Fire Walk With Me

I have a gas fire in my living room.  It was operated by remote control, but that stopped working about five years ago, and ever since then we've been all "we really should get that fixed."  Well, a week or so ago, we finally got a man out to look at it, and he said "oh dear GOD, what was installed here, this is all ILLEGAL, you have no chimney liner, you're lucky you weren't GASSED."  Which was quite an afternoon, let me tell you.

So we ended up in Saltney looking at replacement fires and, as is my wont, I ended up looking at railway stations.  Saltney is a small town on the very edge of Chester.  It bleeds across the border from Wales into England; the English side is classier looking, but the Welsh side has an Asda, so who's the real winner?  (When I worked for Chester Council I used to get people who'd bought properties in Saltney phoning up to register with us and they were almost inevitably horrified when I informed them they were on the Welsh side).

The appropriately named Boundary Lane is the actual border between the two countries, but it's easier to refer to the railway line as a marker post.  The Chester to Shrewsbury line shadows the border on its way up from Wrexham and at Saltney it's a handy demarcation point.  The line then progresses to Saltney Junction, where it joins up with the North Wales Line and proceeds into Chester station.

As a town on the edge of a conurbation, where a large river prevents easy road access to the city centre, you'd expect Saltney to have its own commuter railway station.  And it did, for nearly a hundred and twenty years, from 1846 to 1960, when the passenger station was closed.  The goods yard was shut up seven years later, and since then, the only way to get from Saltney to the centre of Chester is via road across the congested Grosvenor Bridge. 

What's left on the site of the railway station is a business park that has, in a kind of twisted logic, been named after the railways.  The Sidings features four buildings; Great Western House (the former carriage repair shop), plus Mallard House, Pullman House and Scotsman House.  It's as if they built a housing estate on top of Hyde Park then named all the roads after the trees that were chopped down to build it.

Obviously, the world of Britain in the 1960s was a very different place.  Trains were big annoying steam things that were a hundred years old; you had to follow their lines and their timetables and buy a ticket.  They didn't have the freedom of the car.  Now, as you edge through a traffic-choked Curzon Park to the Chester ring road and hope and pray you can find a space and then pay an exorbitant sum of money for the privilege, the idea of a fast train into town seems very appealing.

Strangely, there's never been much of an idea to reopen Saltney station.  I did find a twelve year old report suggesting that opening a station at Lache, a mile or so to the south, might be an idea; that would enable a park and ride facility, and would be close to the Chester Business Park and a proposed bypass.  The fact that the only mention I can find of this station is in a twelve year old document should give you a clue about how active a proposal it actually is, though I really hope it gets built, because then Chester will have a station to the north called Bache and a station to the south called Lache and that kind of thing amuses me.

So there you go: Saltney.  It used to have a station, now it has a small business park.  As for the fire, we've decided to get an electric stove.  The good thing about electric stoves is they don't murder you while you sleep.

Foot Passenger

Earlier this week, through no fault of my own, I found myself in Chester with a couple of hours to spare.  It was early on a scorching hot Bank Holiday, and the city centre was still lazily waking up: people were comfortably sleeping off barbecues and the shops were opening... whenever.  I wandered over the Dee to Handbridge, and sat for a little while watching the weir and listening to a podcast.  Then I remembered a little bit of transport infrastructure I'd never seen, and decided to go and take a look.

I have long campaigned for more footbridges by railways.  Actually, I say campaigned: what I actually mean is I have long bitched about the lack of footbridges by railways.  It mainly stemmed from when I visited Tonfanau station, during a lovely trip along the Cambrian Coast.  Tonfanau is on the north side of the Dysynni estuary, and Tywyn is on the south side.  The railway takes the shortest route between the two points, over the river, while the road goes round the long way.  Not wanting a five hour detour, I clambered up onto the railway and basically trespassed.  I'm not proud of it.

My point is: there should have been a footbridge.  (There is one now, built a little further inland, and I am disappointed they didn't name it after me).  If there's a railway forming the shortest crossing between two points, I think there should be a footbridge strung along the side of it.  It's a quick, easy fix, and a handy way to link communities.  There's nothing more annoying than seeing a Sprinter merrily skim across a river while you clamber on board a bus for a huge diversion.

There's only one crossing of the River Dee between the Grosvenor Bridge in Chester city centre and the A494 in Queensferry: the railway bridge taking the line to North Wales.  And, for once, there's a footbridge for pedestrians, connecting the racecourse to the upscale district of Curzon Park.  I suspect it's no coincidence that a footbridge was deemed necessary for those two parts of the city rather than, say, connecting Saltney with the industrial park at Sealand. 

After a long hot walk through Chester's most suburban suburbia I turned up a side road to the golf course.  The footbridge is reached via some steps from the road surface (so bad luck cyclists and people in wheelchairs), taking me down into cool undergrowth.  The footpath was slippery, despite the baking sun, and angled downwards just to add to the general feeling of mild peril.

It was only as I reached the crossing itself - literally as it hoved into view - that I remembered: bridges tend to be high.  And I don't like heights.  Hate them.  My heart immediately began to pound as I realised I'd walked two miles to reach a footbridge I really didn't want to walk over.

There is a facet of my personality that will always outvote something as small as crippling vertigo, and that is my bloody mindedness.  If I had come all this way to walk across a bridge, then I was going to bloody well walk across a bridge, and not even the prospect of dying of a heart attack midway could stop that.  I put my glasses in my pocket - because I'm always scared they'll slip off and fall in the water - and ventured across, one hand skimming the handrail just in case a train came across and tried to shake me into the river.  To my left, I could see the railway tracks; to my right, an admittedly beautiful view.

After, oh I don't know, about four and a half weeks of walking, I finally reached the stairs on the opposite bank. 

I headed down them to the blessed safety of dry land.  On the north bank, there's far more places to go; a riverside stroll, or a walk between the railway viaducts and the greenery of the Roodee.  It was all very pleasant, and helped to moderate my pounding heartbeat.  There should be more footbridges attached to railway bridges, because they're a simple but effective way to make cities more pedestrian and cycle friendly; just don't expect me to enjoy using them.

