Matron!

I stood on the platform.  Staring.

I know advertising execs operate on a different plain to us mere mortals, one where they think "Chocolate = a gorilla playing Phil Collins!" and "Outrageously unaffordable loans = puppets of old people!", but really.  Sign up for our new smartcard - as used by zombies!  I can only assume someone in the office said the words "dead handy" and they followed a train of thought.  A train that probably should have been derailed.

I was back in Huddersfield to complete some unfinished business.  Regular readers (hello you!) might recall an incident a couple of months ago where I had a small... moment.  I abandoned a planned trip to the Penistone Line and instead spent the day in bed feeling low and miserable.  The line remained unfinished.

So even though I was only in Huddersfield a couple of weeks ago, I'd returned to the station to polish it off.  I wasn't going to be defeated, dammit.

Besides, it's the Penistone Line: a gift to smut lovers like me.  It's got the word Penis in it.  I was barely on the train before I started yuk-yukking like Finbar Saunders.

We zoomed through white hillsides, over the county border into South Yorkshire, and stopped at Penistone.  It was a busy station, with a horde of passengers ready for their trip into Barnsley or Sheffield.  Two workmen were shoveling the snow off the platform, stacking it up at the end while their supervisor took pictures with his phone.  I assume it was for some sort of evaluation purposes, and he wasn't just admiring the fragile beauty of the wintry scene.

I do know it's pronounced Pennystun, by the way.  It's a shame.  I feel they should embrace the smuttiness of their name.  IT'S PENIS-TOWN.  Sell t-shirts and postcards and key rings.  This is Britain, home of the Carry On films: go with the fact that everyone is going to snicker when they see it written down.

Penistone used to be a junction, with a further two platforms the other side of the now closed station building.  The second line headed off to Manchester through a tunnel under the Pennines on famous Woodhead Line.  This was the first line in the country to be electrified using overhead lines, but, in a typically British fudge, the system used wasn't adopted for the rest of the country.  The Woodhead Line remained as a strange blip until British Rail decided in the early Eighties that people really wouldn't want a fast electric train route between Manchester and Sheffield and closed the whole thing.  It's part of the Trans-Pennine Trail now, though there are periodic calls for it to be rebuilt.

I'd be visiting the other end of the Woodhead Tunnels at Hadfield later on, so I headed down the slippery road outside the station into town, pausing at the bottom for a smirky sign picture.

I had an hour until the next train south so I decided to go on a walk round the town centre in search of filth.  I'd decided that Penistone must be filled with all sorts of smut and I wanted to laugh and point at every double entendre I could find, because basically I'm a twelve year old boy.

Initial signs weren't good.  Penistone seemed like a perfectly reasonable small market town.  There were chippies and dog grooming parlours (dog groomers seem to be the new tanning salon; every town has one) and a home interiors store.  They had a sign in the window advertising Bill Beaumont Textiles, and I had a quiet giggle to myself at the thought of the former rugby player squatting over a knitting machine.  I felt quite foolish when I got home and found that, yes, it is that Bill Beaumont; the former Question of Sport team captain has a family history in the world of soft furnishings.  Live and learn.

 
I struggled to get a decent eyebrow raise out of the Penistone Paramount, not least because it's lovely to see a small local cinema still functioning in the era of multiplexes and Netflix.  They were showing The Theory of Everything and the latest Hobbit, two films I'd only see at gunpoint, but good on them anyway.

Past the parish church, into the main street.  There was a pub called The Spread Eagle, which is sort of rude, but it looked far too classy to indulge in that sort of undignified filth.  A small cafe with gingham curtains had windows obscured by steam, while a man sat in Greggs and ate a sausage roll with calm deliberation, each mouthful carefully considered.

