Back and Forth

The Christmas hols are coming up, which inevitably means that it's about the time that I remember that I probably should have booked my travel back to Belfast much earlier than this. Anyhow, travel has now been sorted, I'm going to head back to Northern Ireland on Thursday 13th December, on what is now my favourite travel route back to Belfast. Someone informed me near the end of my undergraduate degree that there was a direct train from Oxford to Birmingham International that only takes an hour, making it by far an away the quickest connection to an airport from Oxford. Further to this, FlyBE run flights from Birmingham into Belfast City airport, which makes transit from airport to house much easier than flights into Belfast International.

Due to the early start of my course in the new year, as well as a rather significant deadline due at the end of that week, I've decided to return to Oxford on the 29th December. For this journey, I've made the decision to follow through on a thought that I've been harbouring for a while, and I'm going to get the train (and of course a short ferry journey...) back to Oxford. This involves a somewhat epic journey:

Depart Port of Belfast at 0735
Arrive Stranraer Harbour at 0910
Catch train to Carlise at 1000, arriving at 1331
Depart Carlise for Birmingham New Street at 1413, arriving at 1711
Finally, catch train to Oxford from New Street at 1733, estimate time of arrival in Oxford 1841
For those as geeky as I am, there's a map that can be found here.

Total time Belfast to Oxford is 11 hours and 6 minutes. Ouch. But it is all for the rather pleasing price of £30.35, which all in all is quite reasonable. We shall of course see whether I still think it is reasonable at about a quarter to seven on Saturday, 29th December... Although if it is indeed a reasonable experience, the next experiment will be to try the subtly different Belfast-Dublin-Holyhead-Oxford route, so watch this space.

Anyway, there are a couple of questions arising in my head in response to my travels back to Oxford:

1) Is there anyone in Oxford prepared to welcome a weary Irish traveller (in the unorthodox sense) for dinner? I'm suspecting my will to cook will probably be quite low by that point...

2) You may have noted that I'm going to be back before New Year, and it would be nice to see in the new year with some company, so is anyone likely to be in Oxford? Or for that matter somewhere in the South of England?

Answers on a postcard to the usual address...