Viva La Deva

I’m writing this on my MacBook with a latte in Starbucks, because I am just that awful.  It’s not just any Starbucks though: it’s Chester Starbucks, a coffee shop that I used to be a frequent visitor to.  Every now and then, before work, I’d wander in and get myself a Caramel Macchiato and a cinnamon swirl to eat at my desk as a breakfast treat.  I was such a regular that the barista finally offered me a discount, because I worked in the city centre; unfortunately it was literally on my last day working in Chester, but the thought was much appreciated.

They’ve done it up a bit since I was last here.  The front is far more open, a plate glass window, and they’ve finally installed decent air conditioning.  And the toilets are actually quite decent, for once.  Why do Starbucks have the very worst lavatories in the world?  They aim for sophistication up front, all matey barista banter and limited blends, and then you go to the loo and it's worse than a toilet in a French service station.

Across from me is a man in a tartan tam o’shanter reading the Daily Record; I think he may be Scottish.  There’s also a pair of dreadful old bores who are referring to the Prime Minister as "Mrs May" in a way that makes me think they call women "pretty young ladies" and share risque jokes at the golf club about the barely out of her teens barmaid.

I’m in town for reasons far too dull to go into here.  I was on the first train out of Hooton, meaning to transfer to a different service at Chester to head into North Wales, but my schedule is light and I can get any train along the coast, so I decided to jump off the train at Bache.  We have history, me and Bache.  When I worked in Chester city centre, I used to get off the train there, then walk into town.  It was a pathetic attempt at getting some exercise into my life, an effort rather undercut by the fact that I then had the aforementioned Caramel Macchiato and cinnamon swirl when I hit town.  It was also the second station I ever visited for this blog, back in the far off days of 2007 when I was just visiting the Merseyrail stations on the Northern and Wirral lines.  Back before I became obsessed.  (If you click that link, incidentally, you'll see a picture of me when I was still in my skinny twenties, all chin and forehead).

The only thing that's changed about Bache station is the giraffe ALF board I mentioned in my old blog has long gone.  The rest is the same, two platforms wedged round the back of Morrison's.  I crossed the tracks via the overbridge, which probably hasn't been painted since I was last here, and down into the car park.  

Funny how quickly your brain slips back into the old routines.  Muscle memory guided me round to the pedestrian exit from the car park, across the road, and onto the Liverpool Road into the city centre.  Sometimes, if I was feeling a bit adventurous, I'd head down the suburban streets the other side of the railway line, crossing Brook Lane and coming out round the back of the Northgate Arena, but today I stuck to the favoured route.  

In the old days I'd have been here about ten past eight, breathing the fumes from nose to tail traffic, but today it was six thirty and quiet.  I crossed at Lumley Road - of course I thought of Joanna, instantly - and continued past big homes hidden behind trees.  Many of them had been repurposed now, acquired by the hospital or the university, name boards tucked at the end of the drive to let you know about their new purpose.  A bus trundled by, not even pausing for me, even though I was right by a stop, the driver keen to get into town for a break.

At the Queen's School, I crossed the road.  When I commuted, crossing was a struggle, the harassed drivers unwilling to pause to let a pedestrian break their grim faced morning routine.  Now I practically sauntered across, past the glass fronted Total Fitness that occasionally gave me a tantalising glimpse of some speedo clad hunk (but more often than not gave me a view of a large lady in a psychedelic one piece), and past the site of Liverpool Road station.

There used to be a railway line passing across the top of Chester, from the Northgate station - now the leisure centre I mentioned earlier - through Liverpool Road and Blacon and then joining up with what is now the Borderlands Line above Hawarden Bridge.  The railway line lasted a surprisingly long time; passenger services were axed by Beeching in the sixties, but freight trains continued until 1992.

It's hard to conceive of trains passing through today, now that it's been surrounded by trees and aspirational apartment blocks.  Every now and then I think about walking the route, just to trace it again, skirting the edge of the city centre and ending up at Mickle Trafford.  

Half the sponsors on that board don't even exist any more.

Further on, the University buildings really start to build up.  It was originally a teacher training college, established by the Church of England, but it became a University in 2000 and has swelled rapidly.  Perhaps it's the glamour of Hollyoaks tempting young people to head to an educational establishment with the potential for plenty of casual sex and the odd murder.  There was a cut through at the bottom of Liverpool Road, an old road too narrow for cars that dropped down to Parkgate Road, but a few years ago a wall collapsed onto the pathway.  As with almost everything else in Chester, the walls were found to be incredibly old and incredibly fragile, so rather than risk them toppling on an innocent student they closed off the pathway completely.

Passing the not-at-all-amusingly-named Gaymoore Close I was surprised to see the garage nearby had closed.  Even more surprisingly, now the trappings of the service station had been stripped away, it turns out there was a fine Victorian villa hiding underneath.  There's another wonderful villa on the other side of the road, with a stained glass orangery at the side; I was upset to see that it was undergoing work, and the glass roof was open to the elements.  I hope there is a Heritage Officer from the Council making sure that it's restored exactly as it was.

I was pleased to see the fountains at the Fountains Roundabout were actually turned on for once, as I descended into the underpasses beneath.  Underpasses are never nice.  There isn't a single one on this planet that doesn't carry a vague sniff of urine.  The ones beneath the ring road in Chester were built with ambition, to try and stop them from turning into the usual rape alleys.  The one at the bottom of Brook Street leads into a submerged garden beneath the roundabout, while the Fountains underpass sends you through a central circulation area.  

There's something bleakly futuristic about it, a bit Clockwork Orange, a bit THX-1138. The roar of the fountains fills the space.  In the ceiling, plexiglass domes are set into the ceiling, meant to let in light but now covered with dirt and mould to turn the sunlight brown.

The top of Northgate Street has changed beyond recognition since I was last along here.  There's a huge student residence on the ring road - built as a Travelodge, but closed barely a year later - and opposite the old bus station has disappeared beneath a hefty office block.  Sadly, the Bull & Stirrup - a regular haunt for me and the BF; the very first time I ever visited Chester we met up there - was closed up, its windows covered by metal grilles.  

