We always travel first class. The seats are padded, and there's a full bar. And why not spoil ourselves? It only costs one pound more than the regular fare.

Having written recently that we never return to the same place, I was reminded by my family that there is one journey we make several times a year - the first-class trip across the Romney Marsh on the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch railway, aboard the miniature steam engine Green Goddess (rhdr.demon.co.uk). The journey out of Hythe passes along the end of perennially green back gardens, where you can always see the stripes made by the mower, as if they were printed on the grass. Rows of gnomes stand in regiment to wave you on your way.

There is also a surrealism of scale. The painted carriages are so low that you cannot stand up in the bar without bending your head. But you can order a full sized gin and tonic while the kids play spot the Marsh Frogs (the largest in Europe) which live in the drainage ditches alongside the track. At the end of the line at Dungeness, the tiny dark-wood fishermen's huts (which filmmaker Derek Jarman made so fashionable) are overshadowed by the twin towers of a gigantic nuclear power station. With no earth, just gardens of grey shingle in which only stunted plants grow, the village looks as if it has already suffered from atomic attack.

Yet, we continue to return to this place. Perhaps it's because we want the comfort of the familiar after all. And also because, strangely, the better you know somewhere, sometimes the more there is to discover. You begin to notice small things that you miss in the rush of excitement with the new.

So, never say never again after all.

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