Triangulation

All over the country, there are railway ghosts.  Lines that have been abandoned.  Stations that were closed.  Goods yards declared surplus to requirements.  You can trace their shapes on maps: big supermarkets right next to railway lines, or the tracks suddenly splitting wide apart to accommodate long demolished platforms.  Sometimes you can see a long vein of green that runs round the backs of houses for mile after mile.  It looks like some particularly forward thinking planners laid out a pedestrian route a hundred years ago, but it's actually the trackbed of a railway that was Beechinged.

The Liverpool Loop Line - or to use its older, more formal name, the North Liverpool Extension Line - was a railway that ran from Halewood to Aintree, skirting the city's eastern suburbs.  It took revellers to the races, freight to the docks, day trippers to the coast.  It's all gone now, turned into National Cycle Route number 62, part of the Trans-Pennine Trail, and a ghostly thread through the past.

I'd long wanted to walk the Loop and trace this piece of railway history but, to be honest, cowardice got in the way.  The line passes through some of the less desirable areas of the city, and the idea of being on an isolated, out of the way track, vulnerable and alone, put me off.  Fortunately, for this trip, I had backup.  It was only Ian and Robert, so it was less the Krays and more the Three Stooges, but there's safety in numbers.

We got off the train at Broad Green and crossed under the M62.  The flyover sweeps over the whole area, a grand concrete arc that refuses to bow down before the little houses below.  Its confidence is admirable, and it's sad that it almost immediately crashes into the mess of the Rocket junction, brought low by a lack of funds and ambition.  Cross the road by the Turnpike pub and you can find the slopes down to the former railway line.

It might be "just" a cycle route now, but there's no denying that heritage.  It's clearly a railway route, with that fantastic Victorian bridgework contrasted with their more prosaic 20th century cousin.   We followed the path down to the track level and we were soon on a cool silent pathway.

There was a secondary motive for our little journey.  Ian used to live and work in Childwall, before he headed off to the Big Smoke, and so this walk was something of a nostalgia trip for him.  I was intrigued to visit parts of the city I'd never been near before.  Generally speaking, if it's not on the Merseyrail map, I've never been there; famous chunks of the city like Old Swan and Knotty Ash are complete mysteries to me.

The old railway bridges are still intact throughout the walk; it's what makes it such a good route for cyclists, because it's miles of entirely segregated pathway.  We were frequently interrupted by the tring of a bell as another lycra-clad bicycler came up behind us.  One pair even had cameras mounted on their helmets; it's the Liverpool Loop Line, folks, not stage five of the Tour de France.  All you'll get out of that is a very dull YouTube video.

After a mile or so we peeled off the route to head into Childwall.  We were actually passing over the site of the former Childwall station, which closed in the early 1930s.  The railway company built the station to service the village, but it was a little too far for easy commutes, and when the tramways started providing competition they gave up and closed the station.

There's no sign of the old station; it was demolished not long after it closed.  There's a Sustrans information post, on which someone's graffiti'd Stab the BNP (combined with the Fuck UKIP at Broad Green, it made you sort of proud of the politicised vandals), but there's no info on the old station.  Across the road are cottages built for the railway workers, but they could be semis anywhere in Liverpool.

Before he became one of the London elite, Ian worked for Liverpool's most glamorous company: Mersey Television.  Ok, he was a website writer, not Chief Boob Wrangler to the many glossy haired starlets, but it's still a frisson of showbiz that Robert and I could only aspire to.  As he lead us through the village, he pointed out its many links to Hollyoaks - the parish church frequently pressed into service for weddings and funerals, the sandstone pub that doubled for Chester's boozers.  Childwall (pronounced "chilled-wall", not like a small human, in another of those damnable Scouse affectations designed to alienate outsiders) was a charming little place, green and pleasing.

