Imagine sweeping through green fields, floating five feet above ground, sun on your face as you slide by on track to your destination, not a car in the world, as you simply lean back.

And before you know it, you're there.

This is how travel should feel, and on our trains, it does.

Avanti West Coast, feel good travel.

I'm Johnny Smith, I'm Richard Porter.

Welcome to Smith & Stiff, a podcast in which two friends talk about cars and also Stephen King's cocaine.

I can't believe that your tortoises come back.

Well, no, I know that can I, and it was an amazing double take.

I do think it's nothing short of a miracle, I have to say this, because she's been, this means she's been in hibernation, unless you're a conspiracy theorist, like my wife, who thinks there's a small chance that somebody stole her, took her away, and then got cold feet, and then has just placed her back in now that it's got slightly warmer.

I was on the phone to someone for work, and I typically pace around a bit, and in this weather I try and get a bit of fresh air, so I'll just pace around in the garden.

And I actually have started to look for the tortoise whilst I've been on the phone, because it's something I can do without using a great deal of brain cells.

And I was on the phone, and I just looked over, and she, the front of her shell, and her front legs were just popping out of a hole in the ground.

And I nearly dropped, and nearly dropped the phone, and she was so caked in mud, like an inch of packed mud.

She just looked like she sent me, it was extraordinary, yeah, she needed a good rinse.

Yeah, it's like, it's amazing.

She spent the whole winter underground somewhere in your garden.

Dude, she spent five and a half months. I lost her, we lost her at the start of October.

So she hibernated herself early, seemingly.

And if this was the first day that she came up that I saw her, she's been asleep for all that time.

Now, that's rare in itself, because animals don't tend to hibernate for that long, but it's rare for a tortoise to have survived that amount of time.

And I keep saying this to, like, the kids and people like that, she hasn't eaten or drunk anything, or seen anyone, or possibly even moved for nearly half a year.

So it's a bit like, is it kill Bill, too, when you know who Mathurman wakes up, and she's, isn't she tied and trapped somewhere, and she hasn't, she's got to retrain her muscles.

...