Here

"Here domes and statues, spires and cranes cluster"

Hull is crap.  I mean, officially.  You don't come 1st in the national Crap Towns competition unless there's a reason, do you?

Except, it sort of isn't.  It's sort of lovely.  I know.

I wandered around Hull city centre and I found it interesting, charming, pretty.  There were some decent buildings.  Good shops.  Plenty of trees and monuments to stoic Victorians.

In many ways, it reminded me of Liverpool, only on a smaller scale.  Liverpool made its wealth from importing slaves and cotton from Africa and the Americas; Hull got rich off lace and sausages from Germany and Holland, so there's clearly a difference of scale here.  It's on the wrong side of the country to really profit from Transatlantic wealth, but that's ok.  It means its grandeur and memorials are a little more human in scale, a bit more modest.

Liverpool demolished everything in the 18th and 19th centuries so it could build enormous palaces that showed off just how rich they were.  Hull didn't; it just built on what it already had.  The road layout is a bit more medieval and old fashioned, with little pockets of sailor's homes.

It also means that there's docks right in the centre of the city.  Ever expanding cargo demands meant that Liverpool decommissioned its old facilities and built new ones, over and over.  John Lewis now sits on top of Liverpool's first dock; the Pier Head and the Echo Arena are both built on filled in water spaces.  All the actual shipping activity moved north and south of the city to vast purpose built dock estates.

Hull still has tongues of water poking into the centre, like the Princes Dock above.  Ok, so one side of the dock has been given over to a bland corporate behemoth of a shopping centre, floor after floor of chain restaurants and a googleplex cinema, but on the other side it's still all Georgian and dandy.

I took a promenade along the quayside, jaunty, a veritable Beau Brummel for the 21st century with my sweaty Olympic hoodie and a pair of jeans from Sainsbury's.  There were bars and restaurants, with people dining al fresco beside the water.  It's difficult to do that by the Mersey; the wind comes barrelling in and rips the top off your Mr Whippy.  If a seagull doesn't get there first.

Further down the docks had been turned into a marina with smart flats and nauseatingly healthy people jogging round the perimeter in tight pants.  It felt alive and lived in, a twenty four hour place to enjoy; some of the marina developments in Liverpool's south docks are silent for most of the day.  This felt like a part of the city, not a suburb with a pond in the middle.

I followed the ring road behind an excitable Asian family.  They were swinging carrier bags from The Deep, Hull's massive aquarium.  The children were bouncing, full of energy and enthusiasm, and I was once again thankful that I didn't have a gaggle of six year olds to keep amused for two months every summer.  Although children today are spoilt, with day trips and theatre clubs and soccer schools; we spent our holidays sitting on the school gates taking the mickey out of passers by and watching WACaday.  There were no camping expeditions or aquarium visits for us; if we were lucky we might go and see my nan.  Did we complain?  Not at all.  Not being in school was reward enough.  Kids today, etc....

Anyway.  Hull was thoroughly bombed by the Germans, as you'd expect for a major port on the East coast.  All they had to do was nip across the North Sea; it wasn't really very far for the Messerschmits to go.  The post-war rebuilding produced some - shall we say? - interesting experiments, with bits of concrete all over the place and a surfeit of indoor malls.  There's one called the Prospect Shopping Centre, which sounds depressing in itself; something about the word "prospect" just says "Aldi, grey floors, and a general air of despondency".  In some places, however, the rebuild achieved wonders, such as this, the best BHS I've ever seen:

I didn't go inside because (a) it couldn't possibly have matched up to that fantastic exterior, and (b) who goes in BHS now, anyway?  Pensioners on the hunt for cardigans and slacks?  Desperate souls looking for Secret Santa gifts?  Mothers needing somewhere clean to change a nappy?  They used to be up there with Debenhams and Marks and Spencer - I got my first ever pair of boxer shorts from a BHS, underwear fans; a pair of New York Giants ones I could wear to cub camp - but now they just smell of despair and age.  It's like Littlewoods in its dying days, and we all know how that ended.  I think the rot set in the minute they stopped calling themselves the British Home Stores.  There was something reassuring and comforting about the British Home Stores, almost as if the clothes had Government approval: "this overcoat has been stamped with the official seal of Her Majesty's Department of Wet Weather Garments."

