When the girls were young, we used to travel to the Manx from Aberdeen by train. We left home in Insch at 7pm, stopped in Aberdeen, then a longer break in Edinburgh, and then the train to Wigan, and the milk train from there. It was great adventure, although once, when we caught the Wigan to Liverpool train at something like 3 in the morning, we had to share a very small carriage with a huge, fat, smelly drunk. He sat half on me, and we were terrified!
When we got off the train, we had to walk through one of the not so nice bits of Liverpool to get to the boat...followed by a bus trip to the campsite, to set up our tent, and then....oh luxury....a sleep!!Happy days.....and then we discovered the Southern and did it twice a year.....

Who the hell wants to return to reading.

lol. I actually returned to Reading from Oz once after living there in the seventies. Gee, what a different place it is now from then.