An away day by train; we could have driven but thought it would be fun to take the train, we are in holiday mode and not everything has to be done in double quick time; The station was once large with many platforms, a turntable, ticket office and waiting rooms (warmed with coal fires in the winter; the boys think this is most amusing, my descriptions of how it was when I was a child have skipped the swinging 60’s and placed me firmly in an out-take from the Railway Children) this station even had a large adjacent hotel, (now flats) which has always looked somewhat incongruous in a village that never quite ‘grew up’ to meet the expectations of the hotel or the railway.
The station is now a shadow of it’s former self, it’s cadaver stripped till all that remains is one rib of platform, on it an arched Perspex shelter, it feels exposed even in August, I am glad I don’t have to wait here for the 07:39 on a wet Monday in January, definitely a place for only the briefest encounters (what no tea urn?)
The ‘big trains’ hurtle through the station on their journey from the Dark City to the Industrial City, they do not bat an eye at such a little place, the large heavy stone trains lumber through, taking what seems like half a hillside, in each of there 20 plus trucks, when you consider how many years mineral extraction has been going on and on such a large scale its a wonder the whole of this area hasn’t fallen into a large black hole. But at least each railway truck mean one less lorry crawling through the villages, their vibrations shaking the mortar from the houses, their dirty diesel fumes blackening the stone work.
The imminent arrival of our train is announced by an Orwellian voice, it arrives pretty much on time, a handful of passengers get off, one of whom is sobbing, she falls in to the arms of her man, who is waiting for her on the platform, oh dear there is, as my mother would say ‘always something for someone’ The three of us and the other waiting passengers board the train (lady with ‘touring bike,’ business man with ipod, grandma with grandchild and his little ’sleep over bag’)
It is a stunning journey and it makes a nice change just to look at the scenery rather than be driving, not daring to take your eye of the road for errant sheep and low flying motor bikes. The purpose of our journey is to buy replacement sandals for Joe, after he lost one in the briny; Joe is not a big fan of shoes, he would rather be bare foot or in his Wellington boots, but he did like his ‘Treva’ sandals. The village we are going to is not much bigger than our own, but because of it’s location it is a Mecca for shops for ‘outdoor enthusiasts’ its the sort of place you would probably struggle to by a 40W equivalent, low energy light bulb, but if you want enough climbing rope to go up and over the Eiger, a tent suitable for the top of Everest, or a collapsible dog bowl this is the place to go.
The train seemed to be devoid of a ticket collector, the stations at both ends are unmanned; no one it seems wants our money, this annoys me, as every couple of years we have the headlines in the local press, that the local train services are threatened with closure because the are under used. So as they sold no tickets to us or any of the other passengers that boarded along the line, one can only assume we will also be invisible in the statistics used to asses the lines profitability; this particularly rankled me because as the train pulled away, after we got off, Joe and I caught sight of the ticket collector and his machine, holed up in the rear cab of the train. It’s not that people aren’t using the train, just that the staff can’t be bothered to collect the fairs.
We got the replacement sandals, (in the sale) we had a very nice lunch in the sort of hikers cafe (or this case loft) that you can’t get in to at the weekend for people in sodden Gortex; it’s the sort of place where tea comes in mugs and the slices of cake are as big as the surrounding peaks. Then we pottered around till it was time for our train (2 hourly service) the round trip could have been achieved in a third of the time if we had gone by car, but it was a grand day out.
Stripped carcus, ribs
