Let Me Count The Ways

Patchway looks a lot more modern than it actually is.  A station first opened in the 19th century, it has upgraded lifts and a footbridge, as though someone actually cares about it as a destination.  The reason for all this up to date tech is simple: electrification.  The Great Western Main Line got wired in the 2010s, meaning that the footbridge here had to be rebuilt higher up, and inadvertently making it a much nicer place to visit.  It's yet another argument for electric trains across the entire nation, which is why it isn't happening.  Making sense isn't a good enough reason I'm afraid.

The station's main claim to fame is that it serves the Rolls-Royce manufacturing complex, and they even have their own entrance from the platform.  Looking at the acres of vacant land I wondered if this was going to be another part of the Brabazon new town, but apparently not.  Rolls-Royce are still doing well here, producing aircraft components, and probably also some terrifying murder machines that we'd rather not think about.  

I left the station by the car park, where a group of men in their sixties were meeting up for a trip into town, manfully shaking hands and being polite to one another.  Absolutely no hugs here.  Station Road is a small, narrow country-esque lane which, judging by the speed of the drivers who passed me, is used as a rat run.  There's an estate the other side of the trees, but they're weirdly kept separate, in case they go mad and decide to use public transport.

At the end is Gypsy Patch Lane.  Is that okay?  I don't know if that's okay.  It's a wide road that forms part of a chain crossing the top of the city, lined with corporation homes set back behind gardens and front gates.  I followed an elderly man returning home; he absent-mindedly picked a piece of litter out of his hedge before going into his home.  

Across the way was a pub called Stokers which, unlike a lot of estate pubs, still seemed to be thriving.  A quick look at their Facebook page revealed the reason for this:

SCOTCH EGG FRIDAY.  I repeat: SCOTCH EGG FRIDAY.  What a concept.  While other pubs are branching out into gourmet eats or tapas, Stokers is slapping down eighty scotch eggs and doing a roaring trade.  That's what you want with your pint, not some padron peppers or a croqueta or two: an egg wrapped in meat with maybe a bit of pickle chucked in as well.  I'm writing this from nearly two hundred miles away, and I'm furious I'm not there.  Admittedly, I'd probably get my head kicked in - it doesn't look like the kind of pub that welcomes fat train station spotters - but so long as I got one of those cheese and cracked black pepper bites first I'd be happy.  

Stokers also had a bonus claim to fame in the car park.  Computer, zoom and enhance.

Waiting to feed the students later that day was the legendary Jason Donervan.  I felt quite starstruck seeing it across the road, like when I went to Sunderland and saw Amy's Winehouse.  Also Jason Donervan never sued anyone for saying it was gay so it's already one-up on the Aussie soap star.

I was quite happily wandering around, hoping that those clouds wouldn't get any darker or more rainy, when I saw a bus stop.  The problem was, this bus stop was so good, I actually told it to fuck off.  Out loud.  Look at it.

It would appear that Bristol has a network called metrobus (no caps needed, it's the future).  This is an actual Bus Rapid Transit network, with four express services running around the city.  

The bus stops themselves incorporate dispense the tickets, so you can buy before you board, plus seating and a next bus indicator.

Obviously buses are rubbish, in the main.  However, part of the reason they're rubbish is they're easy to get rid of - how many "this stop is not in use" signs have you noticed? - plus they're slow and get caught up in traffic.  If you give them their own dedicated lanes and busways and modern vehicles that are easy to use and understand, people will be all over them.  I was wildly impressed (although a bit of reading up has shown me that they're not necessarily all they should be; bus lane provision has been spotty, meaning the vehicles get caught up in the traffic with everything else).

It's not the only bit of Bristol's transport planning that surprised me.  While I was reading up on the stations I discovered that there are actual local government plans for an underground railway service.  

Obviously this is all heavily caveated.  They're talking about it being possibly a mix of over- and underground services, so it might be a tram network with a couple of tunnels rather than a full metro.  The proposal came from Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees, who's now in the House of Lords and his position has been abolished entirely (there's a Metro Mayor for the West of England instead).  Funding was allocated to look into the proposals, with a suggestion of four lines, each of which costs one billion pounds.  That sounds like far too low an amount to me (Line 4 of the Milan Metro, which opened in 2024, cost €1.7 billion) and the amount will be rising every moment there aren't spades in the ground.

