Green and Pleasant Land

January 2014 was the wettest January for a hundred years.  Sensible, right thinking people would hunker down in front of the fire in a onesie with a hot chocolate.

I am not one of those people.  Not least because I think onesies are an abomination.  (It's a babygrow for adults!)  

Instead I hauled myself aboard an early train and went cross-country to the rural Hope Valley line to collect some railway stations.  The choice of destination wasn't entirely mine.  Blogger and human will-o'-the-wisp Diamond Geezer had suggested we meet up and collect some stations together.  Sheffield is two hours' train journey for both of us, so it seemed like a good spot to rendezvous.

Getting to Grindleford meant taking a rattling Northern train through the Totley Tunnel.  As was fairly typical for the Victorians, they took a look at the steep rises of the Peak District and thought "no problem", whacking what's still Britain's fourth longest railway tunnel through the hillside with barely a second thought.  It's an impressive piece of engineering, even though it's 120 years since it opened.  It's three and a half miles long and still carries huge amounts of traffic - indeed, my train from Liverpool had passed through it earlier.

Grindleford station is less impressive, just a couple of platforms and shelters.  It can't live up to its name, which sounds like a dwarf from The Hobbit.  DG and I got off the train with a single other traveller, a hardy looking hiker who was no doubt about to walk to Bristol or something.  He had a beard and everything.

Up on the roadside I persuaded the normally camera shy DG that he should make a guest appearance under the station sign too, and he graciously agreed to be photographed.

That's odd.

After that, all we had to do was walk to the next station, Hathersage.  There was a longer route via the road but, come on: where's the fun in that?  My Ordnance Survey clearly showed a footpath that went through woods and beside a river, and an odd part of my brain thought that would be an ideal route to walk in drizzle at the back end of winter.

We trekked slowly upwards on a side route, through a strip of quiet houses.  It wasn't much after nine o'clock and some of the residents were still opening their curtains.  We turned off the road eventually, to cross the railway line via a muddy footbridge.

"Hang on."  DG reached into his bag and produced what looked like a pair of blue condoms.  Being a gentleman, I averted my eyes so he could slip them on.  I say "slip"; what actually happened was I heard a series of groans, squeaks and exclamations.  I didn't like to look, and it was actually a relief when he joined me at the end of the bridge wearing waterproof trousers over his jeans.

The footpath sloped downhill rapidly, taking us to the side of a frothing, foaming River Derwent.  We were glad to see that we were high above the torrent - there was a part of me that had been concerned about flooding - but it was still a wet, sodden trudge.  Our boots squelched out brown water with each footstep.

Things only got worse as we entered the Coppice Wood.  Water pooled in fossilised footprints; we were ankle deep in mud.  Even the side paths, created by desperate walkers trying to avoid the morass of the main path, were damp and messy.

It became clear that DG and I had very different attitudes to the mud.  While he backed up, tried to find a route that was drier or clearer, I just yomped through them, splashing and sinking.  I'd seen The Hunger Games that weekend, and read Catching Fire on the way over, so I think I was in a Katniss Everdeen frame of mind.  I admit there weren't genetically altered beasts chasing after us or psychopathic teenagers trying to blow our foreheads open, so it wasn't really a direct correlation, but there was still that slight frisson of adventure and exploration.  I like wandering off the metalled roads and into the undergrowth.  It did mean, however, that I was quite regularly slipping, almost but not quite ending up on my face in the soil.  I'm not gifted with tip top physical co-ordination on dry ground - I must remind you that I once broke my foot by falling off a welcome mat - and the slick earth tested my balance to the maximum.  I knew things were bad when I realised I had stuck my tongue out so I could concentrate better.

We left the woods behind and returned to fields, heavy with the January rains and dotted with giant puddles and miserable looking sheep.  I imagined all that wet wool and shuddered at the smell.  Now and then we diverted off the path to try and avoid a small lake that had been formed by the rain.  Finally we were on a proper, tarmacced road, and dog walkers appeared as if to herald our return to civilisation.  I wonder what we looked like to them: wet, bedraggled, mud up to our knees.  One dog saw us and laid its stick on the path in front of us, backing away as though it had presented us with a religious artefact.  I choose to believe this is because of our God-like auras, and not because the poor animal was terrified.