Of course, the true hub of the Hollyoaks industry is the Lime Pictures complex (formerly a teacher training college).  It was easy to spot the entrance thanks to the dozen girls hanging around outside the entrance hoping for autographs.  I don't watch Hollyoaks, never have; my only exposure to it is when I change channels and catch another blonde girl arguing with a gay-faced teen about something.  I know Stephanie from Over the Rainbow is in it now, plus Gillian Taylforth and Candace from Coronation Street, and I assume that brother of the boy from 2 Point 4 Children is still in it because he is Chester's Ken Barlow.  Ian still filled us in on the behind the scenes scandale, with tales of production team changes and writing crises.  We craned our necks to see if we could spot any of the set (better known to me as Brookside Parade, because I am an old fart), but the site is surrounded by thick woodland.  Finally we bought a bottle of water each and headed back to the Loop Line, pausing only by Ian's old flat so he could criticise the new owner's taste in wallpaper.

Soon we were heading south again on the path.  Excited children on half term squealed and squeaked around their parents; women walked their dogs with the lead in one hand and their mobile in the other.  The thick trees formed a cooling canopy over our head, gently rustling in the low May wind.  We were isolated from the city around us.

Of course, that's part of the reason why the Loop Line closed in the first place: it doesn't really go anywhere.  Linking up the suburbs in a chain might work somewhere like London, where the outer boroughs are townships all of their own, but Liverpool is centred around its river.  A railway line that doesn't go anywhere near the city centre, just through a series of leafy suburbs, was going to have problems getting passengers.

The city recognised this when it was building what's now the Northern Line from Garston to Southport in the 1970s.  The original proposal was that the Loop Line would simply link into it, making a massive circle line around the city, until analysis showed that people wouldn't really use it.  The second idea was to make two loops, one in the south of the city and one in the north, which would have connected onto the main line into Lime Street.  There was going to be a massive, six platform underground station at Broad Green which would have enabled you to connect with trains going to all points of the compass.

Ambition is one thing; reality is another.  The Link and Loop works in the city centre went over budget, while the UK went into financial meltdown.  British Rail put the whole scheme into cold storage, which is a polite way of saying "the bin".

By now we'd reached Gateacre (pronounced "gattaca", because obviously), which used to have its own railway station.  In fact, it had a station right up until 1972.  It lost it in a broken promise that I'm sure the residents are still bitter about.

The Big Idea in the late Sixties was to send all Liverpool's long distance services into Lime Street, while the local service - the Northern Line, as it would become - would travel under the city centre through underground stations.  Problem was, the people of Gateacre had an existing railway service into Liverpool Central, which British Rail planned on demolishing.  For a while they had a shuttle going back and forth, but finally BR closed the line and promised they'd get their station back when the electrified Merseyrail services opened in 1977.

Since that's the former station site, you may have deduced that Gateacre never reopened.  Budget squeezes meant that the electric lines were only opened as far as Garston; a bit more money was found to extend it to Hunts Cross for interchange with the Manchester line, but after that, nothing.  In what can only be described as a mean-spirited act, British Rail whipped up the tracks and built a transformer over the tracks at Hunts Cross, effectively a big yah-boo-sucks to Gateacre.

It's a shame, for a number of reasons.  Hunts Cross is a rubbish place for a terminus; the line through there is far too busy, and it's close enough to Liverpool South Parkway for people to start suggesting that maybe it should be taken off the Northern Line altogether.  If the tracks continued on to Gateacre, it wouldn't be such a problem.

Plus, Gateacre is lovely, and it would be nice if it were linked into the rest of Merseyrail.  It'd be commuter heaven.  Instead, everyone's forced to drive to work, or take a bus, and we all know that buses are rubbish compared with trains.

We wandered into the village's centre, past Moran's (the oldest music shop in Liverpool) and over to the Black Bull pub for lunch.  We took a seat in what looked like an empty space near the front of the pub, but soon revealed itself to be the family room; not too much bother, really until we got onto Scottish politics and I called Alex Salmond a "c**t" three feet away from a toddler.  I'm not built for family areas.

After a quick trip to the loo, I returned with accusations; which one of Ian and Robert had corrected the sign in the gents, crossing out the unnecessary apostrophes?

They both denied responsibility, but we collectively agreed that whoever did it was a wonderful human being and we should buy them a pint.

Full of sandwiches and beer (except Ian, who remains bafflingly teetotal), we headed back to the line for the last stretch.  There was an information point on the south side of the road, which we hoped would have a lot of stuff about the railway, but was very much cycling-centred.  It's a shame they gloss over the line's history this way; it's so glaringly obvious why the route is there, they should celebrate it.

