Taking In The Air

 

That strip of Transport for Wales stations down the left hand side of the map was always going to be tricky.  A series of small country stations that got a service ranging from "infrequent" to "very infrequent" and which were a fair distance apart.  Normally I'd like to wipe them out in one go, a whole swathe of grey stations collected in one day.  Instead I decided to chop it into manageable chunks: the top first, the bottom at a later date.  Whitchurch, Wrenbury and Nantwich in one day - that'll do.

Whitchurch smelt of fire, which is always a good start.  I don't want to sound like a pyromaniac but I love the thick smell of fireplace smoke hanging over a town.  It's nostalgia, of course: my nan had a coal fire in her house in Hertford, and when we'd get out the car on arrival the scent of the neighbourhood's grates would wash over me.  I'd position myself in front of the fireplace and feel the heat on my face, enjoying the smell, listening to the crackle.  My brother and I would snap up bits of rubbish and detritus to throw on it - a bit of old cotton, a crisp packet - and gleefully watch it burn.  Actually maybe I am a pyromaniac.  The point is I immediately felt welcomed to Whitchurch, even if the station is a little lacking.

Two platforms, two shelters, a footbridge and that's your lot.  In the northbound shelter, a homeless man was wrapped in a sleeping bag, completely cocooned.  Even his face was hidden within the hood of the bag.  I imagine this is his overnight spot.  Homelessness is no longer a "big city" issue; it's everywhere.  

I left the station via the car park behind a man in his fifties who was wearing tight lycra leggings with bell bottoms.  From the waist up, he was a perfectly normal older gentleman in a padded jacket; below the waist, Liza Minelli circa 1972.  I wondered if he'd accidentally put on his wife's trousers that morning, and had decided to style it out, or if perhaps he was some sort of aging dance captain and was off to the local theatre to choreograph an am dram Cats.  Ahead of him were three teenagers who immediately dashed across the road and piled into a telephone box.  Teenagers using a phone box?  In 2023?  Clearly they were drug dealers.

I need to get an apology in now.  Though I hadn't realised it at the time, there was a smear on the lens of my camera.  I didn't realise until I got home and uploaded the pics to my PC.  As a consequence, some of the photos that follow will have a slight blur at the edge.  It couldn't be helped, and I'm not going back to Whitchurch to take the photos again, so if you don't like it you can simply go away.  (No, please don't, I love you really).

I stomped into town in my new boots, past a cul-de-sac next to the station called The Sidings.  Can we stop with this?  Have a bit of imagination.  "Ooh, it's a road built on old railway land, let's call it The Sidings, that's never been done before!"  Call it The Goods Yard or Pacer Close or Thank You For This Gift Of Valuable Real Estate Doctor Beeching Avenue.  Be original.  Be as original and unique as the man further along the road who had painted his Transit van in the colours of the A-Team van for some reason - black with a red diagonal strike.  He stood on his driveway, vaping and barking into his mobile, but he didn't resemble any of the team.  Maybe BA Baracus, if BA Baracus was white.

You'll know Whitchurch by name at least if you've ever been to Lime Street station: you'll have seen it in enormous letters staring down at you.  The clock on the concourse at the station - like a lot of railway clocks - was made by J B Joyce & Co, a company who operated out of Whitchurch for nearly two centuries.  Joyce's also did the Eastgate Clock, in Chester, and the clock in the University of Birmingham's tower which I visited only the other week.  They started in the High Street, making intricate timepieces, and as their business grew they moved to new premises on Station Road.  

Regular readers will know that station clocks are a small obsession of mine.  As far as I'm concerned, every station should have one, and, more to the point, it should be working.  This last part seems to be the most difficult one for train companies to manage and I'm not sure why.  My mantlepiece clock has been running for about twenty years and all I have to do is change the battery now and then and move the hands for British Summer Time and back.  Most station clocks are electrically powered so I'd have thought all they'd need was the occasional once over and maybe a wipe down with a damp cloth.  And yet, time and again (ahem), I turn up at a station and find a fine ticker jammed on 1:27.  It's disappointing, it's disconcerting, and it's plain sad.  It says that the rail company doesn't care, like a broken window or an overstuffed bin.  It makes it lesser.

