I would like very much to have been on the platform at Banbury station a couple of Wednesdays ago as the 83-year-old steam locomotive Sir Lamiel roared through at the head of a long and heavy train clocking close on 80mph. What a wonderful sight it must have been! The stirring vision was denied me, however, for the simple reason that I was seated in one of the 12 coaches being so pluckily and energetically hauled by this absurdly dinky — as it seemed to me — King Arthur class 4-6-0 locomotive of the Southern Railway. Cossetted passengers (and a glass of chilled champagne was in my hand) will ever be denied line-side thrills.

I was delighted when Rosemarie's mother spotted an advertisement for this Cathedrals Express outing in the Oxford Mail a month or two back and generously invited us to join her on it. King Arthurs have always been rather favourites of mine. Sir Lamiel's sister (or perhaps that should be brother) engine Sir Balin was pictured in my Ladybird Book of British Steam Locomotives which I possessed from the age of about five. (How odd that I should remember this, but such names stick in the mind; others in the book included the Sandringham 4-6-0 Fallodon, and the Battle of Britain Pacific Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory.) I had never seen a King Arthur in action, however, as all had been withdrawn by the time I was old enough to venture into the Southern Region territories (including Oxford) where they operated.

The train began its journey at Victoria. Some passengers alighted (to use an antique verb that survives mainly in transport terminology) in Oxford, making room for such as us to travel on to Warwick or (as we did) Stratford-upon-Avon. Since we were premier dining class, as it's called, most of the journey was spent eating.

In the outward direction there was an excellent breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, Lincolnshire pork sausage, roasted tomato, mushrooms and fried bread. Freshly baked banana bread and home-made cookies followed. Coming back, Two Many Cooks Catering offered a four-course dinner: a Norbury blue cheese salad with pear and walnuts; roasted guinea fowl with pancetta and sage, sweet potato and thyme crushed potato cake, and fine beans; rich chocolate tart with whipped cream; and a selection of English cheeses.

I shall not reveal which parts of the sumptuous repast were rejected on account of their cholesterol content. I can truly state, though, that this was one of the most strangely timed dinners I have eaten, beginning at 5pm. Sir Lamiel's remarkable turn of speed throughout the whole of the journey meant that it was a race again time to complete the meal before Oxford was reached.

d=3,3,1In Stratford, which I probably visit about ten times a year on theatre reviewing duties, we decided on this occasion to be tourists. We boarded a Stagecoach City Sightseeing open-top coach — the same sort of hop-on, hop-off service offered here in Oxford. This struck me as being exceptionally well run, with well-informed commentary supplied not by recording (as I had expected) but by real, live guides.

One of these encouraged me to hop off in in the village of Wilmcote, close to Mary Arden's house. He did this by telling us that a person with some importance in the world of crossword puzzling was buried in the local churchyard. Now it happened that a few days earlier I had been talking to the white-suited broadcaster Martin Bell, during the Woodstock Literary Festival, about his father Adrian Bell. He was the first compiler of The Times crossword, and notched up more than 5,000 puzzles for the newspaper before his death in 1978. Might he be the person commemorated?

For 30 minutes, I scoured the graveyard. I found nothing to do with crosswords. Nor was there information inside the little church. This was built by William Butterfield in 1841 in the early days of the Oxford Movement (whose members also had a retreat here). As I stood in its gloomy interior, the smell of stale incense in the air, I suddenly realised that I had been had.

"You need to look six across and ten down," the guide had said. This ought to have been clue enough that he was joking.