We trekked back up to the main route.  Ian turned to me and said, "Does it not bother you that we've missed out walking over a section of the track?"

I paused.  "Well, it does now."

I HAVE OCD, ALRIGHT.  Much to Robert and Ian's bemusement/annoyance, I insisted that we backed up a little, so that I could cross the railway bridge and walk over the twenty yards or so of the path that we hadn't passed over.  I blame Ian.  If I hadn't realised there was that little section, uncrossed, I would have been quite happy to carry on.

Having indulged my mental illness, we headed south again.  An abandoned tin of Asda "Smart Price" lager seemed to act as a marker that we were heading into less salubrious surroundings.  The path was the same, with the greenery all around us, but the people changed.  They were noiser and harder.  The jogging women had thin, gaunt faces and bodies, and they wore unbranded track suits instead of the head to toe Nike we'd seen earlier.  At one exit, a man was slumped against the bollards; something had put him out of it, and I'm guessing it wasn't joy at the onset of summer.  Three teenagers appeared and nudged him into consciousness via shouting and prodding with the toes of their trainers.  A gang of lads, spread across the path in a single line, walked a straining, sinewy dog.

It was still pretty, it was still charming, it was just a tiny nudging up of tensions, a hint of threat that hadn't been there before.

There were no bins along the path - a real oversight if you ask me - and so the bushes became the place to put your litter.  Dog turds were left out on the tarmac too.  It was a shame, especially when now and then you'd get a break in the trees and you could take in a long view over the Cheshire Plain to Fiddler's Ferry.

We'd left Liverpool now, and entered Knowsley.  A cast-iron sign welcomed us to the "Halewood Park Triangle", which sounded wrong to me; shouldn't it be the Halewood Triangle Park?  This was the point where the railway line used to split in two directions to form a wide junction with the Manchester line.  When the track was lifted, they turned the whole area into a country park, with a lake, playground and sculptures.  It's a pleasant place to wander, though I'm not convinced by some of the artworks.

That's just an exploded lamp post.

The path split, and we headed west, with the aim of reaching Hunts Cross for the train back into town.  I was sweating profusely - the afternoon had turned out to be unexpectedly warm - and the tree pollen had got into my throat and made my voice croak.  These sound like complaints, but really, I was absolutely content; I was with my friends in a railway based adventure, and we had a nice meal booked for later that day.  It was about as good as it could get.

The green bridge carried us over the railway line and onto Higher Road.  After the gentle noises of the country park, the A562 seemed overpoweringly loud, a cacophony of traffic and noise.  I insisted that we pause for a selfie outside the park sign, then immediately hated myself for using that word: I was doing up the nose shots on my phone long before Kim Kardashian and Ellen at the Oscars.

We trekked along towards Hunts Cross, pausing only at the pedestrian crossing so I could embarrass myself again by discussing female ejaculation just as a nice middle aged lady turned up next to us (it's a long story).  There was a nice surprise when we reached the station; it was one of those cheapskate brick ones last time I visited, just a kiosk for the stationmaster to sit in.  It's had a bit of a makeover, and now there's a proper ticket hall.

It's a vast improvement, with a nice covered area and wooden ticket windows.  Good work, Merseyrail.

It seemed appropriate that after a day of travelling over Liverpool's dead railways we should end up at a very active one, a station that seemed to have a new life in fact.  The platform was full of people travelling back towards town.  I wish the line carried on, and we'd got that massive Broad Green interchange, but at the same time I'm happy with what we've got.  Merseyrail's great.  We're lucky to have it.

Closing Time

Today's Echo has the details of closure for next year's station upgrades.  The good news is, the stations are being upgraded at all.  The bad news is that the promised station closures aren't going to be restricted to Liverpool Central, as had previously been indicated.  That £40 million is going to be spread right round the Loop, and so is the misery.

I've done a few little diagrams to show how the situation's going to develop over the next few months.

This is the situation right now: a lovely SQUARE loop, interchange stations, trains everywhere.  From the 23rd April next year, it'll change to this:

Liverpool Central will effectively be wiped off the map.  Both the Northern and Wirral line platforms will be closed for refurbishment.  Replacement bus services will run instead, but to be frank, you'd be better off walking.  When the Loop was closed, back when I was commuting from Birkenhead Park to Crewe, I found it quicker to just walk across town than to wait for the James Street-Lime Street bus.  Northern Line passengers can go onto Moorfields and change to the Wirral Line, if they really need to, to end up round by Central.