I also found one of the famous cream phone boxes, which was a tiny thrill.  It's another reason to love Hull - it's a sort of island.  Its position as the only city in an incredibly rural area makes it isolated and alone, not helped by the wide Humber cutting off any access from the south.  It's given the citizens a flinty, independent spirit.  Only Hull kept its own municipal phone network, refusing to let it get absorbed into the Post Office and, later, BT.  It's still independent from the rest of the country, though it's now been privatised; the council took the money and went on a mad spending spree, revitalising council houses and generally trying to make everything nicer for the citizens.  Hull is also the home to Hull Trains, one of the few "open access" train operators to make any money.  Hull Trains wasn't tied into any particular franchise, and existed solely to run trains between London and the city.  It was so successful it was subsequently flogged to the First Group and rebranded.

Which neatly brings me back to the railway station.  (SEAMLESS!).

It's not actually called Hull Paragon any more, which is a terrible, terrible shame.  Hull Paragon is a thoroughly ridiculous name, and should be preserved wherever possible; the railway companies dropped the name and just call it Hull now.  The locals showed that feisty independent spirit once again, however, and when the station was redeveloped with a new bus terminal they sneakily renamed the whole complex Hull Paragon Interchange.

The bus station's been inserted into the space formerly taken up by train tracks, making it a genuinely useful interchange.  Double deckers whisked in and out as I watched, transferring commuters seamlessly from bus to train and back again.  The travel centre is also optimised for use by both methods of transportation, though when I went in there was a huge queue for the trains and no-one looking for bus info.

Paragon's been thoughtfully and tastefully restored all round.  The curved roofs arch over long empty platforms which have been allowed to stay that way; there hasn't been a thoughtless intrusion of Journeys Friend shops or Starbucks.  The retail's all been allowed to congregate at the front of the station.

It doesn't feel crammed up there though - there's still plenty of concourse space to mill about.

The waiting area/toilets were built in the 1980s, but they manage to avoid many of the disasters British Rail's architects inflicted upon the network in that decade.  A plaque on the inside notes that it was opened by "The Right Hon. The Earl of Halifax DL" which is just lousy.  I mean, he's not even a proper Royal; the 1st Earl was a former Conservative politician who got given a peerage even though he was an arch-appeaser before the War.  They couldn't even scrape together a cousin of the Queen or something?  Surely Princess Michael of Kent will open anything if there's a buffet.  It makes the Chuckle Brothers' recent reopening of the Cleethorpes line look like an A-list booking.

Far more notable is regular traveller, arch-miserablist and poet Philip Larkin.  He was actually born in Coventry but lived in Hull for most of his life, dying here in 1985.

The statue is inscribed with the first line of his great poem, The Whitsun Weddings, in which he travels from this very station:

That Whitsun, I was late getting away;
   Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone.  We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish dock; thence
The river's level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

Larkin's reputation has suffered in recent years; many of his papers reveal him to be misogynistic, racist, and just a bit of a git all round.  I can't believe people were surprised.  This is the man whose most famous poem is This Be The Verse:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad
They do not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

After that I'm shocked anyone bothered talking to him again; this was clearly a man who enjoyed the darker side of life.  He's not exactly Betjeman cooing over Metroland.

I sat in the station for an hour, just watching, watching people, watching life roll by.  I liked Hull Paragon.  I liked Hull.  It's not a crap town at all, it's just a bit different.  I like different.  Different is good.  Different should always be applauded.

Incidentally, the following year Hull was kicked off the Crappest Town In Britain list; the trophy went to Luton instead.  I'll say no more.

Down Down, Deeper and Down

I'd been looking forward to visiting Hull.  That's not something you hear every day, is it?  But no, I really had.  I'd never been, it looked like an interesting town, and its station is called Hull Paragon, which is just ace.  I found a cheap ticket - one of those ones that are restricted to a single train company on a single day at a single time and don't you think about deviating - and stowed it with excitement.  I even made a dash to the library the night before I left to pick up some Philip Larkin after I read there was a statue to the poet on the concourse.  A bit of educated reading would add a frisson of intellectual pretension to the blog, I thought.