Across the canal and under the Northgate, one of the city's ancient entrance points and part of the Roman Walls.  Chester is the only city in Britain to still have its entire run of walls still in one piece, thanks to an eternal fear of rampaging Welshmen wandering across the border to pillage.  Behind the gate is Chester's oldest gay bar, the LA (I still call it the Liverpool Arms, because I'm ancient).  I'm not sure what the status of the city's other gay bar is, the subtly named Bar Six T Nine.  Gay bars are falling away now; Grindr and Gaydar and other, more niche, internet sites have taken away the traditional way of meeting other homos (standing by the bar until you're so drunk you just go home with the first person who says hello).

I wandered down Northgate Street, noticing the new shops, the new restaurants, which ones had updated their signs, which ones looked exactly the same as they always did (the Cheese Shop).  My job at Chester City Council had meant dealing with a lot of these businesses, and over the years, I grew to know them by heart.  I could practically list from memory the shops on the streets within the walls, one after the other.  When I left I stayed away from the city for a long time, just so that I could lose those memories.  I needed to come back to Chester with a blank slate.

  

Town Hall Square still looked the same, dominated by William Lynn's town hall, its three faced clock  tower still refusing to give Wales the time of day.  (By the way, no, you can't shoot a Welshman within the walls after sunset - that's murder, and no ancient law can get you out on a technicality).  I looked up when I left my job here, and I was shocked to realise it was eight years ago: I shared my leaving do with a girl who was going on her maternity leave.  That child will be old enough to join the Cubs now.  It's still all there, tucked in my mind, though.  It's nearly eight thirty as I type this.  In the old days this would be when I arrived at my office in the Forum, finding a space amidst the mess of papers, settling in for a day's work.  Instead I'm going to head to the seaside.  Much better, I think.

Four Way Split

Take a train.

Stand on the platform 1 at Hamilton Square and take a train.  At that point, it'll just be a Liverpool train.  It'll have Liverpool on the sign board on the front and the automated voice will tell you "This train is for ... Liverpool Central.  The next station is... James Street."  You'll pass under the river and then it'll change. That Liverpool train will magically shift its state and become something else.  Without you even noticing, your surroundings will transform, morph, and suddenly you're going somewhere else.  All without leaving your seat.  At James Street, you'll learn where you're going.

"This train is for... Chester.  The next station is... Moorfields."

It looked like I was heading for Chester, then.  I was playing a game.  I'd decided, for no reason at all, to travel all over the Wirral Line.  I was going to go to each of its termini, just riding the rails.  Just taking in the route.

I got a seat at Liverpool Central.  The guard and the computer voice beg you to leave the train at James Street for Liverpool ONE, and some do, but it still hasn't caught on properly.  People still cling to Central as the heart of the city - good news for the Central Village development, when it eventually shows up.  I wonder if it's the name.  If Bold Street or Ranelagh Street would get the same volumes of traffic; if people are just conditioned to go that way by the name.  Two tourists clamber off the train, carting bikes, nervously checking out the line diagram to make sure they're in the right place.  A woman helps them; she got on at Moorfields with hair still damp from the stylist.  As we leave the station she fingers her new style anxiously, still unsure about it.

There's a blue spark as we cross the junction, and the lights vanish, and then we're back at Hamilton Square again.  A nurse boards and sits in the bank of seats across the aisle from me.  She crosses her sensibly shod feet and flicks through an Argos catalogue, letting it fall open on random pages, then urgently moving it on again.  She drops it on the dead Metro beside her as we break out of the tunnel into Birkenhead Central. Sunlight, but no sunshine; a grey murk and the threat of drizzle.  There's a train stabled alongside the southbound platform, the Councillor Jack Spriggs.

Green Lane is almost empty, as usual.  There's a single waiting passenger on the Liverpool platform.  He's sat in the shelter with a little lunch beside him on the bench, a can of Dr Pepper, a packet of ready salted.  The train squeaks and groans as it clambers up the incline, a ridiculously steep gradient that takes the train from underground to an embankment.  We're suddenly over the top of gardens and rooftops and basketball courts.  A quote on a wall - John 3:16 - God loved us so much He gave us His only son.  Whoever puts their trust in him will not be lost but will have eternal life.

At Rock Ferry, we pull alongside a train heading the opposite way, and I look through into a mirror image.  A boy with a rock star haircut and a leather jacket sullenly takes up a seat, earbuds jammed deep inside his skull.

This is, in its own way, my line, the one I travelled on the most.  Twice a day, there and back, to my job in Chester.  It's such a long time ago now.  It doesn't feel familiar any more.  I can't do the timings in my head any more - I can't work out where we are just from the view out the window.  The summer foliage confuses me too.  In my head, this trip is always cold, frosty, on a grey morning where you can see your breath.  Two men in high-vis suits are opening a drain cover at Bebington.  Some parkland, longer back gardens from a time when houses weren't squeezed on top of one another, and then Port Sunlight.  The concrete square of the Unilever building hangs over the track, ugly and basic, exiled to the western side of the tracks away from the pretty village.

The green cage for cycle parking at Spital has a single bike in it.  A man leans against the cage, red woollen hat, hoodie, drinking coffee from a silver thermos and looking like he wants to be back in bed.  The guard passes through without checking our tickets and doesn't close the connecting door properly behind him.  It clatters and thuds with the movement of the train until the braking at Bromborough Rake makes it click into place.  The trees that over hang the platform here have made it wet and slick with fallen yellow leaves.  A man with a double buggy tries to control it on the steep ramp, while excited babies wave from the front.

The guard comes back - still no ticket check - but he closes the door properly this time.  The doors open at Bromborough with a clatter of key and a sigh of pneumatics, then he leans against the glass partition with his head tilted back until Eastham Rake.  The grey concrete walls here still jar, twenty years after they were put up.  They're aggressively urban after the pretty quasi-rural halts that preceded it.  The paint at the base of the fences is flaking.