Joyce was sold to another clock company in the Sixties and the building is now an auction house.  Pleasingly, the current owners are proud of their history and have an entire page on their website devoted to the building, but I was still disappointed I couldn't nip in and ask them to sort out the clock at West Kirby station.  It's been broken for years.

A cut across the inner ring road and I was walking down Green End towards the High Street.  There's been a market town here for centuries but it reached its true prosperity in the 18th century, and the buildings reflect that.  The streets are lined with impressive Georgian town houses and brick shops with elegant fronts.  I bet the whole town closes for six weeks every other year so they can film the newest incarnation of Persuasion or Middlemarch.  You're trying to get to Home and Bargain but unfortunately they've chucked a load of muck all over the main street and are letting chickens wander around for that period atmosphere.

Although actually Home and Bargain is a bit downmarket for Whitchurch.  It's a respectable, moneyed country town, and so the shopping centre was filled with kitchen shops and boutiques and coffee places.  There was a place that offered pilates and journaling classes, and the flowerbeds were supported by the Rotary Club.  I'd describe it as solidly Tory, except it's got a LibDem MP at the moment, thanks to the resignation of one of those dodgy Conservatives who got caught breaking the rules, Owen Patterson; I think it says a lot about the current calamitous state of the Government that I can't really remember who he was or what he did.  After a while they all blur into one another.

There were also two restaurants that proudly displayed signs boasting of their listing in the Michelin Guide.  As is usual for restaurants with this high level of quality, they don't seem very keen on you eating there.  Neither one had a menu outside, or a price list, and when I looked at their websites they only offered "sample menus".  These are the kind of restaurants that have Tasting Menus, where you turn up and the chef feeds you whatever he feels like whether you like it or not.  Don't like shellfish?  Have a gluten intolerance?  Tough: course three is crab bread and if you don't want it you're scum.  At some point all the top restaurants started employing Lenny Henry in Chef! in their kitchens.  If I go out for a meal I want to know what I'm getting - in fact I want to be able to look at the menu before I even walk through the door - and I want to enjoy it.  I don't want to live in fear that the next round of plates will bring me an aniseed cockroach on a bed of curried ox tongue.  Perhaps I am denying myself a classic culinary experience, but I'm willing to accept that.  I was instead drawn to Percy's, a bar that advertised musical appearances from "Psydoll" and "Papa Shango"; that sounds much more fun.

At the top of the High Street I had to make a decision.  The BBC Weather app had predicted rain all morning, and indeed the streets seemed to have received a light soaking.  However, it was long gone now, and there were blue skies.  If I walked to Wrenbury, my next station, it was eight miles across country; if it started to rain while I was out there I'd get wet and muddy very quickly.  On the other hand, if I simply went back to Whitchurch station and got the train to Wrenbury and the good weather held, I'd be forever disappointed.

I looked up at the clouds.  They seemed pale enough - maybe the odd hint of grey in the distance.  I decided to risk it.  I bundled my coat into my backpack and strode out of town.

The pavement soon disappeared, but there was an edge of tarmac marked out with a white line.  I'd never seen this kind of arrangement for a footpath but it made sense as a cheaper way to give pedestrians space to walk without having to put in actual slabs and gutters and drains.  I thought it was a great idea, until I reached the end of it and discovered I'd been walking in a cycle lane.  It made me furious.  Cycles can and do go on the road.  Yes, they are much safer in their own lanes, and I support that.  But put in provision for walkers first.  Give us somewhere to walk where we're not going to get blindsided by a JCB or rammed by a Raleigh.  Give pedestrians the space to walk first before you start sticking in cycle lanes.