The Wirral Line platforms at Central will then reopen from the 24th August, but what's that at James Street?  I'm afraid that asterisk means that platform 1 at James Street will be closed from the 2nd August onwards.  Fortunately, that's not too stressful.  It'll still be possible to alight at Moorfields or, if you're really lazy, you can stay on the train all the way round the Loop and get off at platform 3, before the train heads back under the Mersey.  Of course, if you do that, I'll judge you a little bit.

Liverpool Central will then be fully reopened on October 21st, all being well, but the works on platform 1 at James Street will continue until January 6th, 2013.  Work then immediately shifts to platform 3, so people getting on a Wirral-bound train at Central won't have much chance of getting a seat.

The James Street work is due to continue until April 23rd 2013, but on April 21st Lime Street will close for business, until August 21st.  The map will probably show that it's perfectly possible to walk from Lime Street to Central, but I couldn't work out a way to do that without re-jigging the map in a major fashion.  It'll probably be similar to when the Grand National is on and signs appear in the streets to guide tourists to Central for the Aintree trains.

Sixteen months later, and three of the city's underground stations will have been refurbished.  Moorfields and Hamilton Square will also be getting done, but the timescales haven't been specified: it's somewhere "between 2014 and 2019".

What's interesting about this to me is that they're going to close any of the other stations at all.  I understood that Central would need a lot of work, but I didn't realise that the other stations would be getting this level of attention.  I'm actually a bit more excited now, thinking about the level of work that can be achieved in those kind of shutdowns.  Put it a different way: I am REALLY hoping that the brown plastic seats will be gone when I turn up at the new look stations.

Incidentally, my earlier post about Central has thrown up a couple of issues of its own.  As Marke pointed out, the time for expanding the station is rapidly shrinking, while a shopping centre is built over the top; any reconstruction gets 1000x times more expensive the minute you can't dig down from the surface.  The Echo article also alleges that platform-edge doors (PEDs) will be implemented at Central to contain the crowds.  I'm taking that with a pinch of salt.  When the Jubilee Line extension was built PEDs were put on all the new stations, but not on the old ones, because of difficulties with signalling equipment and the software involved.  Even now, the likes of Green Park are open at platform level.  I think this is one of those cases where things are talked about but will never actually happen.

"Anonymous" (why so shy?  We're all friends here) also said that my Kirkby-Hunts Cross plans will never happen because of the flat crossing of the Liverpool-Manchester line.  Running two such intensive services against one another would cause all sorts of hassle.  This doesn't surprise me, as I basically came up with my plan by pointing at the map and working out what I'd like to happen, rather than being practical, but I have since read rumours that Network Rail has a similar idea.  They're considering putting in a turnback facility somewhere beyond Liverpool South Parkway, so trains can reverse without hitting the junction in the first place.  Good for the Northern Line; bad for Hunts Cross, it seems.

I'm less keen on "Anonymous"'s suggestion that staff are employed to force people along the platforms.  We're British; we don't respond well to that kind of forcible behaviour.  That's all a bit Japanese, and we know where that will end, with disgustingly efficient bullet trains.  Members of staff should be kept behind glass screens where they belong, not manhandling the public.  Unless it's that fit bloke who used to work at Birkenhead Park, in which case he can manhan[remainder of this paragraph cut for reasons of taste].

Riding the Rails

Well, if you've been paying attention over the last few months, you'll know that I'm a sick, sick man. I've been off work via a number of doctor's notes since May, due to a complex series of illnesses which basically add up to me being depressed and/or a miserable sod. It's actually not as interesting as it sounds. Basically you just could not give a fuck about anything, ever, anytime, and then you take a whole lot of pills and fall asleep halfway through repeats of Frasier on Comedy Central.