Under the motorway, across the county line, the ugly industry of Hooton.  Network Rail vans parked in a compound.  Hooton always meant halfway to me: it took as long to get from home to here as it took to get from Hooton to Chester, even though there were hardly any stations.  The driver opens up the train to maximum, enjoying the long stretch without stopping.  It pounds the rails, engine whining, whistling.  Anonymous, secretive cubes at Capenhurst, protected by double rows of razor wire.  Cranes extending it and its hidden uses.

The smell of pollen and wild flowers bursts through the open windows.  Count the road bridges, the places where the noise of the train amplifies suddenly, then the BANG as another train hammers past, air colliding with air.  For a brief moment, I can see across the plains to Wales, purple mountains rising up.  The little stubs of platform that are all that remains of Upton-by-Chester station and we're approaching Bache - "Leave the train here for the Countess of Chester hospital" says the computerised voice, but she sounds like she's been cut off, like she wanted to say more but someone took her mic away.  The train sighs as it rolls towards Chester, as though it knows this is the end.  Allotments, apartments, then a junction and a depot and an expanse of railway lands.

More tourists on the platform at Chester, Italian and Spanish, pulling suitcases and calling noisily to each other.  I take a seat and let the train leave.  When I worked here there wasn't anywhere to sit, just window sills you'd lean on, hollows carved in the stone by a hundred years of buttocks.

My train back is named: Operations Inspector Stuart Mason, a refreshingly banal title.  There's another dead Metro on the seat across from me and an open bag of Tesco pistachio nuts.  It's been opened along the side, and is full of discarded pistachio shells; I imagine someone moving the bag to sit down and inadvertently showering everyone, so I move it to the metal edge of the seat.  Two Scouse lads are "sick" of Chester, and are retreating back to Liverpool.

"A few bevs?"

"A few bevs."

"Magnet?"

"Magnet."

They rest their feet on the seat cushions as the doors beep and we move away.  It seemed like there was hardly any time between trains.  I notice a new sign for the drivers at Bache - REMINDER: Do you stop at Capenhurst? - and I realise I haven't seen Bache's ALF, my very first ALF, the one with the quizzical giraffe.  Is it still there?

We do stop at Capenhurst, and then I jump off at Hooton.  I'd thought about going all the way up, round the loop and back again, but the thought of seeing all the same stations over and over depresses me.  Instead I nip to the M to Go for a bottle of water.  The men in there are bantering with the station manager as she buys a coffee from the machine.  "Have you had any complaints because it doesn't do tea?"

"A couple.  But it's Costa, in'tit?"

"Yeah, but if you go into a Costa shop you can get a tea, can't you?"

"Do you want a cup of tea?" the larger of the men explodes, mock exasperated, his moustache quivering.  "I'll make you a cup of tea!"

I take up a seat by some discarded crisps.  A tall man and his girlfriend scurry along the platform - "fourteen minutes!" - and he spits heartily onto the track, presumably to clear his throat ready for the cigarette.  They sit further down and he puts dance music on the speaker of his phone for everyone to enjoy.  Fortunately it's mostly drowned out by the traffic on the motorway and the road bridge.  Another man, anxious, tiny, with a red backpack dangling off his shoulders: with his khaki trousers and neat blue shirt he looks like a very polite explorer.

A Liverpool train passes through, then a Chester train, then quiet again.  A robin lands close to my feet and eyes me up.  It wants to pick at those crisps, and I haven't moved, so I don't seem to be a threat.  It watches me for a little bit, then hops around some more, dancing round the potential meal, trying to estimate my danger levels.  The Ellesmere Port train clatters into the platform, and he whirls up into the air; lunch will have to wait.

Two businessmen are ahead of me on the train.  The bald one, head shaved and shining, barks into a mobile until the signal fades.  He turns to his colleague to complain, first about the phone, then about his missing pens.  "No-one ever puts a pen back in that office."

"What was that one you had?"

"It was a lovely silver Parker pen.  Just vanished.  Bastards."  They commiserate each other on their missing stationery, pads, pens, claimed by unscrupulous types without morals.

Little Sutton's much improved since I was last here.  The local schoolchildren have been let loose, and now the panels over the bricked up windows are bright and colourful.  A copy of Lord Kitchener wants YOU to join him at the station.  The two businessmen have moved onto their boss, his incompetence and his unfriendliness, but their Scouse vocabulary still comes through in their speech, resulting in strangely personable threats - "The more he does it, the more I think, fuck you, mate."  They alight at Overpool, along with a surprising amount of the train.

The last stretch to Ellesmere Port passes terraces, a siding with Network Rail men clambering over the tracks, blocks of flats.  The station building is wrapped in scaffolding and hoardings, in the process of being upgraded to contain a cafe and community space.  Until then We apologise for any inconvenience during improvement works.

I'd thought about hanging around and getting the next train out, as at Chester, but Ellesmere Port's an unfriendly place.  The platform had people waiting on it who didn't seem to want to board the train, who regarded it as an intrusion.  They smoked cigarettes and eyed it suspiciously, craned over the handlebars of bikes.  I got back on the same train I came in on, along with a gang of students from the local college.  They open cans of energy drinks in unison, a little chorus of hisses, enough to keep them alive for the trip home.  A harassed man boards at Overpool, with flyaway hair and a nervous chew on his bottom lip.  Union Jack flying in a garden at Little Sutton; a collapsed outhouse and weeds next door.

One of the students is holding forth about Tube trains, and his experiences on them.  They're tiny, but the new ones are better - "they're bright and modern, like this train."  I imagine that would please Merseyrail.  We pass through the deep sandstone cutting at Hooton and he moves onto the lack of etiquette on the Underground: "everyone's pushing.  There's no consideration at all."  He's so busy with his rant about That London, they almost miss their station, and have to run to get off at Hooton.

The guard does a ticket check, nodding his and thanking you for each orange square, and we head back over the familiar line again.  "We are now approaching Spital" will never stop sounding revolting.  Every station has the green GoGoGo! cycling banner and a cage for bikes; hardly any are in use.  The man at Green Lane left his empty crisp packet and Dr Pepper can behind when he caught the train; they're like a shed snakeskin on the seat.