My attention was grabbed by the Market Hall.  Looking like an old barn, it was attractive and impressive, but I couldn't help noticing there were hardly any stalls in it, and even fewer patrons.  A glance further down the street revealed the reason: the car park of an enormous Tesco.  It was clear the timber-framed Market Hall had been built as a sweetener for the town, a deal with the devil to allow the construction of the huge superstore.  The town council had agreed, and now it found that no-one actually wanted to use the Market any more because the Tesco over the way was cheaper and you could buy a DVD and drop off your dry cleaning while you was there.

Back on the High Street a woman cowered when she saw my camera - "I don't want to be in your photos!".  I continued past a beauty salon that offered "HD Brows" - real life is High Definition; you can't do anything to your eyebrows to change that - then turned into the residential Victoria Street.  The pavements were slick with ice, so I walked slightly bow legged, each step like the start of an episode of Casualty.  When the way ahead curved down a hill I gave up and walked in the road.

I was starting to feel guilty for laughing at Penistone.  It seemed like a perfectly nice little town.  I mean, I wouldn't want to live in a town with that name.  I imagined phoning up a gas company or a credit card and giving my address.

"Town?"

"Pennystun."

"Can you spell that for me?" they'd say, and you'd sigh and go through it.  After the fifth letter you'd hear a little snort down the phone, or they'd get annoyed with you for wasting their time, and you'd wonder why you hadn't just bought that house in Denby Dale instead.

After twenty minutes I was back at the entrance to the station again.  It was too cold for me to just sit on the platform so I went back into town, taking a different route.  I paused at a noticeboard which informed me that the local horticultural society has a website at http://growpenistone.org.uk/, a website that is probably blocked by a lot of workplaces.

Yeah, ok, I didn't feel that guilty about laughing.

Walking up the hill I got a bit of a shock when a skinhead emerged from a side passage.  He didn't come at me with a Stanley knife, nothing like that; it was just that he was 100% skinhead: bald, checked shirt with braces under a bomber jacket, jeans that were turned up just above his boots.  He was straight out of the 1970s, or rather, straight out of my family album: much to the amusement of my brother and I my mum used to be a skinhead.  Like everything that happened to your parents before you was born, this has provided hours of laughter for us.

(In the interests of tonsorial equality, I will point out that my dad spent much of the seventies with a white man afro, my brother once dyed his hair the colour of marmalade by mistake, and this very blog is an ongoing catalogue of my battles with a whole series of hairstyles that don't suit me in the slightest.)

At the top of the hill, eureka!  A smutty sign!

COCKPIT.  As in COCK.  As in PENIS.  ROFL.

I'd have laughed louder except there was a funeral just arriving at the church over the way.

I figured that was as good as it would get for Kenneth Williams-esque blinders so I headed back to the station.  The workmen were still there, now shoveling the snow on the other platform, chatting about their girlfriends all the while.  To hide from the cold, I went into the waiting room, but it smelt like my rabbit's cage when it needed mucking out so instead I sat on the platform and waited for my next train.

I hoped the train would be a nice smooth modern one, not a rickety Pacer.  There's nothing worse than climbing on board for a ride then bouncing around so much you end up with a sore backside.

OOER!  FNAR!  YUK-YUK!

Divorce Day

Apparently the 5th of January is "Divorce Day"; the first working Monday after the New Year when people rush to the lawyers to get rid of the spouse who's been driving them mad all through the holidays.  I'm normally cynical of these supposed "event dates" (BLACK FRIDAY ISN'T A REAL THING IN THIS COUNTRY) but I got a bit of experience of this back when I worked for the Council.  We'd get an awful lot of people phoning up to let us know that they were now single - "and the date your circumstances changed?"

"Boxing Day."

Awkward pause.

The BF and I decided to take no risks.  Our relationship wasn't under any strain - it helped that I spent the entire Christmas period at my mum's - but best not to tempt fate, eh?  One tug and those gossamer thin threads holding everything together fall away.  We decided to spend the day apart.  He'd drive us to Huddersfield, then he'd go and see his friend Peter and I'd get to collect a couple of stations.  Our actual time together would be minimised and we wouldn't have to find a solicitor.