Simmering gently, I turned off the main road and onto a driveway leading to a pleasing country house.  I was following the South Cheshire Way, a long distance footpath that was clearly outlined on OS Maps and signposted, but I still felt anxious as I got closer and closer to the house.  It was a relief when I spotted a tiny yellow arrow taking me away from it and across a field, a relief somewhat undermined by the big yellow Beware of Bull sign.

Trepidatiously I followed the footpath.  I couldn't actually see any bulls, or any livestock of any kind, but I still kept an eye out as I hugged the fence.  I wondered what I would do if a bull did actually come charging across at me.  I decided the only thing would be to tuck and roll under the barbed wire, pressing myself into the hedge behind and hoping those thin strands of metal spikes would be enough to put off a thousand kilos of marauding beef.  I wondered if perhaps I should stand my ground, and express dominance; then I remembered that bloke in On Her Majesty's Secret Service trying to do exactly that and ending up bent double over an enormous horn.

Fortunately the only sign of wildlife I saw was a series of rabbit holes dug into the soft sandy earth beneath a tree, and I was soon through a gate on the other side and onto a road.  I was back in Cheshire now, and I walked through the hamlet of Wirswall before turning off again up a private drive towards Wicksted Old Hall.  Sheep stared at me idly as I walked up the long straight drive towards the house, eventually turning off through the farmyard itself (a brief whiff of cow shed took me straight back to the farm owned by my Uncles Ted and Charlie) and then through a gate.

Soon I was striding across wide expanses of fields, the sun on my back, a gentle breeze whistling past me.  The way was firm, a little moist, but mainly grassland, and I walked confidently from stile to stile.  Some were muddier than others, as you'd expect, but in the main it was a happy stroll through the English countryside.

At that moment I realised how alone I was.  This isn't the same as lonely.  You can be lonely anywhere, missing the simplicity of human contact.  This was me being alone, the nearest other human a mile away, the only moving figure in a landscape of stillness.  I was delighted.  I felt a sense of relaxation and contentment I'd not felt for a while; a sense that if I carried on walking like this, carried on these isolated paths and away from people, I'd be utterly happy.  I even began to sing to myself, belting out kd lang's Surrender at the trees and the hills, even having a crack at that impossible final note.  

The landscape rode upwards in hills, where the grass and soil were thinner.  Here, the path had been dug into the side, a horizontal forced on the gentle curve.  I slipped a little, just slightly, but enough to get me to temper my speed.  I rounded the hill and saw, in the distance, a farmer on an ATV, bouncing his way down the slopes and skidding in the mud.  It rasped out a monotonous tone but I followed his tracks down into the valley.  

The footpath swept down alongside a copse, merging with a bridleway, and I confidently strode on.  This was a mistake.  If you'd been paying attention earlier, you'd have noticed that I mentioned my "new walking boots".  The Rules of Comedy dictate that if someone mentions new boots early on, those boots will be a mess by the end of the story.  

It turned out that the grass I'd stepped onto, cocksure and joyful, was a lie.  It was a carpet of nothingness, floating on top of a thick ugly bog, and I sank into it.  Right into it.  The thick waters swelled over my feet and ankles and splashed up the back of my jeans.  I extricated myself and stood on a rare patch of dry ground, swearing so loudly I could probably be heard all over the valley.  On the plus side, these boots were sold as being waterproof, and they'd not lied: my socks remained unsullied.  I didn't need to squelch at all.

Which isn't to say that it was easy going.  From here on, the path was a mess of mud, puddles and general swampiness.  I found myself springing from dry patch to dry patch, testing out ground, sometimes messing up and sinking some more.  It was not the casual stroll I'd been enjoying half an hour earlier.  It was relentless.

I was passing round the edge of the Big Mere, an unimaginatively titled lake that accounted for the sudden sogginess of the land around it, and while it was very pretty and everything, it was hard to take it in.  The footpath entered the trees on the shore and it became even darker and wetter.  At one point I skidded, and, in the move to stop myself from toppling right over, I wrenched my shoulder; I let out a colossal "fuuuuck!" that actually caused some ducks to fly into the air in fright, like in a movie.