"What time is the train?" asked DG.

"Umm... a quarter past?" I said, scraping around in my memory banks.  He checked his watch.

"Then we've missed it."

"Ok, maybe it wasn't a quarter past."  I pulled out my mobile to check the National Rail app.  It turned out we still had ten minutes before the train arrived, but it was a fair walk.  Our footsteps became quicker, a bit more urgent; thankfully we had pavement now, so there was no more battling the mud.  Our tight schedule meant we couldn't stop to take in the David Mellor cutlery factory, but they only offered tours at the weekends anyway, so we'd have missed the full thrill of watching teaspoons being made.

The railway bridge appeared on the horizon, but there was no sign of the station; a hoped for path up to the platform didn't exist.  We broke into a run, my flabby lungs wheezing to try and provide the oxygen for the brief dash.  There was a pause, while DG captured my red-faced exhaustion for posterity...

...and then we made it up to the platform with a minute or two to spare.  Enough time for me to phlegm up what was left of my internal organs and gasp for the slightest breath.  I tried not to think about the fit bastards working out in the health club overlooking the platform, laughing at my lack of physical fitness as they hit their eighteenth mile on the treadmill.

Still, we had a rickety Pacer journey to get the blood back from our extremities.  DG was of course fascinated by these cripplingly awful workhorses of the Northern rail network; he was even more fascinated to learn that there's actually a society devoted to preserving them, when the appropriate thing would be to burn them in a large bonfire while grateful commuters celebrated their death by dancing around the funeral pyre in a Bacchanalian feast.  Never underestimate the rail fan's ability to wax nostalgic.

Bamford still has its station house.  It's a private residence now, but it was lovely to see, and the owners are clearly respectful of their home's history.

There was a heady scent of fireplaces in the air, a happy smell of country hearths.  We passed a Network Rail van with a worker in his orange vest reading a paper, no doubt on some very important job that we wouldn't understand.

Best station sign so far.  It was so good I persuaded DG to pose under it as well.

Dammit.

Never mind; there was a walk to Hope to get through, one that would be a lot less fraught as the trains were now every two hours and we were walking on pavement.  The walk was along the surprisingly busy A6187, which sent a constant stream of trucks and cars past us.  In the distance, Hope cement works rose up, a refreshingly ugly bit of industry in the middle of the national park.  I've always said that too much attractive nature starts to get dull - it needs a good dose of filthy human intervention to make you appreciate it.

I had made a pair of plans for the next station.  We could take the easy route, and get a train from Hope to Edale; or we could walk across the hills to Edale and then come back to Hope.  One look at the distant peaks convinced us that would be a bad idea.  It wasn't exactly cold, and it wasn't raining, but there was a slow anger to the skies.  I imagined that we would be at exactly the point when mobile phone reception and human contact were distant memories before one of us plummeted to our death down a ravine.  Hopefully it wouldn't have been me, as I had the ticket home in my coat pocket.  Not only would DG have lost his walking partner, he'd have had to pay £6.90 for a train back to Sheffield.

Instead we headed straight into Hope village, bypassing the disappointing Market Square (basically a car park by the church) to go to the Old Hall Hotel.  It was too early for the pub - and it pains me to write that sentence - but the tea rooms were open, and a sign said that "muddy boots are welcome".  We found a table for Earl Gray, and DG tucked into a turkey sandwich that was roughly eight foot square and needed to be disassembled like a particularly tricky Lego house before you could eat it.

Meanwhile, I wrestled with the delicate bone china, managing to spill tea over the table and then struggling to hold the dainty cup.  I could only fit one of my chunky man fingers in the handle at a time, leaving the cup unsupported and wobbling dangerously.  I flashed back to those ungainly steps in the woodlands, and panicked about smashing the china on the authentic stone flagstones.

Behind me, a group of nice old ladies were enjoying their tea and cakes.  They accompanied their elevenses with a never ending, unbroken stream of gossip and conversation.  I don't think there was ever less than two of the four women talking at one time; their chat flowed in and out at baffling speed, never seeming to connect, until I started to wonder if they were actually listening to each other or if they just came here to talk and didn't care about response.  Perhaps this was some kind of theatre production, a kind of Elderly Vagina Monologues.

