunshine. It should raise the temperature to 28° C. The headline figure for tomorrow is 31° C, but the actual Met Office chart only shows 30° C. However the BBC do say 31° C. Both say strong sunshine all tomorrow. Summer seems to continue, and could continue until next Sunday....and maybe even later.

   I feel tempted to describe yesterday as a good day, maybe even a great day, but in some respects I didn't enjoy it at the level I expected to. The "theme" of yesterday was going out, and I did indeed go out all the way to Southend-On-Sea by way of Southend Victoria station which I had never seen before.

  The thing that takes the shine off yesterday was the long journey to Southend Victoria station. I started by walking to Catford Bridge station, and that takes about 7 minutes when you include going over the footbridge to the far, London bound, platform. I must admit my luck was with me at this point. I hadn't bother to check the train times, and for some stupid reason I didn't consider that it is only alternate trains that stop at Lewisham. I waited just 20 seconds for the first train, and fortunately it was one that stopped at Lewisham.

  At Lewisham I changed to a DLR train to Stratford. I just missed one, and that meant a 5 minute wait for the next. To get to Stratford you have to change at Canary Wharf station, but the system is carefully timed so you step off one train, cross the platform, and step on the next train.  At Stratford I caught the Elizabeth Line service to Shenfield. At that point it was nearly an hour after leaving home, but I lack any good timing points to confirm it.


  It takes approx 35 minutes for the Elizabeth Line train to reach Shenfield after stopping at every station on the way. The only good thing about it is that while it is a long way past Zone 6, it is still free to travel to on my Freedom Pass. From then on I would have to pay money. At the ticket office I asked for a Cheap Day Return, or equivalent, and go the "Super Off-Peak Day Return" ticket shown on the left. It is one half of a return pair, and cost £7.85. It makes it a fairly cheap route to Southend, but it is not really recommended. The journey from Shenfield to Southend Victoria station takes another 35 minutes, and I didn't find it it a great ride. Too many trees or bushes limit the view from the train windows.


  Having got to Southend Victoria you find you are half a mile or so from the sea front. The sign pointing to "The Front" seems to point to a big building, but closer inspection reveals an alleyway that comes at at the top of the high street. I imagine that once upon a time, before the area was severely over built/"developed", and in particular the big building just mentioned wasn't there, the view from the station would have been a nice wide and straight road running down to the sea. Now the station is sort of tucked away as if the town was ashamed of it.
  Just to back track a bit....I did take a lot of pictures yesterday, but didn't have the time and energy to prepare them for this morning. This picture was taken on the DLR approaching the Canary Wharf area. I was playing train driver by sitting in the front seat of the DLR train.
  As usual, this was also a train spotting trip. The trouble with many new trains is that their full numbers aren't easy to see. This train has 004 on the front, but it's full number is 745004. It is one of many, many running through Stratford that I have never photographed before, and is duly entered in my big spreadsheet.
  Another train to add to my photo collection - 720585 - heading towards Liverpool Street at Shenfield station.
  I had about a 15 minute wait for my train at Shenfield to take me to Southend Victoria station. I used some of that time to buy the return tickets, one of which I showed further up the page. There was a manned ticket office, and with no queue the whole transaction took no more than a minute or two. As I said somewhere above, it takes 35 minutes to get to Southend Victoria, and on the whole the journey was a bit dull. The only "exciting" bit was passing Southend Airport, but I was sitting on the wrong side of the train to see it properly !
  I was not really sure what I was going to do once I got to Southend. One possibility was to walk on the pier, but after the walk from the station, along the entire length of the high street, I was already tired of walking - and I was helped in this decision because for the whole high street I was dodging left and right all the time to avoid hoards of people who seemed to have no clear destination in mind.

  Regardless of where I was going I should have turned my tracker on if only to measure the distance from the station to the cliffs overlooking the pier. I actually started the tracker from the top of the lift that takes you down to sea level. It was crowded down there, and I opted for a quieter walk along the cliff road. In the map above I have circled Southend Victoria in red, and drawn a straight line down the high street to where I started the tracker. That unmeasured bit of walk looks to me to be about half the distance that I did measure when walking to Westcliff station for a train back towards home.

 
 The majority of the pictures I took were on that 1.098 mile walk to the station. One picture that I will show among quite a few more tomorrow, is one I was most happy to get because it amused me. It was a great big seagull perched on the head of a statue of Queen Victoria, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow to see it.

  I am thinking I was overcharged for the ticket I bought at Westcliff station. I wanted an off peak ticket, but I was sold an "Anytime" ticket which is more expensive, but maybe off peak singles do not exist now.  Anyway, it was £6.70, with Senior Railcard discount compared to £7.85 off peak return between Shenfield and Southend Victoria stations.


  The train from Westcliff took me to Limehouse station where I could get the DLR direct to Lewisham, but it was a train that went the long way around via Tilbury. It took 67 minutes to get to Limehouse station. Had I waited about 15 minutes for the next train I could have got to Limehouse about 15 minutes earlier - which of course is a net saving of nothing...or is it. I didn't bother to check, but both trains couldn't arrive at the same time. One must have been a few minutes earlier, but I don't know which, and in the long run it didn't matter.

  When I got back to Lewisham station I was lucky again, and only had a 7 or 8 minute wait for a train back to Catford Bridge. Apart from waiting for trains, and most of those waits were little more than 10 minutes, I had been on the go since I left home. I was looking forward to getting home. Once home I checked my blood glucose level, and typically it had gone up despite not eating anything since my breakfast. I was out for nearly 6 hours, and I did have the occasional mouthful of the bottle of water I took me, but I expect I was still dehydrated. My blood glucose reading suggested I was dehydrated because after nice low readings in the morning it had gone up to 8.9mmol/l when I got home.

  I did start looking through the pictures i took yesterday, but before long it was time to watch the usual three Star Treks. The pictures shown today were mostly done during commercial breaks, but I was feeling tired and didn't feel like rushing. I also didn't fancy cooking any dinner. Luckily I had some Just Eat loyalty stamps for one of my more used kebab shops. I ordered two large shish kebabs, and the cost was only £11.47. I could almost afford to get kebabs more frequently if they were always that price.

  After the three Star Treks, and an episode of UFO, I went to bed. That was about 9pm. I read in bed for maybe half an hour before I felt so weary that I put the book down, and turned out the light. Although I felt weary, I didn't seem to feel sleepy. I began to think it was going to be another night when it would take ages to fall asleep. The next thing I knew was that I was waking up for a pee sometime after 1am. On reflection it seems like I slept well last night...although as I write this I have started some serious yawning !

  Once again the Shish kebabs worked their magic. This morning my new blood glucose meter read an rather splendid 7.3mmol/l, and the old meter 7.70mmol/l - also a very good reading. I could almost feel good this morning, but I keep thinking of everything I want/need to do today. I have some laundry soaking in a bucket of detergent in the bath, and that laundry needs to be finished before I can have a shower. Once showered I need to go to Tesco. Finally, I have a full day of photo editing to do. As well as finishing the photos I took yesterday, I have still to complete the Crosstown Revival photos I took last Sunday at Chattfest, and I have said I will also do part two photo albums of Chain and 52 Fridays. Talk about biting more than you can chew !