Left of Centre

I was predisposed to like Aberystwyth.  I used to work with a girl named Emma who'd both studied and met her husband there.  Consequently she had dozens of fond memories of the place which she was happy to share.  She made it sound like a great, jolly, pretty town.

She was right.  There was a laid back, fun atmosphere to the place.  From the wide sweep of the bay, with a pier and guest houses painted the colour of ice cream, into the clogged streets behind, there was an energy and a charm to it all.  The promenade was being washed down with jets of water as I walked along it, preparing for the summer season.

I turned inland by a small square.  There was an old-fashioned pub overlooking it, and a group of students congregated on the benches.  The University does of course explain a lot of the town's vibrancy.  Aberystwyth is the end of the line, hemmed in by the sea on one side and the mountains on the other; you need to make your own entertainment.  The far Western brim.  The students had taken the town and filled it with their youthful vigour.  We were out on the edge, away from the bright lights of the rest of the country; it was a place to create your own world.

It was weird being in a proper town again.  For the last few days Barmouth had been as exciting as it got, and after that, Aberystwyth felt like a throbbing metropolis.  There were pubs and clubs and shops everywhere.  Suddenly I could see familiar names like WH Smith and Boots again.

I walked through the town to the station, a white stone building that stood imposingly over the locals.  Its off-centre clock tower was designed to be seen from as far as possible, directly down Terrace Road; I imagined harassed families running down it from the beach, buckets and inflatables flying, watching the minutes to their train tick away.

All was not as it seemed.  The station was still there, but there wasn't the proud arms of a railway company up there, or the double-arrow BR logo.  The writing along the top was A Wetherspoon Free House.  The station building was a pub now - another boozer carved out of an old building by the corporate behemoth.  Meanwhile, to the side, a retail park had been constructed on the old railway sidings, replacing engines with a Lidl and a Great Outdoors.  It was disappointing, though at least they'd named the pub Y Hen Orsaf - The Old Station.  Directly opposite was a far more offensive pub name:

Having a pub called the Lord Beeching opposite a station is like putting a giant photo of the Pope opposite an abortion clinic.  It's just offensive.  Especially since Doctor B sliced two of the lines from Aberystwyth, cutting a five platform station down to one mainline and one heritage platform.

To give Wetherspoon's their due, the building has been extremely well-restored.  The narrow rooms and areas of the old station have been maintained, with the pub gubbins inserted carefully inside, and the mustering area at the head of the platforms has been converted into an open terrace area.  I got myself a pint and sat down out there to watch the station activity.

With the boozers annexing the main station building, all the facilities had to move somewhere, and so ticketing and so on are now located along the side of the platform.  It's still possible to walk through the grand archway directly from the street into the station, but you pass an Indian restaurant instead of a moustachioed porter these days.  Passengers are pushed off to one side, following the barely noticeable sign you can see above.

I finished my pint and sauntered onto the platform for the train.  It was filling up with students clutching rucksacks, holdalls, black bin bags; for the first time in ages, I wasn't the only one on the train who looked like they were moving house.  There was a toilet on the station, which made me smile.  Years ago, I'd read the novel Stripping Penguins Bare, in which Benson, the hero, is picked up by an enormous man in the station toilet and taken to a farmhouse for a thorough seeing to.  I'd recently revisited the whole Benson series - the story of a Catholic schoolboy growing up in New Brighton -  as I'd got the long-awaited fourth book as a gift a couple of months ago.  Sadly, the newest book was a major let down; the author had gone away and convinced himself that he was writing social commentary, instead of amusing character pieces, and so it's three times as long with a quarter of the jokes of any other book in the series.

I didn't venture into the toilet; it was unseemly, and I really didn't want to find an enormous sex-crazed farmer in there.  I had a train to catch after all.

Collecting Aberystwyth meant that every station to the west of Dovey Junction was mine.  I'd conquered both branches of the Cambrian Lines - Mainline and Coast.  I was tired but deeply happy.

Eagle eyed observers will have noted that the Cambrian Lines go all the way to Shrewsbury, so really, I should have got the stations in between Dovey Junction and there as well.  To which I say - piss off.  Yes, there were more stations en route; yes, there's a part of me that wishes I could have got them too; but the geography and timetabling of the line meant that I wouldn't get home until nearly ten o'clock in the evening as it was.  If I'd stopped for stations on the way, I'd have had to stay another night, and though it was tempting, I wanted to get home to my own bed and my own telly.