The advantage of this idea was that I'd get to start my journey in the wonderful surroundings of Huddersfield station.  It's a massive Classical temple of a building, with an attractive square laid out in front and pubs either side.  The station building is completely out of proportion for the town around it - and if I'm honest, the stuff behind the portico isn't anywhere near as impressive - but it's always a joy to pass through that grand entrance.

My actual schedule consisted of only two stations - Slaithwaite and Marsden, mill towns tucked in amongst the Pennines.  They were the only two remaining halts I hadn't visited on the Manchester-Huddersfield line, so it would be a nice way to close the line off and would give me a bit of a walk to get rid of those holiday pounds.

The platforms at Slaithwaite are splayed either side of a road bridge, the local Passenger Transport Executive's best way to get round a bad lot.  There was a Slaithwaite station here for decades, but it was closed in 1968 and the site was largely built on.  Only fourteen years later, there was enough passenger need for the station to be reopened, so the new platforms had to be wedged in where they could - one on the site of the old station, one on the site of the goods yard.  In other words, more money was probably spent rebuilding the station than if they'd just left the damn thing open for those fourteen years.

Now I'm all for community engagement with local transport, but what the eggy fig is going on with this plant holder?  "Moo Poo"?  "Steel Dreams", under a picture of a smug dolphin?  I stood staring at it for far too long, trying to work out its true meaning.  I'm guessing it's something to do with "the environment", but I'm open to any explanations.

The road plunged steeply down from the station to the centre of the village, a drop I had to lean against to try and stay straight.  Poking through the trees was the hefty bulk of the old mill building, its yellow lettering still advertising Globe Worsted Co Limited, but surrounded by empty windows.  I could see right through it to the hills on the other side.  A vast, unused hulk in the very centre of Slaithwaite.

The town seemed busy, a mix of people working and looking furious and people still on holiday looking smug.  A father corralled two lively children across the road with a facial expression that said "when do they go back to school?".  I turned onto a side road, past the Dri-n-Wash Washeteria with its slightly wonky "T", and onto a spit of land between the Huddersfield Narrow Canal and the River Colne.  The two bodies of water run parallel through the valley, feeding and challenging one another, the wild river counterpointed by the stillness of the canal.

There was another mill along here, converted into an indoor playground for children and an ice cream shop and furniture makers, and then Slaithwaite just seemed to stop, and I was in the countryside.  The yellow brick of the mill was suddenly replaced by low walls, furred with moss, and the towpath became a slick of mud and puddles.

I had a couple of other walkers accompanying me, two stout ginger women who marched through the mud in well-used wellies.  They radiated bluster and self-reliance, making me afraid to overtake them.  There wasn't much room on the towpath, and they looked like the kind of ladies who would attack a potential sexual predator with a swift knee to the kidneys and then a forceful shove into the canal.  I made as much noise as possible as I approached and swung past with an apologetic smile, before putting on a decent lick of speed to take me away from them before they karate chopped my shoulder and rendered me unconscious.

January sludge splattered against the backs of my jeans.  It really is the most miserable of months, isn't it?  At least February - which shares a lot of the same characteristics - is only 28 days long.  January just clings on, a hangover we feel the need to repeat every year, where everything is grey and dead and damp.  Winter, but not the good kind, the kind with snow you watch fall from inside country pubs.  January is drizzle and low sun in the afternoon and dark clouds that threaten but never come through.

The sleeping trees rolled back to reveal undulating hills.  Above me, threadbare grassy slopes rose to ash coloured skies.  To my left, the Colne gurgled and churned, heavy with the last few days' rain, occasionally supplemented by overflow from the canal.

I passed lock after lock after lock.  No wonder there weren't any boats in sight; it must be incredibly tedious working your way up and over the Pennines.  Rise up into one lock and you can see the next in the distance.  This is before you've reached the Standedge Tunnel, just beyond Marsden, a 16,000 foot long passage that's so dark and narrow you can only pass through it with a specially booked guide.  No wonder railways were embraced so heartily.

