This photo taken by Tigger through the train window shows the strange sky with a rainbow.

This is the entrance hall of Ramsgate Station. We left our train to pursue its way to its final stop at Margate while we walked on into town.

On the way, we called in at a newsagent’s shop to check Tigger’s Euromillions ticket. And guess what: yes, it didn’t win anything.

Ramsgate is a strange town which gives off an aura of faded glory, at least, that’s the effect it has on me, though what this glory might have been or why it faded, I have no idea. Its heyday as a seaside town is a hundred years in the past and the Channel ferry service which brought it a temporary importance is long gone, a victim of the Channel Tunnel.

Today, I believe it lives mainly on tourism and its large port now turned into a marina.

The name of this town probably does derive from an animal but not from a ram. In 1275 the name is recorded as Remmesgate and this suggests that it combines two Anglo-Saxon words: firstly, hrem (genitive hremmes), meaning ‘raven’ (the bird) and, secondly, geat meaning a gap in the cliffs allowing access to the sea. There is, however, an outside chance that Rams derives from a personal name, that of the owner of the land or that of a notable inhabitant.

On the way we saw this old shop front with period glasswork advertising leather goods and “grindery”, which would probably have been tools for working leather and perhaps even a blade sharpening service.

We spent the afternoon with Tigger’s people then caught a bus back to the port where we had dinner in a restaurant before taking another bus – to the station this time.

Happily, we did not have long to wait for a train to St Pancras. We prepared our tickets for inspection and settled down for the ride home.

Tigger has an extended family most of whose members live in or around Ramsgate in the county of Kent.

We have started on our way there and have paused at St Pancras International to await the next train thither, in the meantime consuming our usual breakfast of coffee and croissants.

We have found seats on this so far deserted platform 15. This area of the station is for the HS1 trains serving the south-east. “HS”, as you either know or have guessed, stands for “High Speed”, a name justified by the fact that these trains use the fast railway tracks built for the Eurostar, cutting journey times by an hour or so, compared with ordinary trains.

The first stop after St Pancras is Stratford International. Sadly for the Borough of Newham that gave this station the “International” label in the expectation that the Eurostar would stop here, that expectation never in fact materialised. The label thus remains as an ironic reminder of dashed hopes. (Photo by Tigger.)

I grabbed this snapshot as we crossed the river Medway, one of Kent’s main rivers and a tributary of the Thames.

Shortly after crossing the river, we arrive at Ashford International. This station is a changeover point for services to many parts of Kent not directly reached by HS1. As the name suggests, the Eurostar stops here but may not continue to do so, leaving the station’s international status in doubt.

Incidentally, HS1 was so named in the belief that there be an HS2, a fast service linking London to the North. That plan has always attracted opposition from a number of quarters and it is now quite on the cards that, despite the work already done and money already spent, the project will be cancelled, a fiasco of the kind in which the UK has come to excel.

Kent landscape from the train – contributed by Tigger.

We are about to arrive at Ramsgate. I will perhaps take up the story later.