Instead, I made just one more stop - appropriately to the self-styled Gateway to the Cambrian Coast Line.

For once, the station wasn't the main attraction.  I was here to meet the closest I have to a showbiz pal - Mike Parker.  Mike's the author of the absolutely fantastic book Map Addict, the story of his obsession with the Ordnance Survey.  It's always great to read a book that makes you think, "it's not just me then".  He writes lovingly and generously about his affection for the mapping giants, covering its history and infusing it with personal stories.  I enjoyed it so much, I did something I have never done before - I sent him a fan letter (well, a fan e-mail).  We struck up a correspondence and, when he was in Liverpool with his partner before Christmas last year, we met up and had a few pints in the Ship & Mitre.

Now I was in his neck of the woods, so he offered to return the favour.  He met me on the platform and immediately offered to take the obligatory sign shot.  We picked a heritage sign round the side, for a bit of variety.

As I write this, Machynlleth is underwater; terrible floods have swept through the town, driving people out of their homes and closing businesses.  (I have checked that Mike is okay; he lives outside the town, so all he's lost is some foxgloves).  Back in May though, it seemed to be yet another pretty Welsh town.  Mike filled me in on its history and sights; he's from the Midlands originally, but has turned native, learning the language and writing extensively about the country and its people.  He's even written about Dovey Junction in his book Real Powys.  He pointed out the town clock, for example, erected in the 19th Century by an unloved English landowner and now damaged.  Unfortunately, the builder was so unloved, they've had problems raising the money to refurbish it...

Our first port of call was Y Plas Machynlleth, the local civic centre, where Mike had to prepare his AV equipment (not a euphemism).  It was the Machynlleth Comedy Festival, and he was performing a standup routine later.  Through trial and error we set up his laptop, then headed back out into town for a pint.

It became clear that Machynlleth wasn't like other Welsh towns I'd been to.  Criccieth doesn't have a comedy festival; Tonfanau can only dream of an arts centre.  Machynlleth attracts thinkers, liberals, frontiersmen and women; it's a town that embraces life at a slight angle.  On the outskirts is the Centre for Alternative Technology, promoting eco-friendly developments and innovations, as well as researching new ones.  The people who waved hello to Mike (and he was very popular in town; we couldn't turn a street corner without him bumping into someone he knew.  It was like walking down the road with Sean Connery) were all a little different - a bit rough round the edges, a bit more easy going.  It's a town that's got its feet firmly planted in an organic compost heap.

(It does also have an Aga Shop, the only one I've ever seen outside of Chester; I guffawed, only for Mike to confess his devotion to his recently purchased Aga.  I don't think they're ovens, I think they're gateways to a cult, like those tests the Scientologists perform on people to get them through the door.  I suspect if I'd gone inside I'd have emerged with a five burner cooker and a strange devotion to Xenu).

We chatted over a couple of pints, before Mike had to go and give an interview to Radio 4.  Told you he was a glamorous showbiz person.  I tottered in the opposite direction, back to the station.  Outside I took an up the nose shot, just for completion - every other station got a photo with my nose hairs in it; why should Machynlleth be left out?

The station building, incidentally, is a lovely little thing.  Like much else in the town, you can feel the respect and care the residents have for their environment; they have put some effort into preserving their locale.

Trains for both branches of the Cambrian Line meet and part at Machynlleth.  The trains to England from both ends join up here (ignoring poor old Dovey Junction in the process), making an extra-long train to cross the border.  I clambered on board and chose a quiet seat for my journey home.

P.S.  Mike was worried I wouldn't know how to pronounce Machynlleth, so he sent me a handy pronunciation guide:

Thanks Mike!

One Off

Even the grapefruit pink wash of the sunrise couldn't make Pwhlleli look pretty.  Instead of bathing it in a glorious glow, the light seemed to catch on the ugliest features - the satellite dishes, the pebble dashing, the stained concrete.  It was barely six, and I was deeply regretting my decision to go to a hotel that was mainly a pub with rooms.  Sky Sports had echoed up through the floorboards until closing time.

My train was humming on the platform, letting out those odd diesel pops and grinds.  I treated myself to a table seat and wedged myself in, with only one thing on my mind: Aberech or not?

Yesterday I was clear - no.  I couldn't be bothered to go back and collect Aberech.  After a shower and a pint, my mind started to shift, and then the intervening hours had created a clammy hand at my neck.  The knowledge that I was just one station away from perfection.  The overwhelming desire for completion and closure.  I needed to go there.  I needed to just collect that one station, or I would always, always regret it.

