Delayed for three hours today on a train journey from Edinburgh to London because of the high winds, apparently the tail-end of the hurricane which has now reached the UK from across the Atlantic. Just before leaving Edinburgh, we managed to climb Blackford Hill (see photo) in the highest winds I’ve experienced there – it felt almost as if we could lean forward and let the wind take our weight. At the top of the hill, we speculated on whether the wind might play havoc with the overhead power lines on our train journey, as indeed turned out to be the case. First our train lost power from the overhead lines, then we lost power to the rear locomotive, and suddenly we were at a standstill in the fields north of York for a couple of hours, listening to the wind sighing round about our train. As usual in these situations, the British travelling public was unbelievably stoical, almost jolly despite the heat and the lack of air-conditioning. As we sat there helplessly becalmed, waiting for a ‘rescue locomotive’ to reach us from Doncaster, people cheerily swapped stories about all the things they were going to miss because of the delay.