There hadn't been much sign of habitation around.  The occasional farm house, a barn or two.  The distant noise of traffic coming from somewhere in the distance.  A TransPennine Express train would occasionally burn through on its way to Piccadilly, the only reminder that there was a railway somewhere in amongst the folds of the landscape.  It was a surprise to come across the hulk of yet another mill, this one in the worst condition yet.  Windows were smashed, with those on the lower levels bricked up altogether.  Outbuildings had been knocked down.  Razor wire had been erected over the top of the wall to the canal, though I doubt that's where the vandals were coming from.  I fantasised about buying the mill and turning it into a vast home for myself.  Smashing through the floors to make colossal, triple height living rooms, an eyrie in the tower, a garden running down to the river.  Then I thought of how isolated I'd be and how it would be the perfect venue for a slasher movie and I huddled swiftly on.

The Sparth Reservoir opened up the landscape for a bit, with a little expanse of water to fill the canal, and then the woods returned.  There were houses too, backing onto the canal with rough fences and brambles, as I moved into the edge of Marsden.  They had big oil tanks propped up on bricks; we were out of the way of gas central heating here.  The crazy, up and down nature of the terrain sent streets shooting into the air above me while access roads seemed to have suffered terrible landslips.  Horses had come through here and churned up the towpath into a kind of thick porridge.

I re-emerged onto tarmac at a bridge over the canal.  Across the way, a couple of pensioners were blithely stood in the road, catching up without regard for the lack of pavement or the cars trying to get by.  I walked by a couple of small industrial units, including a musical instrument maker who advertised themselves as "the first FSC certified wind instrument manufacturer in the world".  Is that really a problem that needs dealing with?  Are entire swathes of rainforest being cut down for oboes?  Are clarinets responsible for global warming?  It seemed an overreaction to me, but that's probably because I'm utterly selfish and hate the Earth.

I reached the centre of Marsden and was immediately filled with a powerful, overwhelming emotion.  Disappointment.

I must say this wasn't Marsden's fault.  Marsden is a perfectly charming Yorkshire village.  It's set in amongst beautiful hills, it has lovely buildings, there's a real sense of community.  No, my disappointment was down to the fact that I'd been here before and I hadn't realised.  It was back in July 2012, when I'd finished off a day visiting the stations on the Penistone Line with a meal with the BF and Peter.  We'd driven out of Huddersfield and ended up at a charming little pub/restaurant overlooking the river, where we'd had a lovely meal.  It was only slightly spoiled by the fact that I had a panic attack near the end, and I had to go and stand by the river and breathe in deep lungfuls of air to recover.

Well, there was the pub/restaurant.  There was the river.  There was the little bridge I'd stood on for ten minutes trying to get my breath.  It was all as pretty as I remembered it, but the point was, I'd already seen it.

This isn't a blog about grand discoveries and epic journeys: it's about little bits of England.  But it's about finding those bits of England with new eyes each time, so coming across somewhere I should, by all the signs, have adored, only to realise it was old hat, left me with a deflated feeling.

I wandered up the scenic high street.  Marsden seemed to be a thriving place, with plenty of small tea rooms and bric a brac shops to distract you and any passing tourists.  There wasn't much to it - one street leading up to a main road through the valley - but what was there was interesting.  One downside: the public toilet was locked up, and I was dying for a pee.  I had to find somewhere to go.

What?  I needed the loo and it would have been rude to just use a pub toilet without buying anything.  Besides, I knew for a fact that the Riverhead Brewery Tap was a good pub so I may as well take advantage of it.  I settled down in the corner with a pint of Yorkshire Blonde (£2.60, just to make all you London types jealous) and listened to the chatter of the regulars and the quiet parade of music in the background.  After Benny and the Jets then Billy Don't Be A Hero then Brown Eyed Girl I realised that someone was tracking alphabetically through their AOR playlist on their phone, and I put my headphones in before By The Time I Get To Phoenix turned up.  That sort of ordered list trips directly into my OCD, and I'd have spent the rest of the day sat there trying to guess what the next song would be.