Having replenished our tannin levels we paid up - DG boggling that a pot of tea for two and a sandwich with salad could come to less than ten pounds; it's nice to occasionally remind Londoners about the joys of the provinces - and headed back out of the village towards the station.  A man in his fifties jogged past us in tight lycra, and we were united in our admiration for the older man and his activity, while sort of hoping that he'd fall over or have a heart attack or something.  Alright, you're in fantastic physical shape for a man your age - now get lost.

I think that missing "e" tells you all you need to know about the excitement levels of living in the Peak District.  Oh, it's charming, it's pretty, you're regularly overwhelmed by the sheer astonishing beauty of our nation and the bounteous wonders of Mother Nature, but what the hell is there to do of a Saturday night?  We'd seen a banner advertising the Hope Adventure Film Festival, but that was for one night only.  Plus, its definition of "adventure films" seems to mean "people climbing impossibly high rock faces and/or falling down waterfalls", which is interesting enough, but at the end of the day is just some people in cagoules and helmets trying to kill themselves.  I might have been tempted to attend if "adventure films" meant, say, Die Hard, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and one of the Roger Moore Bonds.

There was further disappointment at the station, when we discovered there wasn't actually a sign.  I had to loiter under a platform sign while DG risked plummeting onto the tracks to fit everything in.

There was a charming metal footbridge over the tracks, though, and some other passengers turned up for the train, making Hope very much the Grand Central of the Hope Valley line.

Edale station was architecturally disappointing.  But that view from the platforms.

Any kind of station building would have been cowed by that.  It would have been an impertinence, in fact.

We ducked down from the station and through a dark, soggy tunnel to the road.  There was a charming pub, lit up with fairy lights and once again welcoming walkers, and I had to wrench myself away from it to head into the village.

Edale is famously the start of the Pennine Way, and we decided that we'd head up through the village to take a look at this significant marker point.  I'd seen it marked on the map, but somewhere along the line I'd got confused about what the Pennine Way actually was.  I'd got it into my head that it went across the Pennines - a sort of walker's M62 - rather than running up the spine of England to Northumbria.  As a result, I couldn't really see what the fuss was about walking it.  I knew that Sheffield to Manchester by foot wasn't exactly easy, but I didn't get why people thought walking the Pennine Way was that much of an achievement.  Fortunately DG explained that the path actually went from south to north before I cockily wandered along it, thinking I'd be at Piccadilly by tea time but actually freezing to death on a hillock outside Glossop.

We passed the Moorland Centre, a tourist information kiosk and campsite which advertised that tent plots were available.  I bet they are, I thought, as a cold mist clung to the fields and the lenses of my glasses.  The Moorland Centre, meanwhile, was shuttered up and closed, meaning we couldn't poke around its displays or admire the fountain that cascaded over the living roof.

A tiny village school, its playground filled with all the pupils (i.e. about twelve hyperactive primary children) signaled the top of the village.  The Pennine Way sign was there, tucked in the corner of a yard.

We dutifully took a photograph of the finger sign.

"I thought it'd be a bit more impressive," I said, finally.  "I thought there might be an arch or something."  That was just a footpath sign.  If it wasn't there you wouldn't even know you were on the Pennine Way.  I may write to the Peak District National Park and urge them to consider some sort of elaborate entrance that would give it a real sense of destination.

The Old Nags Head, "the official start of the Pennine Way", was closed, so we turned round and walked back down through the village.  I was all for calling in at that pub, but DG quite reasonably pointed out that there were far more pubs in Sheffield, at the other end of the line.  So we went back to the station.

Up on the platform, with ten minutes until the train arrived, I said to DG, "I think you need to end your mysterious presence on the internet.  I think you need to show who you are.  Finally come out the shadows to receive the accolades you deserve."

He considered this for a moment, then said, "Perhaps you're right."

"Of course I'm right," I replied.  "I always am."  I lined up the camera and took a portrait of him to put on this blog and to finally reveal his secret identity to the world.

