Trains and boats and planes

There is a journey I want to make.

I remember little of my childhood.

Obviously there are some things that I remember, some vividly.  Other things I remember vaguely and I have realised, as middle age becomes a memory, never mind my youth, that some things I thought I remembered I actually don't.  They were things that were recorded on film, black and white film.

Every summer, my mother took me to the Netherlands; specifically Rotterdam.

I do not recall how old I was when we started going but it must have been when I was very young because one year I came back and Dutch was my first language.  Actually, it was my only language and I had to relearn English, so my mother told me.

We didn't just go for a week or so.  We went for the summer.

It was how we went that I would like to do again.

Parts of the journey I don't recall.  Getting from our house to Bristol Temple Meads and indeed the train ride from Bristol to London Paddington.  Nothing.

I do remember, however, arriving at Paddington and usually getting a taxi - a taxi!!! - across London to Liverpool Street Station.  A big black cab in the big city. 

Liverpool Street station was the place from which the journey would begin to take us to Holland on 'the boat train'.

I close my eyes and I can feel what that train journey was like, but I couldn't describe it at all.  It was nothing special either, except that the terminus, the end of the line, was Harwich-Parkeston Quay.

I don't remember what happened after we arrived but the next thing I remember was boarding a big ship, named after a Dutch queen.

We shared a cabin with bunk beds.  

We didn't tour the ship, we went to our cabin and stayed there until the morning.

Then the memories do kick in.

You knew you were arriving when the noise from the ship's engines died down.  I woke up and looked out of the port hole and there was land.

I was captivated by it. The sun was rising and in the distance was the Hook of Holland where the trip would end.

As we got nearer to the shore I could see the railway line and better still there were trains waiting there, probably for us.

I have never forgotten that early morning 'feel' as we arrived in the mother land (well, the mother's land in my case)  the sun peering through jagged white clouds, people going about their business at a time when we really should be sleeping.

My memory deleted the boring bits, such as disembarking, clearing customs and all that.  The next thing I remember was getting on the train.  And the next thing after that arriving at Rotterdam Centraal Station.

This was how you travelled in those days.

Air travel was for the middle and upper classes - as it remains today - and everyone else took a day to travel to the Netherlands.

But there was a sense of travelling.  

I'd love to be more eloquent and write even more about it but sadly I can't.

But I want to do it again one day.

Not just travel to the Netherlands by plane but to make a real journey out of it.

My mum always did it and it was god enough for her.