Problem was, the fates seemed to be against me.  It was the first station after Pwhlleli, not far outside the town, and the train seemed to be speeding along quite happily with no intention of stopping.  There was no sign of the guard either.  That prickly feeling of anxiety began to crawl up my throat - not just because I was nervous about asking for the train to stop again, after the sneery woman the day before.  That request stop seemed to be slipping away.

"Good morning."  The guard appeared, professional, calm.  His blonde hair had been efficiently spiked and his uniform was clean and newly ironed.  I handed over my pass and he asked where I was going to.

"Aberech?" I said hopefully.  Pwhlleli was almost gone.  I didn't know if we had time.

"Aberech!" he exclaimed.  His efficient exterior self-destructed; he was suddenly as sweetly camp as Alan Carr at a Pride parade.

"Am I too late?"

"Just in time.  We'll have to go to the middle though."  He sped down the aisle, the increased pace giving him a mince that John Inman would have rejected as over the top, and rang the bell by the door.  We stopped only a few moments later.

Aberech looks like another country station; there are fields and trees and the twitter of birds waking.  The sheep were already excitable, making their presence felt with loud calls to one another.  Under it all though, an ambient backdrop, the gentle whisper of waves crashing.  I turned away from the platform and headed south, up and over high dunes, and reached a wide, empty beach.

The beach was rough with stones, which made it somehow infinitely more interesting than just another wash of sand.  There was a texture to it.  I walked to its centre and watched the water rise and fall.  My sleepiness had fallen away; the combination of the view and the sea breeze shook me awake.

Finally I turned back.  As I reached the top of the dune I saw another train headed for Pwhlleli, roaring past, the driver taking advantage of the early hour to open it up to maximum speed.  The station was in the distance, quiet and undisturbed.

I stumbled down the hill, trying not to slip and cover myself in the slightly moist sand.  There was a child's sock half buried at its foot.  No doubt a visitor from the neighbouring Aberech Sands holiday park; its neon sign glowed, still prominent in the half-light.

Click.  Photo taken, sign in shot, station collected.  And that was the Cambrian Coast Line completed.  Every station between Pwhlleli and Dovey Junction visited, photographed, written about.  I should have felt a sense of achievement, but I didn't.  Possibly because it had been so easy.  The whole line had been so charming and different.  This time last year, when I'd finished the North Wales Coast Line, I was a physical and emotional wreck.  Today I was aching for more.

Which was lucky actually.  Because I was heading back to Dovey Junction - probably the only person in history to have alighted at that station twice in one week.  I still had a branch to collect.

Dovey Tailing

Hell is other people, said Sartre, presumably while waiting in the queue at Argos.  It's a maxim that's particularly true of rail travel.  All those people, crammed together in a tiny tin tube, breathing in each other's air, smelling their perfumes, listening to their conversations.  Just one bad travelling companion can completely destroy your journey and send you scurrying to the taxi rank.

At Tywyn, there are two tracks, a rarity on the Cambrian Lines, so trains wait there to allow each other to pass.  It meant that for five minutes, waiting for the train to get going, I had to sit across from one of the most negative, miserable, and generally unpleasant women I have ever had the misfortune to be in close proximity to.  She had a bowl of tight blonde hair which looks like it was screwed onto her skull at puberty and hasn't been touched since.  Across from her was her husband, a man with a moustache and the defeated look of a man who's inadvertently chained himself to a Rottweiler for the rest of his life.

She first entered my consciousness as she loudly demanded he repay her for the coffees they'd had that morning.  "How much money have you got on you?"

"I don't know," said her husband.  He pulled out his wallet, one of those ones with a section for coins that are used exclusively by the emasculated, and she snatched it off him.  She rifled through it, pulling out a fiver and dumping a load of coppers from her own purse into it.  "Are you giving me all that change?" he said.

"Yes," she said.  "I'm sick of carrying it around.  I'm taking this five pound note.  You can pay for the drinks tonight.  And the Radio Times, when that's due."  A look round the carriage, her face contorted into a sneer, and then she complained that the train was on time.  How dare it be efficient!

As we take off, the guard appears, a chirpy girl they recognise and call Nellie.  "It's a bit quieter than the last time you were on here!" said the guard.

"Yes, thank God.  It's not that the children were shouting.  There were just far too many of them."