When the land rose up away from the lake it became dryer.  I paused at the edge of a sheep field to stamp my feet and try and shake off some of the worst of the muck.  The sheep and their lambs watched me, slightly judgementally.  Then I continued up the hill and into St Michael and All Angels' churchyard.  The gate had two feathers jammed, quite deliberately, into the release mechanism; it felt like the aftermath of a pagan ritual and by passing through it I'd now cursed myself.

Marbury's villagers knew they had a great view here, and had provided a series of benches to enable you to take it in.  I found one provided In Memory of Barbara Dandy, gave her a silent thanks, and sat down for a drink of water and a moment of calm.

One bottle of Buxton Sparkling later - yes, I prefer sparkling to still water, sue me - I set off to explore Marbury.  Not that there was much to explore.  A pub, a church, a small green.  There were some obvious former council houses threaded along one street, and an old school converted into homes with a cul-de-sac built on the playground.  (The cul-de-sac was called "School Close"; please see my earlier rant about The Sidings and multiply it by a thousand).  One field had a sign in it calling it "The Outlook" with a link to cheshireweddingfield.co.uk, a site that sadly no longer works; my favourite part of that name is the singular of field, implying it was the only one in Cheshire.  Meanwhile, the village hall's noticeboard still had an A4 up for "Paddy's Night" the previous Friday, though the bracketed (Adults Event) carried with it a strong whiff of car keys in a bowl.

School Lane rose slightly to cross the canal, with a lock and a lock keeper's cottage.  Water poured through the sluice gate alongside, and two stout women in wellington boots marched across my path to hit the fields.  They looked incredibly practical ladies, the kind of women who would find an injured bird on their driveway and throttle it to put it out of its misery without a second thought.  I expected them to have some ferocious terriers accompanying them.

This was the Llangollen Canal, which branches off the Shropshire Union Canal to head into Denbighshire via the legendary Pontcysyllte Aqueduct.  That's an exciting, ambitious part of the canal, soaring high above the landscape and designated a World Heritage Site.  This part is... less exciting.

It was my own fault for having that break in the churchyard.  The walk had snapped into two separate parts, and instead of it being a single epic journey it became a before and after.  Striding across the hillsides?  Good.  Trekking along a straight towpath?  Bad.  The South Cheshire Way does, in fact, link Marbury with Wrenbury, so I could've happily continued on it, but I thought the towpath would be an interesting change.  By the time I realised it wasn't it was too late to turn back.

On the plus side, I had the towpath entirely to myself; there wasn't a single other walker the whole route.  A barge passed me at one point, driven by an elderly woman with her husband stood right behind her to make sure she did it right.  I'm never sure if you're meant to say hello in these circumstances.  The canal boat is travelling so slowly and so close to the bank it's possible but, at the same time, why would you?  This is part of my eternal struggle of being a Southerner in the North and discovering that being sullen and ignorant is not the way.  I didn't say hello, of course, but determinedly looked down at my feet as I walked so I didn't make eye contact.

Sometimes there were ducks.  Sometimes there was the gentle burr of farm machinery in the distance.  I passed a "glamping" site (translation: four sheds and an outdoor hot tub) and some men digging for a new fence.  A lifting bridge was left open, seemingly only there to give access to the fields on the other side: the part that worried me about it was the big red STOP sign on the side.  Was the lowered bridge not a signal enough that the canal was blocked?

Wrenbury appeared to my right, mainly new build homes from this angle.  I began to dream of the pint.  I'd spotted, on the Ordnance Survey map, that there was a pub right next to the canal.  Canalside pubs are always good, and I fancied maybe getting myself some lunch there too.  A boatyard on the horizon signalled that the village was approaching.

The pub was closed.  

Apparently, in this part of the world, pubs don't open until three pm, like it's the war or something.  How dare they.  The other pub, further into the village, also didn't open until three.  I'm sorry, was this not England in 2023?  Don't they realise this is a capitalist society and I should be able to buy whatever I want whenever I want?

