Touch of the wicked on Europe’s finest
The trouble with travel is kit. It didn’t matter in Victoria’s reign, when steam engines thundered north and there was an army of servants and gawd-bless-yer railway porters to transport the small foothill of sporting accoutrements up to river and moor.
Anyone familiar with George Earl’s evocative painting Going North, King’s Cross Station, 1893 can only marvel at the insouciance of the passengers. Are they worried that those gun cases, salmon rods, landing nets and six brace of pointers and setters will arrive? Or that something has been forgotten? Not one jot. And they’re certainly not going to pay extra for ‘outsize equipment’ and any item more than 24kg — which, after all, would only cover the Fortnum & Mason picnic basket brimming with the sustenance for the journey.
How different it is in the modern era of EasyJet. It’s not a bad airline and you must admire the stewards, who now