I close the loop at Hamilton Square, passing through the same platform I boarded from ages ago.  Now that they're endangered I feel affectionate towards the brown plastic seats - part of me hopes there's not enough money to redevelop these last couple of stations.  Lime Street is skipped again, its platform covered in a tent of scaffolding poles and fences, the new white panels checkerboarded with blank holes.

I get off at Liverpool Central to use the loo.  It's the second best place to have a pee in the city centre now, clean and efficient and with Dyson Airblades.  (The best place to pee is John Lewis because you don't need a train ticket to use them).

Back down to the platform.  It's rowdy down there; the races are on at Chester, and suits and posh frocks are tottering around after being in the pub.  They're noisy and excitable and I am ridiculously pleased when they all get on a train and leave.  An old woman tells her grandson to sit in the empty seat between me and a heavy man with a briefcase.  She's wearing leopardskin and pulling a pink wheely-suitcase.  I stood up to offer her my seat but she waved me back down.  "He's just come from the hospital, otherwise we'd both stand up," she explains, but I see her take my seat when I get on the train.  The man with the briefcase made no move to offer his seat at all.

The guard informs us in thick, guttural Scouse that this is the New Brighton train.  There's a school party spread along the platform at James Street, legs out in front of them, waving at us as we pass.  Across from me, in the bike seats, a woman in a blue cagoule eats a packet of cheese and onion Snack a Jacks with a slow deliberation.  Each rice cracker is held between two fingers and slowly raised to her mouth; she considers it, then crunches her way through it, before reaching for the next one.  She's wearing pinstripe trousers and girlish pumps over white socks.

She gets off at Conway Park, which is black.  While I've been underground a storm has crashed into Birkenhead, and the canyon of a station seems to be battered by it.  The brightly lit strips with the nameplate on it shine even more distinctively, like beacons.  An imperious looking man alights at Birkenhead Park - he could be Colin Firth's stunt double for The King's Speech, if there were any actual stunts - and then onto Birkenhead North.  People in hoods, like ETs, hunched over themselves, dart across the rain-strafed platform and onto the train.

The driver toots his horn as we pass the depot.  Long chains of carriages stretch alongside us, with a Beatles Story train looking unfeasibly bright next to its yellow and grey siblings.  Its psychedelic colour scheme is completely out of place in the middle of this barren stretch of railway and weeds.  Round the back of the retail park and under the motorway, then up onto the viaduct and Wallasey Village station.  A bamboo screen has been erected along the platform to shield the houses below from nosy commuters.  It gives the station an incongruously tropical air, exotic like a jungle hut.

A sign says that Wallasey Grove Road "is tended and cared for by the Edible Wirral Partnership" but the beds look tired, and there are weeds everywhere.  Perhaps they're "encouraging wild flowers" and a "bee friendly" environment, like I am on that corner of the garden I can't be bothered with.  The backs of apartment slabs, then the first glimpse of the sea at New Brighton.  It's thick and grey, unappealing under the drive of the rain, and Seaforth is hidden under mist.  There are more sandstone stripes in the cutting, fossil beds laid on top of one another, then the train clunks and shudders and we're in the station.

A couple of workmen are fixing the CCTV in the station building as I cross to the bookshop over the road.  I thought I would kill time in here until the next train, but it's too small and crowded, and the staff are too cheery.  I didn't feel relaxed enough to browse; I felt like I was being watched, and they were ready to jump in with help and conversation.  Only as I leave do I realise that the woman behind the counter is dressed as a pirate.

I leave and get back on the train.  It clicks furiously, as though a cricket was trapped under the wheels.  Dots of rain fall through the window and smudge the ink in my notebook.  At Grove Road, schoolkids with blazers over their head to hide from the rain get on board, and then another load at Village.  A banner advertising the Railpass has a picture of a man whispering into a woman's ear; someone has poked out her eyes, leaving her with two black spaces either side of her nose.  It somehow makes her look sarcastic, as though she's listening to the man and thinking "Christ, not this again."

Most of the kids get off at Birkenhead North, thankfully, changing to the West Kirby line no doubt.  A neatly dressed man gets on at Birkenhead Park in an outfit that positively gleams.  Everything looks new and crisp; shiny shoes, pressed trousers, a white jacket that's unscuffed.  I decided that he was off for a night out on the pull, making himself look the very best he could, but then he got off at Conway Park and torpedoed my theory.  No-one dresses up for a night out on the pull in Birkenhead - it's not worth the effort.

Four Network Rail men get on the train at Hamilton Square; clocking on or knocking off, I wonder?  I get off with them at Moorfields, and they look around for the lift - "I'm not fucking walking."

I'd decided to change at Moorfields because I thought it would complete the set of underground stations.  Only as I stood on the platform did I remember that I hadn't been to James Street.

Final leg now.  The train hits Central, and fills immediately; it's four o'clock on a Friday and the office workers with flexi time are out of there.  There's a crisp packet on the seat in front of me, cheese and onion, the artificial flavourings still lingering in the air.  It's passed to the neighbouring seat by a little round woman with a severe red bob.  She produces a historical epic from her bag, cracks the spine and begins reading.  Then the crisp bag is passed on again, to the seat next to me, by a trim pensioner carrying a hot pink handbag.  She's wearing open toed sandals and probably regrets it.

Further on in the carriage two teenage girls are showing their mum their purchases, delving into carrier bags and producing the treasures inside.  A shoebox is taken out and a single trainer is put up for the others to coo over.  A bikini is taken out of a Primark carrier: "Is that for your holiday?"

Through the tunnel again, a pause at Hamilton Square.  The young stylish couple across the way are big on public displays of affection.  Their bodies are rammed together, tight designer jeans swathed around touching knees.  She clutches her iPhone in a fist, its screen strobing across her clothes.  A cyclist boards and the standing commuters shuffle uncomfortably to let him on, but no-one moves the crisp bag on the seat next to me.

