davidgillon | You know you're Home when the Signs for Yorkshire point South*

Trouble-free trip north on Wednesday, with a break in the middle to go for Ice-cream with

at Ruby Violet, which they have been recommending for ages. The push up the hill from King's Cross was tedious (it looked much flatter on Google Earth!), but the ice-cream made it entirely worthwhile. I quite independently made the same choice as Kab - a scoop of Raspberry, Prosecco and Rosewater, and a scoop of Gingerbread - and it was definitely a good one. The raspberry etc was gorgeously cooling, while the gingerbread had a fiery bite to it. Ice-cream with an after-burn? That's new. Surprisingly it was the raspberry not the gingerbread I could still taste three hours later when I was getting off the train at Darlington, though possibly someone in the crowd was wearing a rosewater-based perfume.

Getting back to the station post-ice-cream was slightly less tedious, one moment Kab was wheeling beside me, the next they were 20 metres away, slaloming past pedestrians. It's a wide, pedestrian area, so there was space to do it safely - when in Rome etc ;) Much fun. We barely had time to say goodbye in the station as Passenger Assistance saw the two chairs and descended to find out where we were going, but good to catch up.

I mostly read through the journey, but on one glance out of the window did spot a peewit standing resplendent in his plumage on a bare patch of field, if slightly ludicruous for his backwards pointing deely-bopper crest. I always associate them much more with the moors, so was surprised to see one in the southern reaches of Yorkshire, but checking the RSPB website it's in their normal range.

Home not much after half-four, fed myself a sandwich and crashed for a couple of hours until my mother came in, then crashed again for about 12 hours from 10PM. I went to bed feeling fine, but woke up on Thursday morning with a pelvis that was extremely unhappy to be upright. I must have subluxed my SI joint while asleep. It's better today, but still a bit meh!

* There is a large cast iron sign saying "Yorkshire>>>" just south of Darlington station.