Apathy is really underrated as a depression factor. Not giving a toss about the world means that you can get really excited about something - like, say capturing a couple of railway stations. You really want to do it, and then when it comes down to it you just think, "but if I leave the house I'll miss King of the Hill on FX" and you crawl into bed and fall asleep with your laptop on your knees and half a Mr Kipling Lemon Slice dangling out of the corner of your mouth. This is all theoretical and I promise is not how I spend my days.

Lying in bed all day sounds great, but trust me the novelty wears off really fast. I find my mind wandering, and very often it goes wandering places I'm not comfortable with. I needed a distraction. The Bf was driving into town, so I got him to drop me at Hamilton Square. I got an All Areas Saveaway and jumped onto a Wirral Line train.

I didn't have a plan in mind. I didn't want to go anywhere in particular. I just wanted to enjoy the ride. I used to do it a lot when I lived in Luton; I'd get a One Day Travelcard and skip from station to station on the Underground, just enjoying the sway of the train and the movement of the commuters. Of course, in London half the journey is just changing from line to line; you need to pack a Sherpa and a bar of Kendal Mint Cake before you attempt to transfer between the Victoria and Circle lines at King's Cross St Pancras. Liverpool's a lot more manageable, but the walk from the Wirral to the Northern lines at Moorfields is still a fair way. I decided to board whatever was the next train into the station, and hovered on the landing between the two platforms in anticipation. A southbound train won the battle, and soon I was headed for Hunts Cross.

I did this section of line in a couple of bursts two years ago, so this wasn't about the stations. This time I was here for the journey itself. The train was crammed with pensioners, and I realised that this was probably the first train out of Southport after 9 am; these grey haired commuters weren't headed for work, but instead for shopping and a day out in town. The only people on the train without a walking stick and a pacamac were me and two skinheads. They were only around nineteen, but they simmered with a resentment and flinty anger which aged them. They pushed ahead of the elderly passengers and leapt from the train at Central, laughing and turning the air as blue as the women's rinses.

That left only about half a dozen people in our carriage for the trip further south, and we were surrounded by paper detritus - supplements, pull out sections, and the omnipresent Metro. The guard worked his way down the carriage, picking up all the papers on his way. I thought he was going to bin them, but instead he just shoved them on the luggage rack at the end of the carriage - out of sight, out of mind. It meant I never got to read The Guardian's collectible supplement on the Holocaust, to my eternal regret.

I peered out the window, looking to see if anything was different in the stations as we went past, and looking for the "ghost" stations on the line. I definitely saw the platforms in the cutting at St James, and I think I saw the overgrown remains of Otterspool too. Cressington looked like it had had a repaint, while the ghosts of Garston were still visible: a patch of empty ground and a road with gates at both ends.

My fellow passengers all got off at Liverpool South Parkway, and I was left alone in the carriage. I stood in the aisle and took a photo to commemorate this rare treat, just as the guard appeared behind me, which was embarrassing.

I've always felt a bit sorry for Hunts Cross. It should be important, as the terminus of the Northern Line, but it was always intended as a temporary end, until electrification was continued beyond this point. That never happened. Instead, for a while in the 1980s, passengers from Manchester were forced to get off their train and get on board a Merseyrail one to take them into the city. You can imagine how popular that was, and it was discontinued in 1989. Since then, it's sort of flapped around at the end of the line, and had its thunder as an interchange station (and the interchange circles on the map) stolen by Liverpool South Parkway. It hasn't even got much of a presence on the street, the original Cheshire Lines building having been turned into a pub. The 1980s British Rail "will this do?" replacement is basically somewhere to keep the rain off the ticket seller, nothing more.

I killed time by wandering around the little arcade next to the station, the usual mix of post office, banks, newsagents and hairdressers you'll get in any local shopping centre. A terrifying statue stood outside the butchers and scared a little girl into her mum's skirts as they walked past. I don't blame her. I mean, look at him. He looks like that weird uncle who used to pick you up from school with his hands in his pockets.

Once I'd read the local graffiti (the pleasingly nihilistic "Adults By Accident") and done the tour of the Cross I'd exhausted all the area's sights, so I headed back down to the platform. I'd not noticed before that there was a shop in the waiting room, so I bought a Coke and had a sit down and listened to the conversation of the two women across the way. I do love a good eavesdrop, and this one was a Victoria Wood sketch in the making - "I was there talking to me Dad and I fell asleep. Right there in the graveyard. Right there on the grave. Woke up an hour later in the middle of the cemetery."