The train carries on, as does Helmet-Head's monologue to the guard about children, noisy trains, the inconvenience of train travel, the inconvenience of her friends for living away from Tywyn, the inconvenience of having to pack a bag when you stay overnight.  A pause at an open gate leaves her fuming at the farmer at the side of the line.  "Dickhead!" she shouts, as though he can hear her.  "Now he's held up the train."

"They have to be careful," says Nellie.  "You don't want to accidentally hit some one.  That can traumatise a driver."

"I know," says Helmet-Head.  "You hear about these suicides throwing themselves on the track.  It's so selfish.  I mean, I've been depressed, but I got over it.  You just need to pull your socks up."

Fortunately we stopped at Aberdovey before I had time to finish crafting a rudimentary garotte out of the straps of my backpack.  I stepped onto the platform lightly and with genuine pleasure at the idea that I wouldn't have to sit across from that woman all the way to Newtown.

Perhaps the escape made me especially generous to Aberdovey station.  I don't think so.  It was in a charming spot, close to the sea, with a bowling green behind it.  The station building had been turned into a private residence, but it wasn't fenced off from the platform, and it still gave the halt a sense of importance.

It also had, as you can see above, a Harrington Hump.  These are ramps built onto a station to avoid the expense of raising an entire platform to modern train heights: typically they occupy the centre and mean that it's easier for less able passengers to board.  I just love that they're called Harrington Humps; it's from the same world as Belisha Beacons and zebra crossings, eccentric names for something boringly practical.

The sun had decided that yes, it would grace us with its presence, after a day of being ambivalent about whether it was needed or not.  It meant that there was something approaching a pleasing warmth as I walked down to the main road for the sign shot.

Aberdovey has two stations, which is quite ridiculous for a town of its size, but handy for me.  They were either end of the main street, so I followed it into the centre.  Above me on the clifftops were white villas with sea views; they looked almost exactly like somewhere a vindictive colonel would be murdered by his despairing family in a lesser Agatha Christie.

In fact, Aberdovey had a general Christie-ness about it, a gentility and elegance that you didn't expect from a seaside resort these days.  Perhaps it's because it's still a working harbour, rather than just a tourist trap, but there was a sense of authenticity to it you don't often get.  The promenade curves round the bay, lined with eighteenth-century houses painted bright colours, while behind it are tiny Georgian streets that intersect at wild angles.

I was disappointed to spot a Fat Face in the town square, though.  That shop instantly marks the town as a place where it is acceptable for men to wear both three-quarter length trousers and Breton shirts; the hipsters had discovered it.  Fortunately they all seemed to be out of town during my visit - presumably they were all in England.

I did a couple of circuits of the centre before going into the Dovey Inn.  It had caught my eye with its carved board near the roof:

This house was built by Athelstain Owens Esqr.  

Ano Dom 1729

I was disappointed to find that inside it had been modernised within an inch of its life.  Not in an especially ugly way; in fact it was inoffensively tasteless, all blonde wood and frosted glass.  As I sat down in a corner with my pint of Milkwood, though, I wished it still felt like a three hundred year old inn, rather than a Wetherspoons with a nice frontage.

I watched the light bouncing off the sea for a while, glinting among the wavelets, and slowly knocked back my pint.  I could live here, I thought.  I could live in one of those houses, overlooking the bay, watching the fishermen leaving in the evening for their catch.  Drinking a beer on the balcony while I listened to the sea below me.  Then wandering down into town to find a nice quiet restaurant for the evening.  The slow life.

Of course, it would drive me mad in reality, the moment I realised I'd have to go fifty miles to get that brand of toothpaste I like, or when all my friends suddenly started trying to use my house as a free hotel.  It was nice to dream for a while.

I carried on through the town, feeling vaguely as though I was in a pirate cove, striding among the close fit houses and the sea walls.  The presence of a Literary Institute, with signs advertising both a "News Room (Visitors Welcome)", and a billiard room, did nothing to convince me I was in the 21st century.

Soon I'd reached the other end of the town, close to Penhelig station, and I realised it was a lot smaller than I'd planned for so I still had a while before my train.  I picked another pub close by, the Penhelig Arms, to kill time in.  It was built into the rock face behind the town, with no pavement outside and the railway bridge overhanging it, and I was pleased to find it was a much more old-fashioned pub than the Dovey Inn.  There seemed to be a "posh bit" upstairs, with a terrace, but I'd wandered into the slightly more threadbare lower bar, the place the locals frequented.