None the less, I'm thrilled by the optimism.  This is exactly what the regional mayors should be doing.  Not monkeying around with the odd station or new bendy buses; big, transformative projects that will comprehensively change the city.  Even Andy Burnham - perhaps the most powerful city leader in the country - only tentatively talks about an underground system for Manchester, even though Manchester should've got one about, oooh, a hundred years ago.  The idea that there is a city in the United Kingdom actually pushing for modern, transformative public transport is thrilling, and gives me a little bit of hope for the future.  I look forward to riding on the Bristol Tube one day.  I'll probably be in an oxygen tent by then but that's not the point.

I turned off Gipsy Patch Lane - nope, still not okay - and onto a fast road running between parkland.  Slowly, almost imperceptibly, I started to spot rooftops appearing behind the trees, as a housing estate quietly surrounded me.  Unlike the corporation works I'd been walking by before now, this was very private, a network of cul-de-sacs hidden away.  It turned its back on the main roads, showing them blank walls.  It didn't feel welcoming at all; it viewed strangers with suspicion.

I negotiated another roundabout, and paused in the Tesco Express for a bottle of Coke; the staff were loudly complaining about a fellow worker and his laziness, shouting across the aisles.  Beyond that was another pub, though this one was extemely closed.  They clearly hadn't got the memo about Scotch Egg Fridays.

The road sloped down and there was the entrance to what was, in its own way, one of the most significant railway stations in the UK.  

Motorways were springing up all over the UK in the 1960s and 70s.  While they had ordinary, boring official numbers, they also often acquired other names in planning, names designed to capture the imagination of the locals and distract them from the six lanes of viaduct crashing through their neighbourhoods.  Linguists looked to America, because in the 1970s everyone wanted Britain to me more like thrusting, exciting, everyone driving everywhere America, and they alit on the term "parkway" - a term for a fast road that is usually scenic and surrounded by trees.  It might be a lie - if you've ever got a cab from JFK into Manhattan you will have travelled along a series of Parkways, and it's about as scenic as the bottom of a wheelie bin - but it sounds nice, particularly to naive British people who didn't know much about these new roads and heard the word "park" and thought of ducks and lakes and grass.  As such, the M32 motorway, which goes from the M4 into the centre of the city, was dubbed the "Bristol Parkway" and then, a few years later, when a new station was opened quite close to junction one, it was also called "Bristol Parkway," to let people know that it was conveniently located for that great motorway.

Something strange then happened.  People forgot that the M32 was called the Bristol Parkway at all, and instead associated the name with the station.  They thought that Parkway meant there was a place to park, because the new station had, in fact, been built with a large car park to enable commuting.  In a rare example of 1970s British Rail actually capitalising on some good publicity, they started using Parkway as a generic term meaning "we've got a large car park you know".  Hence Liverpool South Parkway, Tiverton Parkway, Oxford Parkway, and a load of other stations across the UK that don't have a big motorway next door.  It's a strange story of the British public being told a word means one thing and deciding, comprehensively, that it absolutely doesn't.  I still think Parkway is an incredibly boring thing to stick on the end of a railway station name, and I object to it every time I see it, but that's not Bristol Parkway's fault.

The station has proved so popular it's been repeatedly expanded over the years, with the latest rebuild coming in 2001 and looking very turn of the millennium.  A metal roof and plenty of circulation space, though not many actual seats, plus the obligatory branch of Costa.  There were originally two platforms - there's now four - and the car park has been upgraded to a multi-storey, with a further satellite car park up the road.  It's a roaring success, so I shouldn't be sniffy about it, but I have to admit I'm not a fan.

It might be that it felt a bit tired.  Twenty-five years is usually about the length of time railway companies can go without doing any maintenance to a station - "it's still new!" - and the building and public areas all felt cluttered and in need of a good scrub.  It needed to be stripped back of all the extras that had arrived over the years and restored to its clean lines.

I went down to the platform, where I learned that Bristol Parkway is Home of UWE Bristol, and got on a train to Temple Meads.  There were still a couple of stations left in the city for me to visit, on the south side, but I didn't like the look of those clouds, and I didn't have a coat.  Plus I fancied a pint.  You're a great city Bristol.  I hope to revisit you very soon.