The train came in, and soon filled with new passengers. There was something different about them though, a different mood, and I worked it out somewhere around Aigburth. They were day-trippers, optimistic folks who'd woken up to the blue skies and decided to treat themselves with a run out to Southport or Formby or Ainsdale.

Their mood was in contrast to mine. I'd slipped into a low, a trough of despair, and I sat on the train thinking dark thoughts, letting myself get drawn into the steady beat of the wheels on the tracks. The 1-2-3-4 noise that repeats and repeats. I pulled out my journal and scribbled in it, my writing scrawled over the page as the movement of the train shook me. I can see why John Betjeman was such a fan of the railways; he must have drawn inspiration from the steady metre beneath his feet.

We went into the tunnel after Brunswick station, and the heavy undernote became a whine, an electric scream which still thrills me. To quote the legends that are Girls Aloud, it's the Sound of the Underground, it's the noise of family day trips to the capital and happy wanderings with friends and the whole world of the Tube. Then the tunnel opened up into the murky yellow light of Liverpool Central. Does no-one at Merseyrail own a 100 watt bulb? The contrast is even more stark when you get to Moorfields, where the white tunnel reflects the light back and makes it bright and airy.

I didn't want to go all the way to Southport, as I'm going to Birkdale in a couple of weeks time anyway, so I decided to use my time productively and explore the new, gleaming Sandhills station. The last time I came here was in the old station's final days, and I wanted to see what had happened to it since. It's been very nicely done by Merseytravel, Network Rail and the DfT. Speaking as someone who occasionally froze my knackers off waiting for a train at the old Sandhills I was pleased to see not one but two waiting rooms, plus a third waiting area by the ticket office. The ticket office, incidentally, has been moved from down on the ground to platform level.

The station is fully DDA compliant, with ramps from the street and a lift to the platform; a canopy covers almost the whole station, so you're shielded from the worst of the elements; and it all looks very shiny and pretty. In fact, there was a man cleaning the windows on the waiting rooms while I was there. It's even got a big swoopy fin roof thing over the stairs. In short, it's got everything you could want from a station... except they've taken away the ALF! There used to be an Attractive Local Feature board here, advising football fans to alight for the Soccerbus to Goodison and Anfield. They've taken it away, but haven't replaced it. I'm disgusted and outraged. I suspect I will be writing a strongly worded e-mail once I've finished blogging.

Down on the street level, there's a big patch of bare ground that will one day be a bus exchange, though there was no work going on when I visited. I think it may have been credit crunched. I decided that as this was an all-new, glamorous Sandhills, I'd best tart it again. Besides, it had one of the new box sign boards, rather than the old flat ones.

I wondered what they did with the old station signs. Here's the answer; they dump them behind a portakabin and leave them to rust. I spotted the discarded sign, and immediately knew I wanted it. I'm sure I could find somewhere to put it in my flat. Perhaps my "strongly worded" e-mail to Merseytravel will be turned into a "pretty please" e-mail.

So now here I was, in the heart of Liverpool's beautiful* docklands (*actual beauty not guaranteed), with time to kill. I thought I'd go and take a look at a building which had always fascinated me, and which was close by. The Tate & Lyle sugar silo was built in the 1950s, and is a huge arc of concrete on the Dock Road. It's got a brutal charm to it, and its sheer bulk is astonishing.

It's a ridiculous building, and I mean that in the very best way. It should be for building Apollo rockets or housing settlers on the moon instead of sugar. If, indeed it still does; the building is Grade II listed, but is on English Heritage's "at risk" register due to being underused. It's a shame if it is no longer in use, and even worse if it were allowed to crumble and die. Like the nearby Stanley Dock warehouse, it's a colossal piece of industrial heritage, and it should be preserved.

No doubt it was purely suggestion, but I was sure I could taste sweet, sticky toffee on my lips as I took the photographs. Perhaps the air around the warehouse has become thickened with the sugar over the decades.

But that wasn't the sweetest part of my visit. What does that sign say?