The bar was so authentic, they'd not even bothered with levelling the floor for the tables, and I managed to spill a centimetre of beer right instantly.  I mopped it up with my handkerchief while I listened to the barmaid tolerating a regular talking about his day.  He'd been up until 4am watching a documentary about Burt Bacharach; "do you know he made Cilla Black do 19 takes of Anyone Who Had A Heart?"  I was going to suggest that Burt should have made her do a few more, but instead I stuffed my beer-soaked hankie into my pocket and relaxed.

A heavy clock over the fireplace noisily ticked away, knocking down the minutes until my train.  The barmaid perched on a sttol, turning the pages of her Western Mail, enjoying a moment's silence while John regathered his thoughts.  Suddenly he exclaimed: "I don't care what anyone says; I like sprouts."  She took the non sequitur in her stride, and joined him in a chat about which green vegetables are best (the winner: broccoli).  I heard the Pwllheli train rattle past, and realised it was sadly time to go, before I could stir things up by chucking kale into the equation.

Penhelig station was just across the street, with a metre of pavement giving me space to stand and take the sign picture.  Above it was a narrow staircase taking you up the embankment to the platform.  No wonder they put in a Harrington Hump at Aberdovey - this is very wheelchair-unfriendly.

The station is built in the brief gap between two tunnels in the rock.  The train has just enough time to emerge from the darkness and stop before it's back inside for another underground trip.  The Welsh version of the Colour Tsars had struck again, painting the little wooden shelter red, green and white.

It was probably the two pints of beer, but I found the little hut charming, even more so when I found that the local graffiti artists were clearly as OCD as me.  There was a window in one wall of the hut, but not the other, so someone who deeply values symmetry had drawn one in:

It could have done with a ruler and set square to get the angles right, but well done you.

My train turned up and, even better, stopped for me (I was worried that the driver wouldn't see me in the time it took for him to come out of the tunnel).  My next stop was the famous - almost legendary - Dovey Junction.  Even the guard seemed to recognise its special place on the line: "Ladies and gentlemen.  This... is DOVEY JUNCTION," pausing for it to sink in as though it were a headliner at the Las Vegas Hilton.

As I've said before, the Cambrian Line is in two parts: the Main Line heads south to Aberystwyth, while the Coast Line heads north to Pwllheli.  The point where the line splits is at Dovey Junction and, for reasons best known to themselves, the line's architects constructed a station here.  Now it's one of the least used stations in Britain, and as such, on Robert's list for his Station Master blog (but I've beaten him to it, ha ha).

I was the only person to get off.  Most people who want to change trains will stay on until Machynlleth, further up the line, which at least has a station building and somewhere pleasant to sit and get a Coke.  I dropped my bag off in the shelter (who was going to steal it, a vindictive otter?) and walked down the ridiculously long Aberystwyth platform.  There's been talk about restoring London services to this line, and this is reflected in a platform built for Voyagers.  A refurbishment in 2011 also raised it above the flood plains and gave it new tarmac - it has the unfortunate effect of removing any old-world charm the station might have had.

It was a mile and a half from the station to the nearest road; a map advising you of where to catch a rail replacement bus was more or less just an arrow saying "walk this way".  The road passes through high reed beds - it's a protected wildlife area - until you reach the "Station House", and with it, the main road.

In a further blow to Dovey Junction's image as an isolated spot, the main road was undergoing a major upgrade.  There were diggers, trucks and steamrollers loudly hammering at the rock face, while workers crawled all over the site.  The noisy jackhammers echoed throughout the valley.

Up the nose shot taken, I turned round and went back the way I came, pausing only to pee.  I now had an hour to kill until the train back to Barmouth.  The services aren't even aligned to help with the interchange; two eastbound services pass within ten minutes of each other, then it's almost two hours before the next westbound train.

To pass the time, I decided to make a little video.

Even during the course of that video, my attitude to the station was changing.  I'd been let down at first.  It was, after all, the famous Dovey Junction, and yet it wasn't that isolated and it wasn't that pretty.  Look beyond the drab Arriva Trains Wales corporate colours and the easily maintained pebbles and you realise how lucky you are to be here; in the centre of a wide expanse of natural beauty, with no-one but yourself and your thoughts for company.  Out there - beyond the platforms - out there was the world to explore; Dovey Junction was just a means to get there.  Its magic is its surroundings, not the station itself.

I got back on the train and settled into my seat, taking just a moment to perv at the hot conductor (hello Alex!).  It was finally time to return to Barmouth, to a shower and a drink and a sleep.  Day one: done and dusted.