I finished my pint and headed out of the pub, past the Millennium Project model of the village outside, and over the river to the old market place.  I knew from my last visit that there was a set of stocks over there, now slightly incongruously in the grounds of a retirement home.  The plaque underneath alleged that they were medieval, but I wasn't convinced.  They seemed in far too good a condition to be six hundred years old, and Marsden wasn't a real community of note until the 19th century.  I can't seem to find anything on the web to back up the claim, either.

Still, it's a nice little feature for the tourists, if you go with the image of stocks as a hilarious way to punish miscreants by pelting them with rotten fruit.  I read an article once that said it was a horrible punishment, and that people often took advantage of your prone state to do all sorts to you - up to and including raping your unable to move rear end.  Think of that next time you watch a Robin Hood film.

The station's high above the village, so I trudged up the hill to reach it, passing a pub called the Railway en route.  Idly, I thought: I wonder how many pubs there are called the Railway?  I wonder if anyone's visited all of them?  Hey, I'll need something to occupy myself when I've visited all these stations.  It's either that or lie in bed crying.

Marsden has a curious layout - three platforms (it used to be four) and each one accessed separately by its own entrance.  I'd wandered up to platform 3, only to find I needed number 1 and I had to turn round and go back the way I came.  As I crossed the road bridge the voice of a demon burst into the silent air and chilled my blood.  Oh, wait: it wasn't the voice of a demon, it was one of those "be careful on the platform" warnings which, for some reason, Northern have read out by small children.  It's like having a Midwich Cuckoo whisper in your ear, and is quite terrifying; the lispy voice of a young girl turns an innocuous safety announcement into a threat (be careful near the platform edge, because I'M HIDING NEARBY).  I don't know whose idea this was but they need to be shot.  Or left on a country platform in the dark listening to the announcements over and over.

I boarded the train back into Huddersfield, and had another pint in the pub at the station there while I waited for the BF to finish with his friend.  He picked me up outside the station and we headed home.  I'm happy to report that Divorce Day didn't result in the irreparable destruction of our relationship, but hey: there's always next year.

Pie Eater

I'm giving you a million points for your stylish tickets, West Yorkshire Metro.  Then I'm deducting them all for your overcomplicated pricing system.

On Merseyside, it's simple.  If you want to hop on and off public transport, get a Saveaway.  £4.70 and you can go anywhere.  If you're just going by train, well, there's the Day Saver, but that's only 10p cheaper so you may as well get the bus and ferry options in there as well.

Head to West Yorkshire though and you get a whole bunch of different options.  DayRover, MetroDay, train only, bus only, bus and train, bus and train and pack horse,  bus and train and pack horse and the back of a man named Stuart.  On top of that, it's all much more expensive.  The Saveaway equivalent is £7.10, fifty percent more expensive than its Scouse brother.  (I'm not even going to start to try and comprehend Manchester's ticketing system.  There are scientists at CERN who have that on their to-do list after they've uncovered the secrets of the multiverse).

Grumbling slightly, I forked over £6.20 (SIX POUNDS TWENTY PENCE) so that I'd have the run of West Yorkshire's railways.  I was going for a very specific strip: the section of the Penistone* Line from Huddersfield to Denby Dale.  This is the entire length within the county border, so at least I'd get some value out of my £6.20.  SIX POUNDS TWENTY PENCE.

Lockwood, my first stop, was still in town; in fact, this is where The BF's best mate actually lives.  The station bears the scars of its downgrade in importance.  The Penistone* Line used to be double tracked all the way, but now it's just one set of rails.  It makes the stations lop-sided, often with sad abandoned platforms across the way, covered in bushes and moss.