Huskisson! Huskisson Dock Number 3! I was indescribably pleased to see old Willy immortalised again. Also, I just like saying Huskisson! It's actually more fun if you sing it to the "Scorpio!" theme from the Simpsons. Huskisson! (You'll have that in your head for the rest of the day. Trust me.)

With Huskisson! captured, I figured I should probably get back to the station. It was the middle of the day, but the docks still had a vaguely threatening air to them, as though I could press-ganged at any moment. The rough road surface and cracked pavements didn't exactly instil much confidence either. There were railway tracks all over the place, a reminder that this whole area was once criss-crossed with freight lines, with the Overhead Railway above them. All gone now.

I'd say my main complaint about the all new Sandhills is that the lift tower is crying out for a big yellow box on top, like the light box on top of the tower at Tate Modern, with the Merseytravel "M" proudly emblazoned on it and visible for miles around. I hope they do get round to building the bus area, and a car park too, because it could be quite a handy park and ride facility. You come within a mile of the city centre but stop before you actually hit the snarled up streets, and then clean efficient underground trains whisk you to the shops. Lovely.

The walk back to the station had tired me out completely. Since I started taking anti-depressants I've become weak as a kitten, and the slightest bit of exercise leaves me exhausted. I collapsed onto a chair on the platform, and made some notes in my journal. I realised that I didn't quite look like the cool intellectual writer when I was making notes on a station platform; I looked like a trainspotter. I was too hot and sweaty to care by that point though. I needed sanctuary and rest, somewhere I could go and recharge my body, mind and spirit. Where could I go?

I'm currently coveting a new laptop, so I went in and stroked the MacBooks until a security man asked me to leave. I sat in the gardens of the Bluecoat, one of those gorgeous city spaces you wish no-one else knew about, and caught some sun until one o'clock, when I went off to meet Robert for a pint in his lunch hour. Even though I complained right at the start about having to sit around the house doing nothing, I have to admit a certain amount of schadenfreude when he turned up, roasting hot in a collar and tie.

The day out worked. I'm not sure if it was the sunny weather, the bright shiny stations, the Huskisson! moment (admit it, you can't stop hearing that tune now, can you?) but I went home feeling a lot jollier than I'd left it. Actually, maybe it was the beer. Yup. It was probably the beer.

Overflated Opinion of Oneself

I'm sorry, I really am. I had no idea that my galloping round the railway network of Liverpool would cause such damage. No sooner had I started my little quest than Merseyrail trains immediately start going mad (http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0100regionalnews/tm_headline=weeks-of-rail-chaos-facing-commuters%26method=full%26objectid=19674972%26siteid=50061-name_page.html). The network operators are baffled as to what is causing all this; I'm choosing to believe that it's my legions of fans following my trail and riding the rails in hope of a glimpse of the MerseyTart.

Clearly under such circumstances I should cease and desist from using the network. I feel guilty now. Especially as I only went out last week. If you are the type of person who copies stuff they read on the internet, stop reading now! You're putting lives in danger!!!

I'd been thinking; my trip along the Northern Line previously had ended at St Michael's, in the south of the city. A little consultation of my trusty A-Z told me that finishing off the last few stations on the southern branch of the line wouldn't be too difficult - a couple of hours work, maybe. So I trotted out last week.

Unfortunately, I forgot about Sunday services. Grr. Trains only on the half hour, instead of fifteen minutes. The upshot was that I ended up loitering in Liverpool Central's bowels for half an hour while I waited for the next southbound train. To add insult to injury, a girl came and stood next to me and consumed what looked like half a tonne of fried chicken. It smelt repulsive. I could practically hear the cholesterol swimming into her veins.

I was glad when the train finally turned up and spirited me off to Aigburth (actually pronounced Eggberth, obviously). I have only limited experience of this end of the line, so I didn't really know where I was, but I was pleased to see that we had another Victorian country station building - one which had been carefully modernised, with automatic doors, but still retaining the charm. It also had an ALF.

I'm starting to get a bit bored of birds now. After the double whammy of Moreton & Leasowe's Evil Crane Type Things (note: I am not Bill Oddie), a slightly bemused looking seagull is not much of a draw. Otterspool Promenade is a relatively breezy strip of parkland beside the river, and while it's very pretty, seagulls are not really a feature worth seeking out. I'm tempted to write to Merseytravel and see who comes up with these things, and to ask if they have more reference material on their desk other than The Big Book Of British Seabirds.

