Choo-choo

I know what you're thinking..."what's with all the pictures of trains?" right? Trains aren't meant to be cool. I reckon otherwise though; I kinda like them as a means of getting around.

At some stupidly small hour this morning whilst most people were either fast asleep or being turfed out of nightclubs, my friend Kyle and I got back from a trip to Morocco. We went from Truro, Cornwall (well I did, Kyle started out in Wales) and got the train all the way to Marrakech with our surfboards. From there it was just a bus ride to the coast and we could get some waves. A medium haul surf trip entirely on a rail: Start-stop-start again, clackety clack, tickets, platform numbers and departure boards, four capital cities, Europe and Africa, pack un-pack, headphones, being kicked off platforms, midnight cafes and crazy taxi drivers, dining cars, eleven trains three of which were underground, a ferry, "you can't bring a surfboard on this train", books and looking out the window, seeing towns as the graffitied backs of warehouses and industrial units, "you want hashish?",lots of coffee in paper cups, wildflower meadows, funny looks and a jacket for a pillow.
We got a few good waves and climbed a mountain.

I have more rolls of film to develop than I can carry in my hands so once they're all done and I've absorbed and reflected on the whole damn deal I'll post a few up and put some words to it.

Why?
Because sometimes it's important to make the journey as important as the destination, put your feet on the stepping stones and nopt just jump right over them. Take a little bit of time.

Images:
The top one is the California Zephyr, which I caught from San Francisco to New York with my old man a few years back so that we could see what America looked like.
I drove my car onto the back of the Indian Pacific and let it carry me across the Nullabor desert right across Australia rather than sit on my own driving on a straight road for three days when my road-trip co-piolt couldn't make it.
The trains in Sri-Lanka are cool, old and clunky with little picture postcard train stations straight out of 1950's Britain. To get my surfboards on I had to pay for a first class ticket which was about a pound more.