I mentally wrote off Wrenbury at that moment.  I would get my pint in Nantwich instead.  I pulled out my phone to find when the next train was due and discovered it was - yikes - twelve minutes away.  As I walked, I tapped my destination into Google Maps and it came back with a walking time.

Seventeen minutes.

I was going to have to move fast.

A five minute gap between the estimated time and the time I needed to be there seems insurmountable.  However, what you fail to take into account is I am a homosexual, and I walk (some might call it mince) at a homosexual pace, while Google Maps seems to be predicated on you being an asthmatic pensioner with a dicky walking stick.  However however, I was coming off an eight mile walk across field and vale; I was, to use a technical term, a bit knackered.  It was going to be tight.

I burned through Wrenbury.  My Fitbit would later record the sudden upswing in my heart rate - not quite "alert an ambulance" levels, but certainly "are you really sure you should be doing this?".  I sped through the heart of the village, occasionally breaking into a trot: I can't run at the best of times.  The village green and the village shop and the village school and the village park all rolled by as I counted down in my head the time.  I could make it.  I could make it.

A swing into Station Road, a single track heading south with a narrow pathway.  A corner, and I could see the lights at the level crossing flashing: the barrier was down.  The train was coming.  It wasn't there yet though.  Another trot.  And another.  I could make it.

The train went by.

I saw it go from right to left, between the flashing level crossing lights in the distance, still too far away for me to reach.  Even if I ran - even if I burned it at maximum speed - there was a bend in the road to negotiate, and then the run up the platform.  I'd missed the train.

By the time I reached the shelter the station was silent again. The crossing gates were up and the train was long gone.  It was a two hour wait until the next train to Nantwich.  I was disappointed and also a bit furious with myself.  That pause in the churchyard - that had doubly done for me now.  If I'd pressed on I'd have made the train but no, I had to sit there and admire the view.

As we have already established, the pubs of Wrenbury didn't want my trade, but it seemed there was another one in the next village along, Aston.  I frantically googled it and discovered two things.  Firstly, it didn't even open on a Monday or a Tuesday, so I had absolutely no chance of drowning my sorrows.  Secondly, the pub had the unlikely name of The Bhurtpore Inn.  A History section on the website informed me that it was named after a siege commanded by the local lord of the manor, Lord Combermere where they took control of the Fort of Bhurtpore in 1826.  Apparently this action "finally assured relative peace in the subcontinent for many years" and I would very much like to hear the Indian perspective on this siege that was apparently a trigger for eternal love and happiness.  

But what is Wrenbury the home of?  Answers on a postcard.  The best one wins nothing except my resentment that you came up with a better joke.

I did have a way out.  There was a southbound train a short while afterwards.  It could get me back to Whitchurch which was at least a little more interesting than a remote country station.  I crossed over to the other platform - taking in the clock laid into the wall of the former station building which didn't work - and got ready to wave my arm about.  I'd not realised Wrenbury was a request stop when I'd come here, which was lucky, because that was a whole new level of anxiety.  (And probably meant I would've absolutely missed the train, because without anyone on the platform, it wouldn't have stopped).

And so, to Whitchurch once again, for that elusive pint.  The first pub I went into was entirely empty, with not even a member of staff behind the bar, so after a minute of embarrassed loitering I went up the street to the Old Town Hall Vaults.  This was a great decision.  It turned out to be a proper old boozer, almost empty, but a place where I could hide in the back and decompress.  (Annoyingly, I didn't realise they sold home made pork pies until I was on my way out for the train and I heard another patron order one).  Thank you, by the way, to the anonymous Ko-fi donators who paid for both this pint of beer and the train to Whitchurch; I'm always incredibly grateful and feel very humbled when I check the page and find one of you has made a donation.  You're astonishingly kind.

I don't know if it was the beer or the tiredness, but I decided not to bother with Nantwich.  I could go there any time - it was one stop down from Crewe, after all.  Instead I slid into the seat and felt utterly content.