At Lockwood, a subway under the tracks has been blocked off forlornly.  Looking at it, I'm guessing that was a nice, open gateway, until someone realised that rubbish and leaves could get through the bars.  Instead of tidying up the debris, or modifying the gates so it didn't happen, they just clamped a big heft of steel across the front and left it.  Sometimes this country can be soul crushingly ugly.

I headed down the hill into town.  Despite the weatherman's worst predictions, it was a warm and pleasant day, dry for once.  I didn't think it was warm enough to take my shirt off, but an extremely well built Asian man I passed disagreed, and bless him and his pectoral muscles for it.  The hill was almost vertical, the type where you realise your feet are at an acute angle to your body, as it plunged down into the centre of Lockwood.  Down there, the River Holme was bridged amongst small shops and restaurants.  A shop named How Bazaar won the prize for Place I'd Shop At Just Because Of The Name; a pun always wins me over.  It wasn't all gentrified though.  A large double fronted store sold workmen's equipment, a dummy in the window modelling a high-vis overall next to a display of helmets in a variety of fetching colours.

I crossed the bridge and started making my way up the hill on the other side.  I realised that this was a dreadful prediction of things to come.  As I conquered the Northern Rail map I was going to be spending an awful lot of time just staggering up and down hills.  I might need to invest in some kind of ankle support system.

I was fascinated by the way builders had dealt with this geographical nightmare.  Rather than adapting to the contours of the hill, they'd just ignored it, and had built up to a flat surface for the house's foundations.  They just dismiss Mother Nature out of hand.  It means that the streets have a weird, slightly terrifying air of being close to collapse the whole time.  A row of houses looks perfectly normal until you come to the driveway in between, and you can see that it plunges down a sixty degree slope to a parking spot about four miles away.  There are gouges in the tarmac where generation after generation of exhausts have clonked their way over the top, trying to find a piece of flat ground.

In the distance, like a strange mythological tower, is the Lockwood viaduct.  It rises up out of the trees and just begs for the Hogwarts Express to ride over the top.  We were both taking roundabout routes to the next station, just on opposite sides of the river.

I passed pretty cottages, grouped around tiny front lawns, and then more modern suburban homes with proper drives and garages.  A family were in the process of moving house, and had paused to grip mugs of steaming tea and say goodbyes to neighbours over the fence.  The youngest child chased me making gun noises and aiming two fingers.

Berry Brow was a bit more downmarket, a bit less special, but still had that commanding view over the valley.  Its houses were workmen's cottages, its pubs were stout and square, with plastic lawn chairs outside for the smokers.  Just before the station high rise flats emerged above the treetops; the view from the top floor must be like being God.

There's a layby for the station, which was being used by a taxi driver as I passed, playing with his PSP between calls.  I took the station sign pic quickly.  I'm not keen on the Metro logo - that M is just too plain for me.  It's utilitarian rather than understated.

Down below, there's a platform and a bus shelter and, pleasingly, an ironwork noticeboard.  The Penistone* Line Partnership are extremely dedicated, and throughout my trip I'd see the fruits of their work - a signpost here, an ad for music trains there, some guided walk brochures.

I took up residence in the shelter and continued listening to my audiobook, Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman.  Astute readers will have noticed I am not, in fact, female, but it doesn't matter: the book is frequently hilarious, often obscene, and thoroughly thought provoking.  It got me riled up in feminist fury, even though, as a man, I could have just spent my time being thankful that I never had to get to grips with Tampax.  When a teenage girl arrived on the platform I wanted to grab hold of her and demand that she not give in to societal pressure to wax her vagina.  I didn't of course, because I'm not mental.  Well, I am mental, but I'm sane enough to know what things will get me arrested for sexual harassment, no matter how much you shout "I was trying to save her from the patriarchy!"

Fortunately a train arrived and saved me from all this, taking me to Honley.  Again, the Penistone* Line Partnership had been at work, decorating the fence with textiles from local schoolchildren.  (They were framed of course - they hadn't just scattered a load of old hankies about).