Unfortunately my brain decided to have a bad day.  I felt sluggish and miserable when I woke up; I showered with an increasing sense of futility and pointlessness, listlessly letting the water run over my head, putting conditioner on my hair instead of shampoo by mistake.  I was slipping into a depression sinkhole.

By the time I was on the train, pulling out of Lime Street, I was completely there.  I'd had a mix up with my credit card at the ticket collection point.  I'd almost sat in the wrong seat.  I was fritzed.

This happens now and then; about once a week.  There's a system crash in my head and the signal gets broken up.  Imagine a tv when there's a sunspot; you can still see everything that's happening, you know what's going on, but there's a grey mist and flecks of static over the picture and there's a background hiss.  An incessant, nagging hiss that stays with you and won't go away.

It meant that by the time I reached Hull, I wasn't in the mood.  I was feeling like crap.  I wanted to go home and sleep.

I pushed on though, because I had that restricted ticket, and I'd come all the way across England, and a little station collecting might perk me up.  I got my East Yorkshire Round Robin ticket at Hull Paragon, then went back the way I'd come in on a Northern Rail train to Brough.

Good name, Brough.  And a pretty good station.  It's got a ticket office, it's got platforms, a car park.  It's a prime commuter town, as trains stop here en route to Hull, Leeds, Doncaster and York.  I crossed over the tracks, letting my fellow passengers get ahead so I could get some space for the station selfie.

Further down from the car park, the old buildings remain, and it's nice to see them named after the station.  Even though the ticket office is now in a hut on the platform I like that the Yorkshire stone originals remain.  I especially like the "Station Supper Bar"; that's a great name for a takeaway.

I crossed back over the tracks on my way to the Humber.  Somewhere around here was a footpath; I'd seen it on the Ordnance Survey map.  That was my way to Broomfleet, the next station on the line.  My first attempt sent me into a car park on the river - all very pretty, but the only footpath went back to Hull.  Another path took me into a marina, with signs for a Yawl Club.  At the marine shop, a man and a woman were carrying a box across the yard to a barn.  "Can I help you?"

"I'm looking for the footpath.  I think there's a footpath.  It's round here... somewhere," I finished pathetically.

"You passed it.  Turn round and go right."

"Cheers."  I turned round, went right, and saw the seven foot tall finger post pointing to Broomfleet.  My brain was clearly more addled than I thought.

Over a brook that smelt of sewage and horror and then I was up on a tall ridge.  The land round here is flat and low and particularly prone to flooding; in recent years the Environment Agency has beefed up the defences.  I'd seen diggers down at the riverside from the train, spooning heavy granite lumps onto the foreshore, and now I was walking along a U-shaped mound that shadowed the water.

It wasn't that exciting to be honest.  The path was hard, the route was straight, the view uninspiring.  I was walking away from the Humber Bridge, which I'd been thrilled to see earlier.  All I could see was unending drab fields and rabbit droppings.

I clambered over a stile.  These were sheep pastures, and the hump was now covered with dull looking livestock.  They stared at me blankly before legging it down the slope, some a little less sure footed than others.  I caused a small emergency when I passed a pen, and about a dozen sheep barrelled out through the narrow openings; one got its rear end caught, and couldn't flee.  There were a few moments of panic for both of us as she struggled, her eyes fixed on me, her back legs thrashing wildly, before she snapped free and ran at double the speed away from me.  

The path finally ended on a strip of tarmac by a farm and a level crossing.  The whole route here is peppered with them.  I thought of all the accidents that happen on level crossings, and realised it's just something we're going to have to put up with.  There is absolutely no justification on earth for building a bridge or a tunnel out here, on a tiny lane with few cars.  The finances just don't add up.

I now had a couple of miles of on-road walking ahead of me.  I could feel a ticking clock at the back of my head.  There's only a couple of trains a day from Broomfleet, and I had to get there in time for the 11:40 or I'd be stuck.  I powered along, but that pessimistic, miserable voice I was having problems conquering was shouting in my ear.  Give it up.  You'll never make it.  Why do you even bother trying?

I passed a small bungalow with wide windows and no curtains - why would you need them?  There were just miles of open countryside and no neighbours - and followed the straight single track road.  There were occasional passing places, but they looked barely used. 

