Welcome to my Adelaide In Stations Blog!
First I will link my socials:
YouTube, where I post (semi) daily vlogs of my life as an Au Pair travelling Great Britain: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCshvFxF2VTOyTZnqE9Nvb1Q
Twitter, where I post all the photos of the stations I visit, along with the vlogs and other randomness: https://twitter.com/ameliacdee
Instagram, I post my, mostly London, photography there https://www.instagram.com/londonandamelia
Right, with the socials out of the way, who am I?:
I’m Amelia, I’m 19 years old and I currently live in central London. I was born in Wellington, New Zealand, I moved to Adelaide, Australia when I was 6 years old. I graduated high school in December 2017 and planned on having a gap year for 2018, work first 8-9months and then travel in the latter 3-4months. By March 2018 I was bored of being at home and wanted to travel, but had little savings. So I decided that becoming an au pair in the UK was the best way to combine my, always growing, love for travel and my passion for working with children. In May 2018, I made the moved and have been here ever since. I originally lived with my first host family in Surrey, May 2018-Feb 2019, and now I am with a different family in central London, Feb 2019-onwards(Dec 2019).
So, how did ‘Adelaide In Stations’ start?:
In August 2018, I travelled to Bath, Bristol and Cardiff for a week during my holidays. During that time I discovered a Kickstarter funded YouTube documentary series, called ‘All The Stations‘, where couple Vicki Pipe and Geoff Marshall travelled to all 2563 (now 2566) railway stations in Great Britain in the summer of 2017. I instantly became engrossed with the series and very quickly became a “railway nerd”, obsessed with all things railways and trains (not a “trainspotter” though, I couldn’t tell you the class of a train if my life depended on it!!). This really sparked the travel bug in me, I wanted to travel more than ever before.
Fast forward to October 2018, half term week to be exact, my at-the-time host family went away for the week, Friday-Friday. (I spent the first 3-4 day binge watching ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’!).
Along came the Wednesday and I book one the London Transport Museum’s ‘Hidden London’ Tours – ‘Aldwych – The End of the Line’ (Here is the Vlog), which was absolutely amazing.
Thursday – that evening All The Stations were holding a book event for the new book ‘The Railway Adventures’ at Southwark Cathedral, which I was attending, so I decided to go into London for the day, before the event, and just have a day exploring London.
Once in London, I needed a plan. So I sat down in Green Park, pulled out my Transport for London (TfL) “Tube Map” and then noticed the amount of places/stations with the same name as a place in Adelaide/South Australia. Which I know makes sense, as the British colonised Australia/Adelaide, but to me it was really cool.
Above is the first tube map I drew on, circling the stations that shared a name with a place in Adelaide, I knew of.
So, I set out on my day, Tube Map and contactless card in hand. On that first day I visited 6 stations, Hyde Park Corner for Hyde Park, Kensington (Olympia) for Kensington and Kensington Gardens, Westbourne Park, Stepney Green for Stepney, Mile End and Aldgate. (Again here is the vlog.)
My original plan was just to do the Tube Map, but when I got home I decided to include National Rail as well.
At this moment in time I have visited 33 out of 61 stations done on the Tube Map and 17 out of 191 National Rail stations. I am still finding stations as I go along, so these numbers are always changing.
How did the name “Adelaide In Stations” come about?:
It just makes sense, doesn’t it? Making Adelaide (and South Australia) out of stations!
What is the purpose of this blog page, if I already have a YouTube channel and a Twitter?:
Well, it’s somewhere to keep everything to do with Adelaide in Stations all together and easy to find. Each day I travel there will be a blog post to go with it, as well as a vlog.
That’s all I think you need to know! I will post the stations I have already visited in seperate blog posts (one for the Tube Map and one for National Rail).
Speak soon,
Amelia 🙂
Adelaide In Stations 