Like Lockwood, there was a closed off subway.  While that was ugly and basic, the gate here was red-painted and pretty.  It was the difference between town and country; the assumption that the people in the city didn't deserve nice things.

Having said that, Honley doesn't have a proper station sign, but Lockwood does, so I think Lockwood wins.

Instead of going up and over the hills this time, I walked down into the valley, following the course of the river.  Civilisation had clustered into the narrow gap.  Houses and factories wedged themselves into the space beneath the hills and the shore, with a spindly road threading between them.

Further along, I was reminded how this pass would have been exploited.  There was a toll bar, listing the charges for the turnpike road through this area.  Because really, where else would you go?  You had to pay the charge whether you wanted to or not.

The prices were broken down according to what transport you were using, how it was powered, and whether you had livestock with you or not; looking at the complicated series of charges, I began to wonder if this was where West Yorkshire Metro got the idea for their pricing structure.

My next station was Brockholes, which is Anglo-Saxon for "badger anus".  It was located at the end of a modern housing estate, its access alleyway barely visible between the executive garages.

Inside, that lopsidedness reared its head again.  The working platform at Brockholes is modern and clean; red and silver steelwork, plenty of seats.  Nothing exciting.

Across the way, though, it's 1954.

Brilliantly, frustratingly, whoever bought the old station building has decorated the train-side part of their house with old enamel signs and railwayana.  They've made their home into a time capsule.  And all us boring commuters can do is look across the track and wish we were over there, perhaps smoking a pipe in the General Waiting Room and chewing on Spratt's Ovals (I assume they're some kind of sweet?).

They say the grass isn't always greener on the other side, but in this case, the other side was most definitely a better place to be.  I almost resented my platform for being so rubbish.

Stocksmoor tried its best to make up for Brockholes' deficiencies, giving me a second platform and two tracks.  This is the point where trains are able to pass one another and, sure enough, another train arrived on the opposite platform a moment after mine.

An excitable grandmother kissed her grandson goodbye and scampered abroad while a dozen hard hatted workmen disembarked.  They all headed up to the top of the ramp before huddling for some kind of briefing.  I was too embarrassed to get any closer to the sign, in case these intimidating heaps of masculinity noticed me and took the mick.

There are quicker ways from Stocksmoor to Shepley, routes that are more direct.  I had to make a detour to visit this place though:

How could I not?  It sounds utterly epic.  It's impossible to say THUNDERBRIDGE without doing a deep-throated voice like a man off a film trailer.

It wasn't epic of course: it was just another pretty Yorkshire village.

What did surprise me was how quickly it became wild.  Stepping out of the village was like crossing into a wilderness: trees sprung up around me, high cliffs rose into the sky.  There was no traffic, no sound at all, except for the gentle soft rustle of the trees and the bark of random birdsong.

It was entrancing and not a little bit intimidating.  I was a single human amongst a threatening, dark nature.  We think we've tamed the planet, cut it back, bent it to our will, but we're nothing next to the trees and the plants.  I thought back to those abandoned platforms, already choked with weeds, the concrete cracking as new trees burst through them.  Another fifty years and they'll be gone completely. Forests frighten us, the dark mesh of trees that lean in to hide the sun.  They huddle and scare.

I was glad to step out of the darkness and onto a much busier road, where the council kept the branches cut back and neat grass verges had been carved into the sides.  No-one else was walking this way.  There were plenty of buses though, one, two, three, choking out thick diesel fumes in my face, followed quickly by heavy trucks.  A chain of motorcyclists were playing out Easy Rider fantasies in our green and pleasant land: it was hard to believe they'd be listening to Born to Be Wild on their iPods when they passed cute little country pubs.

I hit the suburban crawl.  This part of the country had very definitely been wrangled into shape with polite lawns and 4x4s.  They'd commemorated the Millennium in their own way:

Either that or someone really old was buried on the village green.