It was utterly silent.  I'm not just talking quiet, I'm not talking a bit muted, I mean silent.  No birds.  No traffic.  No distant rumble of farm machinery or boats on the river.  Nothing.  It felt post-apocalyptic, no movement, no sound, no people.  It was quite easy to imagine I Was Legend.

At the end of the lane there was a sign to indicate that you'd reached the main path of the Trans-Pennine Trail, and it made me smile.  There was something comforting about coming all this way and seeing a sign for "Southport"; a little piece of home.  I've seen the marker for the Merseyside end of the trail and I idly wondered how far away the Humberside marker was.  A check of the map reveals it's miles away from anywhere, so I shan't bother, even though the completist OCD part of me really wants to.  

A gang of garishly coloured cyclists whizzed by as I took a different lane.  This was just as straight as the first one, and just as deserted.  In the whole time I walked along it only one car passed, a silver Mercedes; I watched the light bounce off its roof between the hedgerows as it disappeared into the distance.  

My jaw tensed further as I heard the shriek of an alarm ahead.  It was another level crossing and the gates were coming down.  Didn't they realise I was on a tight schedule?  Didn't they realise how little time I had?  I'd worked out the route on the map before I'd left, and walking to Broomfleet in time had been possible but there was little margin for error.  I'd already wasted time at the Brough end finding the path; I didn't know if that delay had been fatal.

While I waited at the gates I pulled out my phone and entered Broomfleet as a destination on Google Maps.  Twenty minutes, it reckoned.  It was 11:25; I had fifteen minutes to get there.

Fuck it, said my brain.  Of course you're going to miss it.  Of course you are.

A window shushed open above my head and the signalman poked his head out.  "If you want to cross, you can do it now," he said.  I hesitated, a little sick at the idea of breaking the rules of the road.  If I had then been mown down by an Intercity, I bet the signalman wouldn't tell the inquest I'd got his permission.  I'd go down on the files as an irresponsible pedestrian.  My devotion to the law was overridden by my blind obedience to authority figures (seriously, if you put a uniform on, I'll believe and do anything you say) and I made it across without coming to a bloody end.

I was in Broomfleet village now, sweaty, tense, my head pounding.  I knew there was a right turn I had to take, but I couldn't see it.  All the time I was aware that the railway line was receding behind me; perhaps I should have just risked it and cut through a field and hoped that I could get out by the station without a barbed wire fence or an irate farmer.  Little Lane appeared on my right, blessedly, and I broke into a jog, or at least the best I could manage.  I don't jog, I just shift my legs into a slightly higher gear for thirty seconds before I start wheezing and want to die.

Yes!  There was the station!  There was the crossing gate, and the signalbox, and it was 11:39.  The station sign was on the opposite side of the tracks.  I didn't want to risk crossing over them, only to have the gates close and trap me on the wrong platform, so I took a photo from a fair old distance just to make sure I got it.  It is in that photo, I promise you.  Just look past my enormous head.

Damp, dehydrated, a little giddy, I staggered onto the platform as the alarm sounded and the gates closed.  I felt a tiny moment of euphoria and I brought up the National Rail app to see just how close I'd been to missing the train.

It turned out that the train was due at Broomfleet at 11:45, not 11:40 as I'd thought.  And it was four minutes late.  I'd broken my lungs for no reason at all.

At least I made it, I thought.  Another station crossed off.  I reached into my pocket for my East Yorkshire Round Robin ticket.

It wasn't there.  

It wasn't in my other pocket either.  Or the back pocket.  Or the pockets in my hoodie, or my backpack, or anywhere.  It had vanished.  I realised that when I'd pulled my phone out, back at the level crossing, the ticket must have come with it.  Twenty two quid's worth of ticket was flapping around in a hedge somewhere.  

Panic, self-loathing, horror; emotions crashed into me from every direction.  My head had a small spasm.  I didn't have a ticket any more, I didn't have a ticket any more.  I was going to have to buy one on the train, but I didn't have any cash; I'd foolishly passed the cash machines at Paragon thinking, "I've got my lunch already - what would I need money for?"  I'd have to buy another Round Robin - another twenty two quid I could ill afford - and hope that they would take my card.  

