getting up at an un-sunday-ly hour: 7:00…a quick shower and shave, last check on the timetable to optimize the connection in zurich, then a breakfast together with dorothee (the excellent organic green tea from bettys by post and almost two of the xxl size slices of our teabread — almost because i’m nervous about the flight and only manage one and a half. then i’m unfortunately off to zurich airport — unfortunately, because it means a full day shaved off of our weekend: precious quality time when all the time we’ve got together are the weekends…hmph.

the lx 390 flight from zurich to manchester is a swiss flight, so it’s bring-your-own-drinks time again (which i’ve done with a bottle of mineral water). it departs from gate a03, so no ride on the underground skytrain today. the flight itself is fairly pleasant, only takeoff and landing are a bit shaky (takeoff) and rough (landing). in manchester we get to wait for 15 minutes inside the plane: the luggage conveyor belt has a problem and they can’t let us out of the plane before they’ve unloaded the “hand luggage” that didn’t fit on-board. after getting my luggage, it’s through customs — and i apparently must have been passenger number X where X is divisable by 17 (or something like that): the customs inspector wants to have a look at my luggage…i’m a bit nervous about the placebo pills i’ve with me for the m-health toolkit demo, but she doesn’t even dig into those and after reassembling my luggage i’m off to find the train station for the train to york…to arrive just in time to quickly catch the 11:24 (instead of the planned 12:24) which is just about to leave. right!

first class is quite empty except for the trolley operator (who offers me the complimentary coffee just after we leave manchester airport station, nice — i also buy a lamp mint sandwhich). the conductor who appears once we have left manchester piccadilly rises to the challenge and digs out two rather thick volumes from his compartment to figure out whether i might get to harrogate via leeds earlier than what i had planned: with a bit of luck i should make the connection in leeds to the 12:49 to harrogate! he draws me a map of how to get to the platform the quickest — and sells me the ticket to leeds. very nice service!

once the train has left manchester it curves through an interesting mixture of industrial areas, small villages and towns and little hills — some of them topped off with a tower of one sort or the other. before huddersfield we pass a rather pitoresque channel twisting its way through the same valley as our train for a short time, only interrupted by a lock where it has to take a little jump. the weather is cloudy with lots of sunny spells and so we make our journey through a landscape very much shaped and influenced by the industrial revolution.