A turn in the road and I was heading back down hill again, down towards another bridge.  There were lovely large houses, a lot of them now old people's homes, but some had been upgraded with entryphones and electronic gates.

Shepley's another one with two platforms, though in this case they're splayed awkwardly either side of the road bridge.  The Huddersfield-bound platform featured artwork by local children; but the platform I was going to, the Penistone* bound platform, was just plain and a little bit dull.

There was a slight moment of patented social awkwardness as we pulled into Denby Dale.  I waited by the exit doors with two other passengers, a young girl and an old man.  The button lit up, and the old man pressed it, but nothing happened.  The girl and I exchanged looks.  We didn't want to reach past this clearly frail old man to push the button properly and humiliate him, but, you know, we did want to get off the train.  We stood awkwardly a little longer, before the girl reached up and pressed it.  Still nothing happened.  Now the conductor was looking at us, and we sheepishly concluded the door was broken and hurried off at a different exit.

As I left the station, the guard himself pushed the button and the doors sprang open obediently.  Hmmm.

Denby Dale sounds like it would only be visited by Thomas and Friends.  It's quite difficult to take seriously but, as it turns out, the village had a lot to offer.  There was a proper village centre with banks, shops, cafes.  Even a little second hand bookshop.  I also read - on one of the many information boards - of the town's fame for its pies.  Apparently, Denby Dale likes to commemorate momentous incidents in history by baking an enormous pie - the last one was for the Millennium.  Personally I would rather have a massive amount of pastry over a boring old monolith, SHELLEY.

I love pies: I love really hard, crusty baked pies filled with hot steaming mounds of meat.  I love the gravy soaked under crust too, still slightly stiff but every pore is filled with flavour.  I will not countenance, in any way, the "pot pie", where someone just chucks a lid of pastry over the top of a bowl of filling.  THAT IS NOT A PIE, and I will not stand for it.  I felt the residents of Denby Dale would agree with me - it is, after all, the home of the Pie Hall (the village hall, paid for by a giant pie in the Sixties).

I was just wondering where I could lay my hands on a decent meat and potato pie when the summer decided to give up the ghost.  With a crash, the sky collapsed, and soon the village was being drowned by a downpour of Biblical proportions.  I took solace in the nearest dry place:

The "gum tray" is a nice touch.  Shows you how classy they are.

Denby Dale was the end of the line for me anyway.  It's the Hough Green of West Yorkshire PTE, right on the border with South Yorkshire so passes from both sides are valid here.  If I wanted to carry on down the Penistone* Line I'd have to buy another ticket, and it had taken me long enough to work out which one to buy already.  So I leaned back in a comfortable leather chair, sipped my beer and stared at the hot Northern builder who was eating chips in curry sauce two tables away.

Yum.

I'd hoped the rain would have let up by the time I'd finished my pint, but it was still relentless, so I braved it out and dashed through the village.  I did have an overcoat, buried at the bottom of my rucksack, but I figured that by the time I'd got it out and pulled it on I could have been at the station anyway.  I almost ran through the village - not going the whole hog for the sake of my dignity.  I will say this for Denby Dale, if I ever need to buy a fibreglass sheep for my lawn, I'll know where to go.

I'd gone a different way to the station this time, via the main road, and so I got a better view of the village's largest landmark.  Sadly, it's not a two hundred foot high monument to Champion Pie Eater Desperate Dan, but is instead the Denby Dale Viaduct, which carries the railway over the River Dearne.  Silhouetted against the swirling, tumultuous grey clouds it took on a Satanic edge; it became a pathway for demons to cross the sky.  Quite a change from the bucolic charm of the Lockwood viaduct earlier that day.

I settled into the shelter on the platform alongside other similarly soaked pedestrians.  I didn't mind.  The plus side of the BF being back in Huddersfield was that I could get him to take me and Peter out.  I knew I had an evening of good food and wine ahead of me.  Frankly, I felt I'd earned it.

*There is still absolutely nothing amusing about this name.