A Postcard from the City

Bentham Station

"We need to get out, have a change a scene!"

My wife's words rang true for all of us.  We've had a a fairly stressful time of late and so a day out in Leeds we agreed, was just the thing.

We boarded our train for the 90 minute journey to be greeted by the tale tale signs of Football Supporters.  Their white, yellow and blue Leeds United scarves wrapped tightly round their necks gave them away.  Fortunately these were fairly calm examples of the species.  More late middle aged than young, with no lager cans in sight.  The journey was uneventful aside from the steam gala attracting crowds at Keighley station.  Families and spotters braving the snowy conditions, with their cameras preparing to take the KWVR to Haworth for a look around the Bronte parsonage.

Leeds was busy.  It was a Saturday with the usual shopping crowds rampaging through Trinity Shopping Centre. The queues in Primark were snaking around the reductions displays.

We repaired to a well known bakers for a pastry covered snack.  Eldest sons steak bake was filled with magma.  He fought a valiant battle between agony and hunger and eventually it was consumed.  Time for a drink.

First we indulged in a brief cocktail.  An expensive pastime for those of us more used to drinking pints.  Next on to a standard pub, if of course we could find one.  The city centre pubs were rammed with shoppers and football supporters.  In some places we couldn't even get near the bar.  We ended up standing shoulder to shoulder with many others in a tiny historic city centre hostelry.  

Whitelock's Ale House is apparently the oldest pub in Leeds.  Tucked away between Briggate and Lands Lane, it retains an original wooden panelled Victorian interior, with plenty of stained glass and a copper topped bar.  The beer was good and there was a friendly atmosphere.  Trouble was there was barely enough room to raise a glass to the mouth.  We would love to have stayed longer but we couldn't move.  We fought our way to the exit and moved on.

The Old Luncheon Bar Whitelock's Ale House

The Italian restaurant we had chosen was Riva Blu.  This was once a Gino D' Acampo restaurant, but was rebranded, against the TV chefs wishes, in January 2022.  The food was good and the service attentive but not intrusive.  Some reviews have said that the food is overpriced for the quality, but for a city centre restaurant we felt the price was reasonable, and the quality very good. My steak was beautifully cooked and cost £25 which is pretty much the going rate.

As crowds thinned we tried a couple more pubs, but soon enough we had to head back to the station for the train home.  Living in the wilds means the last train leaves just after 7pm.  We had a quiet trip back and decided to stop for a nightcap at the local.

Here we were welcomed by our fellow locals and sat quietly in the corner reflecting on the day.  We were approached by some visitors.

One of these was someone that had once worked with my wife's father.  They happily chatted about Preston and memories of her late mum.  His companion was different entirely.

The gentleman in question was in his late forties.  Bald with a large bushy beard.  His eyes were like pinpricks and he spoke at a breath taking rate.  I suspected he may have taken some sort of stimulant, legal or otherwise.  His first words were a poor start:

"Why do you live in a place like this?  There's nothing going on its s***!"

I smiled and explained that having lived in London, and in other big cities, living in the country side was a much nicer proposition, particularly for our children.

He ignored the answer and continued to criticise our town, its people and the caravan site on which he was staying.  He made sure to point out that he was fantastically well off and that the caravan his husband had taken their three children back to was about half the size of the kitchen in his six bedroom mansion north of Manchester.

He then started a character assassination of someone who is a good friend of ours.  According to this arrogant soul everyone in town hated our friend.  He and his wife were the lowest sort of scum and the fact they had moved away was good riddance.  He was then at pains to point out he didn't know the guy personally, but it was a joke that he had been profiled in the local paper.

I pointed out that I had written the article.

He continued claiming more and more outlandish things about our friend.  He owed large amounts to money to dodgy people.  He couldn't run a bath let alone his business.  The lecture was getting very tiresome.

My wife snapped first.  She pointed out that if he didn't know the man in question, why was he spreading unsubstantiated rubbish about him?  There was certainly no truth to the accusations that were being levelled at our friend.  Moreover the name dropping of other people we know well to support his baseless claims were a nonsense.

He then called my wife mad and continued his diatribe against our friend.  At this point I'd had enough.  I stood up and told him that I would not tolerate him talking to my wife that way.  I said that I found his tone arrogant and offensive.  That he should not be spreading baseless rumours about someone he didn't know and that my wife and I would be going as we'd had enough of his company.

He stood up and started poking me in the chest.

"You're erratic, don't start on me, why are you starting on me?  Sit down, sit down or you'll regret it!"

As I stared him down, the barman stepped in and took the guy to one side.  We left and went home.

Having survived the dangerous bright lights of the city, it was ironic that I should have to come home to get threatened by a drunk.  To be fair it's the first time since 1993, so I'm happy with a once in 30 year record.

Oh and the Leeds result?  They drew 1-1 with Brighton.

The Other End of the Line

Mallard, The World's Fastest Steam Locomotive

I have a confession to make.  I like trains.  Not in the biblical sense you understand, that would be just weird, but I do like reading about and watching videos on trains.  More specifically I suppose the act of travelling by train to a variety of destinations.  Why should I have this strange compulsion?  I've come up with the following theory.