Notes from Another Time

One of the longest direct train routes from Lime Street is the service to Norwich.  Departing every hour, the train crosses the width of the country, heading from the north west to East Anglia and calling at the likes of Manchester, Sheffield and Nottingham on the way.  Like all travel that doesn't involve heading towards London in the UK, it's a slow, meandering route that doesn't seem to know if it's an intercity or a local.  The trains are diesels, because much of the route isn't electrified, and there's nothing fancy like a shop on board.  

Obviously I was going to have to take this train sometime, and I finally did on the 23rd June 2016.  If that doesn't ring a bell, first of all, lucky you; secondly, it was the date of the Brexit referendum.  I voted in the morning then trotted off to Lime Street, not realising that it was the last day of Britain being a relatively normal country.  I was getting the East Midlands Trains (not Railway then) service and I was going to take copious notes.  In fact, my notepad is basically a constant stream of observations for the journey, six hours of scribbling, twenty-one pages of tiny writing, which I'm now going to reproduce here.  I've tidied it up a bit, removed the spelling mistakes and the odd name, but otherwise, this is what happened to me and what I was thinking for that whole trip.

LIVERPOOL TO NORWICH - 23rd June 2016.

10:45.  Primed and ready to pounce at the button.  Surrounded by pensioners in bright florals and polka dots eyeing me shiftily.  They're worried I'm going to take their seat, I can tell.  They've got that hopping anxiety, side-eyes to watch me in case I try to get ahead of them.  My relative youth means I win out though, because my eyes are good enough to spot when the button lights up, despite the bright sunlight.  I'm in there, pushing ahead of them while they're still gathering up cases.

My seat is a table; I don't normally like tables when I'm travelling alone.  I'm always worried I'm going to end up surrounded by teenagers, or worse, chatty people.  People who want to make friends.  People who think a five hour train journey is a chance to mingle.  Sod that.  I want to sit in silence with a podcast in my ears.  My reserved seat is facing backwards, which is annoying.  I unload a packet of crisps and a Coke Zero for the trip, storing the rest of my lunch under the seat.  

A tiny Asian woman, barely five feet tall, hesitates by my table.  She puts down her big leather handbag, brown, with a jacket poking out the top, then picks it up again and wanders off.  Soon she's back.  She sits down uncertainly.

"Is this the Norwich train?"

"Yes," I say, and she thanks me and goes back to looking a bit anxious.  Now I'm anxious too, worrying that maybe this isn't the Norwich train, and now this poor lady and I are going to end up in Carlisle together.

The diesel engines, which have been running continuously, suddenly cut out.  As one the passengers wonder if we've broken down.  Then they start again, there's a whistle, and we trundle out of the station, my companion nervously checking the envelope with her tickets as we go.

We're still in the Lime Street tunnels when the guard appears for a ticket check, bald and gruff, scrawling a twist with his biro, and we're just out of Edge Hill when the trolley appears.  The voice over the tannoy confirms that we're headed for Norwich so I can breathe easy again.  The trolley boy is dark and stubbly, skinny, with a black flower tattoo poling out from his rolled up sleeve.

Estimated time of arrival at Norwich, says the guard, is around 16:10.  This is the longest single train service I've taken since the Sleeper; standard class all the way, no extras, just a load of red seats to stare at.

South Parkway.  The woman opposite looks vaguely like she wanted a cup of tea, but was too shy to stop the trolley boy.  Though it may have been her general nervousness; she sits sideways so that we don't catch each other's eye accidentally.  There are black inky fingerprints on the cornflower blue table, a remnant of the previous occupier.  Do newspapers still give you inky fingers?  I thought they all moved to computer colour printing.  Maybe it was the Telegraph, refusing to go with these modern (1980s) technologies. 

A quick look at the train app as we reach Widnes and we're already three minutes late.  I break open the Coke.  At Warrington, she puts her handbag on her lap to free up the seat; it's reserved from Peterborough.  When we leave the station and no-one sits down she moves the bag back.