The guard didn't actually scratch his head when I asked for the ticket, but it was definitely implied.  "I'm not sure if I can sell those," he said doubtfully, then began tapping away at his little pad.  I shifted anxiously from foot to foot, feeling adrenaline pump round me, aware that I was getting very close to having a panic attack, aware that the train was pounding along the tracks towards Gilberdyke, aware that if I didn't manage to get off there this train was headed for Doncaster and the Round Robin would stop being valid and I'd definitely be travelling without a ticket then.  He tapped at his screen a few more times - "Let's try EYR" he said, half to himself - and I wanted to wrench the machine out of his hand and find it myself.

"Ah, there it is.  You learn something new every day, eh?"

While the card machine bounced my pin number up to a satellite for authorisation, he asked me where I was going, and I could only remember Selby.  "You must be going on a lot of trains," he said.

"A few, yeah," I said.  My mouth no longer seemed to contain any saliva.  He handed over my new Rail Rover and I stowed it safely inside my wallet.  Inside a pocket.  Inside my bag.

I think it's fair to say that the person who staggered off the train at Gilberdyke was only semi-human.  I collapsed onto a bench and took long, deep, undignified breaths, letting the air hiss out between clenched teeth as I tried to get my body back under control.  

After a while - it seemed like forever, but was probably about two or three minutes - I was able to limply make my way up and over the footbridge to the exit.  I had to pass three girls on the way, girls who I might uncharitably have termed "slags", with bellies showing above tight shorts and hair pulled back to reveal faces caked in make-up.  They stared at me and my sweat soaked hoodie, judgement running out of every pore.  The London 2012 logo on the front probably didn't help - there was a million miles of difference between the fit lithe bodies of a Chris Hoy or a Jonny Peacock and my fat lumbering mass.  I cowed my head and went off to find a sign to stand under.

Gilberdyke was one of those villages that had been built up after the war; uniform houses had been grafted onto the old parish and made it into just another place.  It was uninspiring and dull.  Bored kids rode their bikes and their scooters on the pavement, not really going anywhere, just moving.  A Methodist church had a poster outside with a couple of people in swimwear on it and the slogan Join us for a bit of Son worship this Summer?, which is sort of brilliant.  There was a little row of shops, with a post office and a butcher - I wonder where you buy fibreglass Fred Elliots?  Is there a catalogue?  Why don't they do it for other professions?  Why do you never get a five foot greengrocer, or a mechanic, or an undertaker?  Where are the life size models of graphic designers?

I turned left at the crossroads and was soon trudging through the long grass at the side of the B1230.  Despite its unimportant sounding number it was a fairly busy road, with lorries speckled amongst the cars, and I had to occasionally press myself into the hedge to avoid being blown over.  As I approached the railway bridge, a footpath spluttered into view, the tarmac cracked and worn away by the weather.  It was rough to walk on but better than the nettles and thistles.

Once again, there was nothing to see.  There was noise now, at least, the drone of the traffic, but the views were of flat uninteresting fields, uniform in colour.  Some wind turbines would occasionally appear but the only breeze was thin and treacle warm; their blades remained unmoved.

Everything is so straight in this part of the world.  There aren't any hills or contours of any kind so roads are a single black line across the map.  Agriculture comes in squares.  Electricity cables score through the clouds.  It was a dispiriting landscape of conformity and regularity, almost entirely shaped by humans and yet feeling cold.

I came off the main road to walk to Eastrington station.  On the way I passed over the M62, another reminder that I was on the opposite side of the country to home; my position was connected to Liverpool through this single route.  The last time I'd crossed this motorway it had been a tense trek over a narrow footbridge, but this was a generous carriageway built for roads so I didn't get the same rush of vertigo.

There was a speckle of houses around the station; a homeowner leaned on his gate to gas to a passer by.  A blow up pool was half-full of water, balls and cricket bats floating abandoned on the surface.  I took my sign picture and went and sat on the platform.

I started to cry.  I'd had enough.  The grey had won.  I'd pencilled in three more stations to collect, including Wressle, which only gets one train a day; I just couldn't face it.  I was tired and drained.  I really wanted to go home and lie down.  I wanted to be anywhere except in this miserable hot shelter in Yorkshire.

Thunderflies congregated on my skin, too many to ignore, not enough to irritate me.  I guzzled my water and wiped away my tears and decided: Howden and Wressle would have to wait for another day.  I pulled myself off the bench and onto the train to Selby.