The stylish girl's coat slips from her shoulder as we move off again, revealing a pale shoulder under a white vest top.  She gazes out into the carriage through panda eyes, until her boyfriend reclaims her, pulling her back in for another kiss.  At Birkenhead Park there's a chirrup of phones as the signals are recovered, and a corresponding movement of arms into pockets to retrieve messages.  A schoolboy pushes the crisp packet onto the floor and takes the seat next to me, but sitting sideways, tapping at his lime green Blackberry with a well-practised thumb.  It plinks and beeps, new messages covering up his Everton football club wallpaper.

There's a thud as we clonk over the junctions and pass round the back of the giant Tesco Extra.  Bidston station is swathed in netting and building work.  The couple squeeze their way off the train, holding hands.  I can smell thick, cheap aftershave; I suspect it comes from the teenager next to me, spritzing himself anxiously all day to fight off adolescent sweats.  He receives a picture message but can't work out what it is: after turning his mobile a few times he replies with "?".

Someone is talking behind me in an Asian language, Mandarin or Cantonese or something, having half a conversation we can't understand.  That's the third foreign language I've heard on the train today, and it doesn't include the incomprehensible Glaswegian at Chester or the treacle thick Scouse accent.  There are flats at Leasowe I don't remember having seen before, but it's been a long time since I came this way, a very long time.  The boy and the pensioner both get off at Moreton, and the woman with the bob swings round, riding the rest of the journey side saddle so she can stretch her legs.

There's a stretch of unlikely countryside between Moreton and Meols, with paddocks and Shetland ponies and meadows.  The rain returns, but listlessly this time, falling against the window in splatters.  We pass over the barrow crossing before Manor Road, the one that seems to claim a victim every year, and then we're at the station proper.  It's nearly six years since I collected the station, but I suddenly remember being here, coming down the steps to the platform, listening to the Coral on my iPod.

Hoylake is pretty, of course, and probably about to get a makeover ready for the return of the Open next year.  Then the train clears its throat and rumbles, readying itself for a rest at the terminus.  The neatly mown expanse of the golf course provokes a burst of energy in the carriage.  Books are tidied away, bodies stretch, phones are produced and "I'm just coming into the station now" seems to be on everyone's lips.  At West Kirby I tip onto the last station of the day, the last branch, the end of the line.

I text Jamie.  Fancy a pint?

Edit

"Damn.  The free bus from Chester station to the city centre has finished, but it's printed on every map on the network.  We'll have to reprint all of them with the new info.  Unless you have a suggestion?"

"I've got this magic marker."

"Yeah.  That'll work."

Day Four: Down and Out

***apologies if there are issues with this post for Firefox users; due to an error with Blogo I had to post it using Blogger's own editor, and it seems to have created layout problems for Mozilla's browser.  IE9 and Safari both work!***

Seriously Colwyn Bay: what the hell?

It was bad enough the night before when there was almost nowhere to
eat dinner with utensils. As it turned out, nowhere in the town centre opened for
breakfast either. Does no-one need a swift cup of coffee before work? Are there
no people in need of a shot of grease to set them up for the day? Even the
Wetherspoons, which promised a huge breakfast on the menu outside, didn't
open until nine. If you're eating breakfast at nine, you don't care any more: the
day is yours. You may as well have a bacon barm at 11am.

Fortunately the Bf, and more pertinently, the Prius, were still with me, so
he whisked me out of town to a McDonalds where I could fill my face with bacon
and use the wi-fi. I have to give kudos to McDonalds for that - free, uninterrupted
wi-fi, with no password, for as long as you're inside. That's better than the likes
of Starbucks or Caffe Nero, who charge you, or a thousand other places, that don't
even give you wi-fi in the first place. It's worth clotting your arteries if it means
you can have a swift look at the local talent on Grindr.

The other advantage of the Bf's presence was he could drop me off at
Abergele & Pensarn station. If he hadn't turned up I was going to walk along the
coast from Colwyn Bay (with a theoretical breakfast inside me). This was the only
point of the entire trip that I had been anxious about. The Ordnance Survey map
showed a cycle path, but not a footpath; obviously where one goes, the other
almost inevitably follows, but it wasn't a certainty. What's more, the cycleway
seemed to skate dangerously close to the water at times - I had visions of being
trapped on a ledge above the tide, with nowhere to go.

In the pantheon of tragically abandoned railway stations of the North Wales Coast Line,
Abergele & Pensarn wins the prize for "saddest station building". Everything pointed to
the lovely station house.  The approach road and the car park were outside. The station
sign was outside. It looked great. But it was boarded up, locked and abandoned.
Dammit, can't they at least put a flat in it? Just in the upstairs? Just to give some
life to the area?

It's a shame, because the station's in a beautiful spot; right on the coast, with the sound of the sea hitting the beach audible from the platform. You could walk off the train and into the water within a minute. You'd probably have to pause to get undressed first: I doubt Arriva Trains Wales would approve of you sitting around in your Speedos.

I'd been looking forward to Rhyl. Miserable, down at heel seaside resorts are a secret passion of mine. I like there to be a grim air of seediness beneath the roller coaster; a mix of teenage runaways, fag-toting landladies and enormous women with tattoos telling Bethany-Louise to get off that fucking ride because I'm saving my five pences for the bingo.

Rhyl is also blessed with a big, proper train station that's clearly had a load of regeneration money thrown at it. For starters, it has some of the widest platforms I have ever seen - they've clearly filled in the old trackbed with concrete, so as you step off the train you feel sort of small and alone.

There's a red phone box, and painted ironwork on the overbridge. I'm afraid to say that it was only at this point I realised why green, red and white was so popular for station colours in Wales. In my defence, the Colour Tsars are so busy all over Merseyrail, I'm just baffled by anything not being yellow and grey.

The ticket hall was gorgeous. Not only did it have staff, ticket gates, and somewhere to buy things - no really - but it also had elegant green tiling, and a real sense of money well spent. See, Arriva Trains Wales? It's not too hard to do.

It failed only on one, essential criteria: nowhere is there a sign saying "Rhyl station". Judging by the pins on the porte-cochere, there used to be one, but it fell off at some point and no-one's bothered replacing it.

This left me with a quandry. I needed a photo of me with the station sign - I just had to have it. But what do I do if there isn't a station sign? Normally I'd have to trot back in and use the platform signs, but in this case, I'd already passed through the ticket gates: if I wanted to go back in, I'd have to explain it to the guards, and then again when I came back two seconds later without boarding a train. I was already cringing with embarrassment.

