Thurnley Abbey

Three years ago I was on my way out to the East, and as an extra day in
London was of some importance, I took the Friday evening mail-train to
Brindisi instead of the usual Thursday morning Marseilles express. Many
people shrink from the long forty-eight-hour train journey through
Europe, and the subsequent rush across the Mediterranean on the
nineteen-knot _Isis_ or _Osiris_; but there is really very little
discomfort on either the train or the mail-boat, and unless there is
actually nothing for me to do, I always like to save the extra day and a
half in London before I say goodbye to her for one of my longer tramps.
This time--it was early, I remember, in the shipping season, probably
about the beginning of September--there were few passengers, and I had a
compartment in the P. & 0. Indian express to myself all the way from
Calais. All Sunday I watched the blue waves dimpling the Adriatic, and
the pale rosemary along the cuttings; the plain white towns, with their
flat roofs and their bold 'duomos', and the grey-green gnarled olive
orchards of Apulia. The journey was just like any other. We ate in the
dining-car as often and as long as we decently could. We slept after
luncheon; we dawdled the afternoon away with yellow-backed novels;
sometimes we exchanged platitudes in the smoking-room, and it was there
that I met Alastair Colvin.