But that picture didn't come out.  So here's a picture of his foot instead.

Bugger.

Some Hope. Not much Glory.

Part two of a two part trip: for part one, click here.

Pedants will observe that Wrexham is not on the Merseyrail map. Well, not physically, anyway: it's mentioned in a box at the bottom. Furthermore, a quick scan down the page will reveal that this post is all about stations on the Borderlands Line which are also not on the Merseyrail map. These pedants will therefore be frothing at their mouths, demanding a justification for this heinous act.

My justification actually comes in four parts:

1) Doing only part of the Borderlands Line never felt right. Since it's such a simple, single route, with trains shuttling back and forth, it feels like a self-contained route, so stopping at Shotton and saying "well, that's that done" seemed like I was short changing it.

2) One day, someday, maybe, it will be part of the Merseyrail family as an extension to the Wirral Line. Possibly.

3) In the comments to this piece, an "Anonymous" commenter suggested I should do every place that's mentioned on the Merseyrail map - in other words, include the little arrows on the edge as well. I kind of like that idea, though of course, it's a tentative thing. It's easy for me to "do" North Wales. Glasgow, less so. I'm mulling it over.

4) It's my blog and if you don't like it, tough.

Sorry for the truly dreadful map. You should see the whole thing: it's an abomination.

With Wrexham under our belts, Roy, Robert and I headed out of town on the Arriva train to Gwersyllt, a station on its way out of the borough. We were - after much agonies - using a North Wales Rover ticket. To be honest, I didn't have any agony buying it at all, but poor Roy spent forty minutes at Waterloo station trying to convince the staff there that it existed, and that he could buy it from them. They finally concluded that they couldn't sell him any Rover tickets, and sent him away with a flea in his ear.

Roy next went to Lime Street Mainline, who'd also never heard of it. They at least called Chester to enquire about it, but they hadn't heard of it either, so in the end Roy just jumped on a train to Bidston to meet Robert and me. Surely the staff at Bidston could sell it to us? Erm, no. Apparently not.

What to do? The North Wales Rover covered two zones, Flintshire and Wrexham, giving us unlimited train journeys and even bus trips if we got tired. But no-one seemed to want to sell it to us. Robert came up with a plan: accost the conductor on the train and see if we could buy it off him.

"Can we have three North Wales Rover tickets please?"

"Yup." A couple of taps on his touchscreen, and three paper tickets slid out into our palms. Chalk one up to Arriva Trains Wales.

We got off at Gwersyllt which, like the rest of the line, is unstaffed and undistinguished. The station's over the road from a Lidl, and will never win any prizes for beauty or elegance. As we got off, a long-lost member of the Goldie Looking Chain decided to get off too, with his best swagger in his trackies.

Gwersyllt does at least have a big prominent sign. This would be an increasingly rare sight as the day went on.

From there it was a wander down a dual carriageway to get to our next stop. Summer was having one last gasp for air; it was officially the first day of autumn, but it was the closest thing to August we'd had in weeks. There were still berries on the trees and flowers in the gardens, and a gang of road workers were cutting the grass in the central reservation, filling the air with that just mown scent.

(Incidentally, a quick tip for Wrexham CBC: you could save a bomb on your road maintenance costs if you sent out just a couple of men to mow the verge, instead of the seven we saw. And if you gave them decent lawnmowers, instead of strimmers).

The road narrowed to a bridge and we crossed over into Flintshire or, as it is in Welsh, Sir y Fflint. We were headed for Cefn-y-bedd, which lead to a discussion amongst us three Englishmen as to (a) how you pronounced it and (b) what it means. Since our debate was getting us nowhere, I gave in and called the Bf, who grew up in North Wales and so knew this kind of thing. According to his linguistic prowess, Cefn-y-bedd translates as "Rear The Grave". And he pretends he's a Scouser.

Rear The Grave turned out to be a pretty little village, with a large pub about five minutes walk from the station. Roy - whose drinking habits make me look like a teetotal nun - advocated we go there for another pint, but as there was only fifteen minutes till the next train, we settled into the shelter on the platform instead.