It's quiet, this train, conversations in hushed murmurs; when a phone rings, the bell is the noisiest part - the rest of the conversation is in strange whispers.  As we pass under the M6, the lady moves to the offset seat, and I try not to feel hurt.  Would stretching out my legs into her recently vacated space be rude?  Yes, it probably would, so I stay hunched up.  Although then I glanced to my right and spotted that not only had she stretched out, she'd also taken her shoes off, revealing two slightly grey heels and bronze nail polish.  That's not on.  I mean, admittedly she was only wearing sandals - there was no unlacing of shoes - but still.

We're approaching Oxford Road.  A clatter of branches from an unkempt tree, then the island of tall apartment blocks that fascinate me.  A woman on a balcony adjusts her bra through her blouse.  We're due to get a third for our quartet at Oxford Road.  Obviously the hope is they won't turn up.  The back of Home, and a couple of towers.

The platform is packed.  Hare Krishnas on the platform at Oxford Road and our seat mate arrives, a woman in her fifties with a mop of brown and grey perm.  She stows her suitcase then puts her other two bags on the table, canvas woven in bright colours.  She's got a travel mug of a tea and a tiny homemade roll wrapped in clingfilm.  Pink leggings and two or three layers.  "With the air con on, it's a bit cold," she says to the Asian lady.

"Chilly," she agrees, smiling.

Piccadilly.  

Stockport looks pretty, the Co-op pyramid poking out of the trees like a Mayan ruin.  The woman next to me pulls out her glasses, then some crochet work.  She's making a jumper or cardigan, picking at threads.

There's a patch of astroturf on Stockport platform.  Finally the seats across the way fill up; three men in their 60s with bags that won't fit in the overhead rack.  They dump them in the vacant seat.  "Put your seatbelt on," one jokes, and they all giggle.  They're going to North Norfolk; I think they may possibly be train people.  There's certainly no sniff of wives.

"It does get a bit tedious after Sheffield," one warns, the only one with hair; his two companions are bald as eggs.  Yep, they're train nerds; they're talking about chords and the LNWR.

My companion rolls a ball of blue wool the same colour as the table top out as my watch ticks over onto 12.  The ladies begin to chat, first about where they're going, then the Asian lady compliments her crochet work - "it's beautiful."

"It's just a blanket.  It never turns out the way you want it."

An unscheduled stop at Hazel Grove, presumably something to do with the flooding.  The train men are talking about routes and which ones they've done as we plunge into the tunnel beyond Manchester, the one you enter in a landscape of suburbs and industry and emerge into green.  It's the bit of line that makes me think of Diamond Geezer, and trudging around a hill.  

Actually the train nerd with hair is quite hot in a DILF kind of way.  Distinguished in a checked shirt and sandy M&S slacks.  His mates are not hot.

I started wondering if I should have something to eat.  I'm not especially hungry but it would break up the boredom.  I'm a bit put off because I can't remember what flavour my crisps are; I suspect they're a bit stinky.  I'll leave it.

Train folks are talking about the Woodhead Tunnel.  I suddenly realise this is me, Robert and Ian in twenty years time.  I hope I am the hot one.  "So do we agree that privatisation has been a good thing?" one pronounces and I switch off.

To be honest I'm annoyed they haven't recognised me.  I'm a very very minor face in the world of railway blogging!  I knew I shouldn't have taken these couple of months off.  I'm already forgotten.  

Edale is damp and green, lush, thick grass and trees.  The Asian woman has pulled out a very dense, very boring looking conference agenda and is looking through it.  I can only see a few words and they don't seem to connect into a sentence.  Just before Sheffield, the crochet woman drops a needle, and I actually talk to her as she retrieves it.

"Have you dropped something?"

"It's ok, I can see it."

Very proud of myself for not fucking up that interaction.

She shifts from blue to purple wool.  At Sheffield, the train goes back the way it came; suddenly I'm facing forwards.

In the row behind the trainspotters there's a middle-aged man and his doddery old mum.  She's fallen asleep but he's eating his lunch.  A white bread roll that he's putting ready salted crisps into, and a plastic bag with a quartered pork pie.