I walked round the building, and finally found a little side entrance,
with a forgotten sign. That'll do!

My first glimpse of Rhyl proper was disappointingly classy: an old Carnegie Library, with beautiful stonework and a tower. Where was the neon? Where was the faded grandeur? That was just plain grand.

Fortunately, the town centre was far more eclectic. It was a pedestrianised precinct, full of pound shops and hairdressers and cafes. It looked like any number of low-class towns in the UK, except, every fourth store was covered in buckets, spades and inflatables, and there was a much higher incidence of bare upper arms in the shoppers than you'd usually expect.

Eventually I found my way to the front itself, and to the real target of my affections:
an arcade. When I was growing up, an arcade was the only reason to go to the
seaside. I mean that sincerely. Why spend your day sprawled on the beach when
you could be inside, pumping fifty pences into OutRun or Operation Wolf?

To kids like me and my brother, back in the 1980s, the seaside arcade was a hallowed place. It was where you could see games with more than one colour onscreen at the same time, where there was digitised speech, where you could see - whisper it - parallax scrolling. There were cabinets you could sit in to drive, cabinets with guns to shoot, cabinets with ridiculously over-ambitious painting on the side to seduce you into splashing your pennies on it.

My brother and I loved the arcades. We had a day trip to Brighton once, and 50% of it was spent in the arcades, while the other 50% was spent asking when we were going to the arcades. Each one seemed seductive - we could walk out of one and into the one next door, just on the off chance that it had some new, amazing game we'd never seen before.

Remember, we had Spectrums at home; anything without a tape deck was exciting. Gauntlet on a portable tv was one thing, but in an arcade Valkyrie and Elf were quite clearly different creatures, and not just the same sprite in either blue or green. For everyone of my generation, the arcade was a glimpse of the future: we knew we'd be getting boiled down, stripped back versions of these games in a few months for our own home computers. This gave us the chance to see them in their original, unadulterated form. (There was a boy at school who claimed to have a Neo-Geo, which was like an arcade machine for your home, but we treated him with the contempt he deserved).

There's no appeal in the arcade games now. No-one wants to pay to play a game, standing up in the middle of a resort, when they have a game that's just as entertaining on their phone. You can't pay 50p and get an experience as thrilling and in-depth as Grand Theft Auto, and you can't stay in there long enough to get every nuance. Gaming has moved on, and left the old arcades behind. The only machines left were for show-offs - Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution, and even they were rarities. If you played OutRun, you locked yourself into that cabinet and played alone, without an audience. Just you and the machine.

What was left were fruit machines and penny pusher games. I changed 50p into two pence pieces and spent a merry quarter of an hour shoving them into the machines, watching them dance down the back before mixing in with the other coppers and just sitting there. I loved these games too as a kid, but it was harder to justify putting your money into them - next to Sega's blinking, shouting, bleeping machines they looked distinctly old hat. Now they were the main attraction. They all had bizarrely old school names - I spotted a "Disco Inferno" next to a "Rio Carnival" but they were all the basic stick your two pence in and see if you get anything back. I was sure they used to come in different denominations - ten pences and pennies - but maybe that's a trick of my memory. Certainly my skills haven't improved. I got a few cascades of coins, which I chucked back in again, but none of the prizes. I suspect that the Japanese earthquake wouldn't have dislodged them.

With my fifty pence gone, I went back into the sunshine, knowing secretly that I could have happily spent the whole day in there, funnelling coins away. I had a pocket full of change jangling beside me - I needed to get away before I started selling my body for one more go.

Across the street was the prom, which in Rhyl is made of sand-coloured stone, undulating back and forth. Its various bridges and steps and seats mean that you can't actually see the sea from the town, which seems a bit odd, but I could see its appeal on a windy rainy day. There was an aquarium, and a circular space which was clearly the 21st equivalent of a band stand.

Sadly, none of the kiosks were open. I'd wanted some candy floss, or a toffee apple, or some rock. It was ten in the morning; does North Wales have its own time zone or something? Breakfast happens after nine and tourist spots open after twelve.

Strangely, the new yellow-stone development wasn't anywhere near as charming as the tin roofed Bright Spot Arcade. Its newness and determined blandness reminded me of nothing except a Tesco Superstore, or a recently pedestrianised town centre.

This is blatant hypocrisy on my part, of course. I wouldn't go on a holiday to Rhyl, at all, ever, and I definitely wouldn't go if it all smelt of damp and the prom was covered in rust and dog muck. Seedy charm is all very well if you want to come and stand to one side and then get the hell out again. The people who do come here for holidays want good clean fun, with their kids, and they don't want broken glass and homeless people fighting. They want it to shine and be there for them when the sun decides to make one of its rare appearances.

I finally managed to uncover the shore by following a group of day care workers taking their charges out for some sea air. Three women, each with a triple buggy - I dread to think how many Pampers they had stowed away. They were happily gossiping as I overtook them to follow the coastal path behind the Sun Centre.

If you've never been to Rhyl, and so you're not sure what to expect from the Sun Centre, you need to imagine a B&Q Supercentre, painted yellow, with a sign featuring a font not seen since Cheggers Played Pop. Hollow out the inside and fill it with water, then overcharge the public because you're the only place within a square mile that's ok to be inside while it rains. It's so ugly, it makes you wonder if the Council just had a load of corrugated iron left over from roofing some allotment sheds and decided to make a swimming pool out of it.

From here to Prestatyn there's a long concrete promenade, following the sea wall and curving round.  The road drops away into the distance and you're left on a pedestrian and cycle route. I had the sun beating down on me and the noise of the sea. The path was empty except for the occasional dog walker or cyclist.

And yet... I quickly found myself plunging down into a little hole of depression.

I try to keep this blog jolly and happy and light. I don't post when I'm feeling down. I keep quiet about low days. I feel like telling everyone about it is kind of self-indulgent. So I apologise for this whole bit - you can skip it if you want. Go to the point under the next photo. I won't feel insulted.