The weather was excessively grey and threatening to rain, but it was warm, too, as I strolled along. The soundtrack for today's trip was Madonna's Erotica; either this signalled that I was going to spend my Sunday afternoon plunging into a world of kinky sado-masochistic sex, or alternatively, I was just enjoying the contrast between the straight laced Victorian surroundings and Madge's potty mouth. (It was on this trip that I first realised that Waiting finishes with the lines Next time you want pussy/Just look in the mirror baby - which I have to say I found hysterical).

I wasn't entirely sure where Cressington station was - wherever possible, I prefer to follow my nose, only turning to my A-Z when I feel lost. I have quite a good instinct for geography, with an inbuilt compass, though it occasionally gets me into trouble. I once walked from London Bridge to Bermondsey station on the Jubilee Line, not long after it opened, and I found myself in the centre of an estate of high rise flats with absolutely no idea of where I was. I trusted my instinct, and kept walking, and ended up almost bumping into Bermondsey station, but it was a slightly nervy time up until then.

I kept walking, assuming there would be a sign pointing me in the right direction, and there was. But it was a bit confusing; it seemed to be pointing into a park. Intrigued, I wandered through the elaborate Victorian gateway and into what turned out to be a private estate and a conservation area.


Apparently, during the 19th century, wealthy Liverpool businessmen established Grassendale and Cressington Parks, then built themselves some large, exclusive villas in the middle. I was simultaneously delighted to find this little suburb and annoyed. Delighted, because the architecture was lovely; big, attractive mansions, on tree lined streets. Annoyed, because of the signs like the one above, which struck me as just horribly snooty. I received some extremely dirty looks from an elderly couple climbing out of their car to go inside as they clearly disapproved of the riff raff who had the temerity to wander into their estate. Newsflash: public transport is for the public, and even if it isn't a right of way, technically, I absolutely have the right to wander into it. Live with it.


Fortunately Cressington Station made up for it. As was to be expected, it was a lovely little building, in keeping with the estate around it, and better still, it was utterly deserted. Not even a ticket inspector. I had a little wander around, taking in nice little features like this old water fountain, and the overbridge, which felt impossibly high because of the cutting, and induced a little vertigo attack in me.



Then a train came up, and spoilt my fun, and took me to Liverpool South Parkway. Never mind Doctor Who; this was a trip from the past into the future with just a train ride. From Victorian to modern Elizabethan in one trip, Liverpool South Parkway is only a year or two old, and it screams modernity from every pore. Built to serve the airport, it's like an airport itself, with soaring glass and massive metal braces. The station was built by combining Garston (on the Northern Line) with Allerton (on the City Line) into one complex, and it was strange to see. I once worked near Garston station for a time, and took the train there daily; it was another nineteenth century relic, tucked away down a back street - not a gleaming epic of Norman Foster-inspired transportation. I loved it, but I suspect I'm in a minority about this, because frankly, the thing was deserted. This massive transport complex - as you can see, there's a bus interchange outside - was playing host to around a dozen passengers. There were members of staff just milling, aimlessly. Well, not completely aimlessly; they were also eyeing up my photography with suspicion, as though I were a potential suicide bomber planning where to set off my waistcoat. Which is why the shots are a little blurry - I was snapping them quick, before fifty armed SAS men descended.

And from there, I went to Hunts Cross, walking around Allerton cemetary and through fag end suburban streets. It couldn't help but be a disappointment after the two previous stations, and it was; the station building you see behind me in the pic is now a pub, and was filled that afternoon with Liverpool fans getting hammered loudly. They had spilled out onto the pavement - the downside of the smoking ban is that this kind of drunken behaviour has now been carried out onto the street so they can have their Silk Cut and their Becks - and so I snapped a pic and hurried to the platform through the disappointing 80s box of a ticket office.

The station was drab, the end of the line in all senses, and frankly, I was glad to be going home before the rain finally gave in and hammered down. The plus side is, I've crossed off the branch from the map - so I'll never have to see it again...

(And a quick thank you, by the way, to Sue the very lovely Tubewhore herself, who gave me a gratuitous plug on her site!)