Caergwrle used to be called Caergwrle Castle & Wells, until sanity prevailed sometime in the mid Seventies. The pretty little shelter on the platform still had this name painted over a very deep blue that was certainly not Arriva Trains colours: I predict a truck with a couple of gallons of emulsion is on its way even as we speak.

The station also provided another mystery: what is "Chester on Tour"?

These stickers had been applied to a few of the stations along the way - I'm guessing it's something to do with the football team, but I'd be happy to be proved otherwise.

Sign snapped, we continued to Hope, along a route that was far more scenic than our previous one. The trees were thick and overhanging here, and the traffic was light. The houses were also a charming mix of nineteenth century and older cottages, threaded along green streets. The road took us over a pretty weir, and we all stopped to admire it.

It was lovely, but I wondered how long I'd be able to live here before I cracked and went insane with a pitchfork? I see the countryside as something to be viewed from a distance, on a day trip. Once you start getting immersed in it, and are living in it, you realise the reason that it's all so pretty is there's nothing there. I'd be driven mad if I had to get in a car every time I wanted to buy a magazine or something non-essential. And what do you do when your home is attacked by armed thugs, who break in and hold you hostage? You can't call for help, because no-one will hear you. (Of course, in the city, they'll hear your cries and ignore them because it's none of their business, but that's not the point). I don't want my last few moments to be spent trussed up on a folding chair while thieves ransack my home willy-nilly, free to romp as long as they like because there's not even a street light outside.

This discussion took us into Hope, which, besides having a lovely name, also does well as a village. Tiny chip shop, tiny dressmaker, tiny garage, a church and two pubs - compared to Cefn-y-Bedd, this was a throbbing metropolis. We had loads of time before our train so we picked the Red Lion at random and went in.

I'd now like to apologise to the landlady of the Red Lion. The three of us relentlessly leered, lusted after and perved at your barman son, who was incredibly fit and wearing shorts. We made a number of comments that would have made Samantha from Sex and the City blush, mostly involving him being stripped naked and spreadeagled over a bar stool. It was a thoroughly shameful display of objectification and we should have been more discreet and polite.

On the other hand, it cost £9.50 for a pint of John Smiths, two pints of Stella and a packet of Quavers, so I think we can safely say you've had adequate compensation.

Once we'd drunk our drinks, and adjusted our underwear, we headed for the station. Sort of. What's going on, Hope? Why don't you want to put up signs for your train station? Are you ashamed of it?

I lead the way, brandishing an Ordnance Survey map and mentally tying my compass to it. Roy and Robert were less convinced as we headed down into a cul-de-sac, with plain semi-detatched houses on either side. In fact, they began to openly pour scorn on my directions. I suspect they secretly hoped I was wrong, so we could miss our train and go back to the pub for another session of Fantasy Barman, but I knew I was right. I just knew it. There wasn't a doubt in my mind. Ok, maybe a little one.

That's why I look a bit smug in that photo.

To be fair, the station was really hidden away: if you didn't know it was there, you would never find it. And as I've said, Hope was a pretty large village - there are loads of potential passengers there.

Back on the train, and thankfully the ticket inspector wasn't the same one who'd sold us ours that morning. It was starting to get embarrassing, running into him over and over.

Off at the delightfully named and consonant heavy Pen-y-ffordd station. It looked a bit prettier than some of the other Borderlands stations, and we found out why: it's been adopted.

Kudos to you, Richard Spray, and your horticultural efforts.

The route from Pen-y-ffordd to our next stop, Buckley, was colossally dull. We were all starting to flag a bit by this point, with the beers and the walking taking their tolls on us. My foot, which is well on its way to being fully healed, was also starting to make its presence felt in my trainer, throbbing slightly. It wasn't in the mood to trudge alongside a bypass, on soft grass because there was no pavement, with nothing to look at. Not a thing. There was the occasional horse in a field, but that was it. Beyond that it was just one long slog. The weather was turning on us, too, and the skies were greying over.