The thing about depression is it's always there. It's like having fuzzy edges round your vision; surrounding everything you see. Sometimes it's just a little haze, but sometimes it swirls down over everything and colours your vision.

That's what happened between Rhyl and Prestatyn. I fell into that hole. I'm guessing it was a combination of my weariness, thanks to the last few days' walking, and the loneliness of the spot. I just felt ridiculously depressed, and alone, and horrible. I hated myself and everything about that walk. I fell onto a bench and just stared at the ground.

I probably would have stayed there for hours. Fortunately, in addition to suffering from depression, I have an obsessive compulsive disorder. The two mental illnesses had a little tussle inside me, and the OCD dragged my arse up and out of the seat. Because, dammit, there were two. Stations. Left. That was it. Two stations and it was complete.

With heavy legs and my forehead lightly toasting in the sun (if you look at the photos over the course of this trip, you can see me turning a nice shade of pink) I pushed on into Prestatyn: the town where people go to die.

The Bf's mum used to live in Prestatyn. (She now lives in the flat below ours. I know, I know. Don't get me started). I've been there a few times, and what's always struck me is how low it all is. Not just its position on the coast, between the sea and the mountains, but also its architecture: long straight avenues lined with bungalows. Nice single storey buildings for all the pensioners to hole up in. Each house was the same. No grass in the front lawn (too hard to maintain), just a load of gravel with a thousand pieces of garden centre tat positioned all over it. If you think gnomes are a bit declasse, you should see some of the horrors perpetrated in Prestatyn's front yards. Each house had a glass porch on the front, with a couple of wicker chairs, so that the occupiers could sit and stare out the window and wait to die. If I hadn't been depressed before, I would be after all that.

Prestatyn station was undergoing some major, major redevelopment. The single island platform was surrounded by a mass of ironwork and glass and scaffolding. Disability Discrimination Act works mean that an enormous ramp was rising up to a new lift shaft.

I understand that access for all is extremely important, but that is one ugly ramp. It makes Aintree's twisting mess look positively understated. Is this all necessary?

Down on the platform, there were already a few people waiting for the train. There was a highly excited father with his little boy in a pushchair, getting him overstimulated at the prospect of a train arriving soon. There was also an enormous woman with two teenage daughters, proudly telling another woman that her fourteen year old daughter was so mature looking she regularly got served in pubs because they think she's over eighteen. Nice.

All the works meant I had to settle for a platform sign:

Onto my last Arriva Trains Wales service. On the whole I can't really complain about them. There's that horrible blue, of course, and some of the guards had been less than pleased when I'd made a request for them to stop, but they were on time and mostly clean. Some of the trains were stupidly small for the routes, and ended up being rammed, but it wasn't too bad. Perhaps Deutsche Bahn are having a positive influence on them.

The next station was Flint or, to give it its full Welsh name, Fflint. And with that extra F Fflint wins the prize for Most Annoying Use of A Consonant. Are there really Welsh people looking at "Flint" and thinking, "How do you pronounce that? It makes no sense."

The Bf lived in Flint for many years, and one of his best friends still lives there, so I'm not unfamiliar with it. I don't remember seeing a giant disembodied foot on any of my previous visits, however.

Called Footplate, by Brian Fell, it is a "tribute to all forms of transport", with the foot filled with cogs.  It's a bit weird, if I'm honest, but still nice to see.

It's nice that Flint was my last station because it's a delight. Really. It's well maintained, nicely painted. It's a good building, appealing to my OCD with its symmetry.

The ticket hall includes photos of the station and trains from days past in its clean, well appointed waiting area:

Lovely stuff. A plaque commemorates the work, and it's well deserved. Kudos Flint.

As a tribute to the combination of England and Wales over the last week, I took my photo in front of both station signs. Flint and Y Fflint, one country and another.

Are you sitting there saying "but wait! He hasn't been to Shotton! That's the last station between Flint and Chester!" Well, actually I went there two years ago, as part of the Borderlands Line.

I did think about carrying on. I thought about walking along the coast, but it's not a pretty route, and it gets decidedly dodgy around the steelworks - there's no paths marked on the OS map, and I didn't fancy trotting along the side of the A55. I considered getting a bus to Shotton, but then I thought - sod it. I was having a bad day. You could hardly say I was slacking off.

So I went for a pint.

This was actually a bit of a mistake, because the pub I went to was one of the scabbiest, most low rent pubs I have ever been in. I walked in past a haggard old man sucking on a fag in the doorway; he followed me in because, as it turned out, he was the barman. He poured me a pint with disdain - how dare I interrupt his ciggie time? - and I took up position on one of the threadbare benches with a view of Bargain Hunt on the tv.

Still, it gave me time to sit and think. My journey was practically over. All those miles and all those trains. All that walking and riding. It was all done.

I loved it. At the time, sat in the pub, I was glad it was over, but that was more to do with my depressive state of mind. Now, a couple of weeks later, I've got nothing but good memories. It did what I'd originally set out to find when I looked at the Merseyrail map: it gave colour to the names, an added dimension. Those little ticks on the map now have memories and pictures attached to them.

Sixteen gorsafoedd (stations): Holyhead, Valley, Rhosneigr, Ty-Croes, Bodorgan, Bangor, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, Llanfairfechan, Penmaenmawr, Conwy, Llandudno Junction, Colwyn Bay, Abergele & Pensarn, Rhyl, Prestatyn and Flint.

That's a lot. And I'm pleased I did it. It feels like a great achievement, and I get a real sense of satisfaction. Of course the question is: where next? (Just don't tell the Bf).

Finally I got the train to Chester, a Virgin Super Voyager. Trek geek that I am, I always think of Janeway and her crew of annoying idiots whenever I see that name. It's always a slight disappointment that Neelix isn't manning the shop. I clambered up and over the bridge at Chester to platform 7b.

There was something pleasingly right about finishing my journey here, on a Merseyrail train. I'd started this whole blog because I had an all areas Railpass to get to work in Chester, and I realised I could get my money's worth out of it. I'd spent months and months on that platform. And now it was time to go home.