Until the age of four, we lived in a small flat overlooking the West London Railway between Shepherds Bush and Kensington Olympia.  I have memories of watching all sorts of different trains passing by from our living room window.  I especially remember Motorail trains, wagons full of cars, that once ran all over the UK from the dedicated terminal at Olympia.

The poster advertising Motorail services at Olympia now long gone.

It was once possible to travel to over 28 destinations around the UK by Motorail.  The service was launched in 1955 with an overnight service from London to Perth.  By 1966 the terminal at Olympia had opened and it was possible to reach destinations such as Inverness, Penzance and Cardiff.  You could even connect with ferry sailings from Dover and Fishguard.  At a time when cars were less reliable and long journeys by road took much longer than today, the service boomed.  By the time of privatisation however the services were less popular, and most were withdrawn by 1995.  First Great Western relaunched a service from Paddington as a supplement to the overnight Night Riviera sleeper to Penzance, but this was withdrawn in 2005. 

My father's parents lived in Weybridge, a Surrey commuter town on the Southwest Main Line.  We would often travel 'up to town' through Clapham Junction for a trip to a cricket match at The Oval or a day in the bright lights of the West End.

Clapham Junction looking towards Waterloo

Clapham Junction is the busiest station for train movements (between 100 and 180 per hour) in Europe.  Both the Southwest Main Line and the Brighton Mainline pass through the station before heading on to Waterloo and Victoria respectively.  This also makes Clapham Junction the busiest station for interchanges between trains.  It was also the site of one of the most serious rail accidents of the twentieth century.  A faulty signal caused the collision of three trains leading to the death of 35 passengers and injuries to 484.

Later, before my mum learnt to drive, we would visit her parents in Sussex by taking the train from Charing Cross or Cannon Street to Ashford.  There we would change trains for the trip across the Romney Marsh to Rye on one of the narrow-bodied Hastings Diesels, a Class 201 DEMU, built for the London - Hastings via Tonbridge Line.  

A narrow-bodied Class 201 Hastings Diesel

The unscrupulous builder of the line saved money by not sufficiently reinforcing the tunnel walls on the route.  When this was discovered, after a collapse of one of the tunnels, the cost of reboring them was considered too great.  Therefore, they narrowed them instead to stop a collapse.  As a result, the tunnels were now too narrow for two standard trains to pass side by side.  The class 201's were built specifically for the route and also provided the Marshlink service from Hastings to Ashford.  When the line was electrified in 1986, the lines through the tunnels were singled so that standard size rolling stock could work the route.

Living in London I was a frequent user of the London Underground.  I would frequently meet friends for drinks alongside the Thames at Hammersmith on the District Line, visit the music shops in Denmark Street via Leicester Square and travelling to my then girlfriends at Acton Town.

An R Stock District Line Train for Richmond at Gloucester Road once my local tube station.  These trains stayed in service until 1983 when they were replaced by more modern D Stocks.  These too have now been withdrawn, replaced by the S Stock between 2013 - 17. 

The Tube is another subject all on its own.  Each of the lines have an interesting history, tales of corporate shenanigans between rival companies and of course the legacy of a Chicago businessman (swindler) Charles Tyson Yerkes.  The Underground has given us not just the blueprint for all the mass transit systems in the world today, but also Metroland, the iconic Harry Beck map and the Johnston typeface. 

It's not just the trains, the stations also hold a fascination especially those in London.

The long demolished Broad Street Station.  Formerly adjacent to Liverpool Street it was immortalised just before closure in Paul McCartney's film Give My Regards to Broad Street.

The capital has, according to Network Rail, seventeen 'Terminal' stations.  That is to say, when you buy a ticket that says "London Terminals' it is valid to any of the seventeen.  However not all of these are a terminus.  What I mean is not all these stations are at the end of the line.  At London Bridge for example, which is in fact London's oldest surviving station, a train could continue on to Charing Cross or Cannon Street before running out of railway.  This got me thinking, just how many stations are there where you can go no further because the rails run out?

In London the answer is twelve National Rail Stations.  As a quiz question spoiler these are: Waterloo, Victoria, Paddington, Marylebone, Euston, Kings Cross, St. Pancras International, Liverpool Street, Fenchurch Street, Cannon Street, Charing Cross and Moorgate.

If you ask most people, they will be familiar with most of them.  Four can be found on the Monopoly board for example.  Most folk living locally to me will have taken the train to Euston or Kings Cross from Lancaster or Leeds at some time or another.  So that got me thinking even more.  What is there at the other end of the line?

With some basic research I found out that there are almost 150 terminal stations in the UK.  From Penzance in Cornwall to Thurso in Scotland.  From Holyhead in the west of Wales to Felixstowe in the east of England.  Some of the stations are in major cities like Liverpool Lime Street, others in small villages such as Gunnislake in Cornwall.  In fact, so fascinated have I become I'm planning a series, visiting as many of the places as I can to see what they are like.

Are there enough of you out there that would read such ramblings?  I suppose if you've got this far there's a fair chance.  To be honest I do enjoy travel writing, I read a lot of Bill Bryson and Paul Theroux.  In fact, Theroux made his name by writing about a train journey from London to Asia and back, calling his book The Great Railway Bazaar.  Now there's a thought.

Perhaps a round trip to Asia is a step to far.  Heysham Port is the closest terminal station to home so that will have to do, for the time being at least.

Heysham Port Station