We talked on the way about the Borderlands Line, and its future. Before we travelled on it, we'd all been quite gung-ho. Bring it into Merseyrail! Get it on the map! Having almost completed it, we found ourselves asking - why? Because what struck us was how different the Borderlands Line was to Merseyrail. Unstaffed, deserted stations in tiny villages. Barrow crossings. No kind of customer services. How different it was to the very urban stations we were used to.

Getting Merseyrail to Wrexham - yes, absolutely, I can see that is a valid target. Especially as Wrexham General becomes more and more important. But when they electrified all the way to Chester, it meant they also got the urban sprawl of the Wirral in on the act too, places like Bromborough and Spital, dense urban environments. How many people would use a frequent service in Cefn-y-bedd? How many passengers would get on at Hope for the hour long journey to Liverpool?

The more we travelled on it, the more it seemed like the Borderlands Line would be a bad fit with Merseyrail. I can absolutely get on board with an extension to Woodchurch; possibly even as far as Neston or Shotton. But beyond there, it's a lot of rural halts that would just get in the way. It seems less like a business plan, and more like someone colouring in the lines on the map.

As for Buckley station - well, it's a liar. It's nowhere near Buckley, which is another minus point for electrification. It should be called Little Mountain, because that's where it is, and besides, that's a much better name.

The train was late at Buckley, by twenty minutes. Robert was able to bring up the National Rail update on his phone while we huddled in the shelter from the newly arrived rain. We were accompanied in the shelter by two teenagers, who were both listening to their iPods way too loudly, causing a competing mash-up of discordant sounds. I couldn't work out what they were listening to: from this distance it sounded like half a dozen keyboards being thrown into a grinder. I'm getting old. What's wrong with a bit of Blur, eh, kids?

They gave us some very odd looks as we took our photos too. They didn't say anything though. If they were in Merseyside they'd have been all over us, demanding to know what we were up to, but in rural Wales they've been brought up better.

Only one station remained to be tarted on the Borderlands Line, and that was Hawarden. We'd debated whether to walk from Hawarden to Shotton to finish with, but decided that it'd be better to stay there and get a pint and a pub meal. We'd been walking for hours, and the soulless trip to Buckley had taken out our last bit of enthusiasm.

This is not to denigrate Hawarden station in any way. It was lovely. Lots of planters, freshly painted, murals in the shelters - all very nice. It even had a footbridge over the tracks, instead of making you cross the line itself. Once again, we have someone to thank: Mr John Wannop.

Since it was the last station of the day, we went for a group shot, which unfortunately blocks out the English translation for us foreign types:

But here's me and the translation, just for completion's sake:

Incidentally, how do you pronounce Hawarden? All three of us pronounced it "Hard-on", leading to many base jokes and schoolboy sniggers. But the announcer at Wrexham pronounced the middle syllable - "Ha-warden" - and quite spoiling our fun. That doesn't sound even slightly smutty. Maybe it's part of a concerted effort by the locals to remove the innuendo, like when everyone started pronouncing "Uranus" differently.

You've probably heard of Hawarden; it's quite a notable town in North Wales, and it's worth visiting. It's famous for being the home of Michael Owen, who bought up an entire close for his family after he hit the big time. He himself lives in a manor outside the village. We considered nipping in for a hello, but there wasn't really time. Plus we thought we'd get shot.

Instead we hit the pub for that pint and meal. You'd have to be on a footballer's wages round here to afford the beer: £9.10 for a pint of John Smiths and two Stellas? The Red Lion was forty pence more, and that included a pack of Quavers. Plus, it turned out that they didn't serve food until 5:30, despite there being a sandwich board outside and menus on the table. And if that wasn't bad enough, there were no fit barmen, only two young girls in low-cut tops. Who wants to see that? (Oh you do, do you?). We got up and left. Hang your head in shame, Fox & Grapes.

There were other pubs, but to be honest, we were all exhausted, and running out of money (there are no cash machines in Hawarden! What do they do, barter?). Stuff it we thought: we'll go home.

We'd earned it, after all. Six hours of trekking through North Wales, following the Borderlands over the border and back. It was finally time to say goodbye to this strange little anachronistic line, this commuter route that isn't, this country train that goes to the city. I've crossed it off the map now, and I can feel a sense of completion.