The Asian lady puts her coat on.  "It's chilly."

"It's the air conditioning, I think," says the other lady.  I like the fact that they're having the same conversation in reverse.

A new ticket inspector, bluff Sheffield, checks all our tickets again while the trainspotters talk pubs and restaurants.  They have a voucher; "it's pasta or pizza only, from the fixed menu."  The trolley boy is the same though.  

A check of the app and we're four minutes late; we got back on target in Manchester and lost it again at Hazel Grove.

"I used to do that," says the tiny woman, pointing at the blanket.

"I started it in February," her new friend replies.  "It's something to do on the train or in front of the telly.  Or waiting for the kids to finish their swimming lessons."  The Asian lady is returning home to Nottingham after three days in Liverpool on a course.  "It'll be nice to get home."

"Well, yes, but I'll have to go back to work."  She pulls out a grey silk scarf with black spots, and Crochet Lady coos "that's beautiful", and I think they're definitely repeating themselves now.

It seems to be the toilet shift; the door hisses open and shut as a stream of passengers make their way.  I'm trying not to think about it.

Trainspotters move onto model railways - "Hornby have just brought out the Q6" - and have a tupperware with a bun and a couple of sandwiches and a thermos.  One of them has, anyway, the taller bald man; he doesn't seem to be sharing.  Meanwhile the middle-aged son is playing a fruit machine game on his phone.  I know this because I can hear it loudly paying out.

Alfreton.  Haphazard details of my visit swim in my head, the heat, the road, a convenience store where I bought water, the general Midlands-ness of it all.  Going the wrong way and having to turn back, a mining village, a canal walk, cows.  Finally the station, tired and hot, not being able to sit down because the shelter was full of trainspotters with tripods.  

The Asian lady begins to redistribute the contents of her handbag into her pockets, getting ready.  A moth flies right by my face and crashes into the window before vanishing.

"I wonder how the voting's going," says the Crochet lady, and I brace myself.  They chat generally - the polls are open so she can vote when she gets in, the results will be out in the morning, they'll count through the night - but neither asks how they're voting.  I'll put Asian lady down as remain but Crochet Lady is harder to read; she could go either way.  There could be a Daily Mail stashed in her handbag.

There's actually works at Ilkeston!  It's happening!

The Trainspotters have moved onto European railway systems and their failure to implement decent platform heights.  "I thought disability standards were all across Europe!  I thought we all had to do it!"  I tense up again.  Maybe I just shouldn't listen to other people's conversations.

Nottingham.  Of course the last time I went here I went to Hooters.  Still a bit ashamed of that.

"Prague's worth a visit but it's full of schoolkids on trips."

The Asian lady says goodbye to her pal and leaves us.  The seat reservation says we'll be getting a new companion.  On the platform at Nottingham is an old man with a cane wearing a grey hoodie with a picture of John Wayne on the back.  The trolley boy disembarks with a clatter.

Our new companion is an old lady with big dark glasses in a sleeveless top.  She leans across and says, "I always wanted to learn to crochet.  You could've taught me on the way!"  They immediately bond; our new companion knits and sews and patchworks.  I feel like joining in with my love for the Sewing Bee and how Rumana was robbed but I keep quiet.  I did pipe up when the new lady arrived to point out the Asian woman hadn't been sitting in the right seat; written down it sounds like I was a pedantic bastard but it wasn't like that.  Not entirely.

Ooh, the Trainspotters are talking about some gay!  "Does his mother know?  His brother must know.  He's reasonably intelligent."  I think DILF might be a gay too.

We leave Nottingham past the rotting hulks of warehouses - finally a bit of unfamiliar track.  And only halfway.

Now the smaller bald man has broken out his sandwiches - they smell of meat.  Yup, DILF is definitely A Gay, with a German boyfriend.  I remember the dark fingerprints; I hope the lady didn't dirty her wool.

New lady pulls out her lunch - "I think my daughter thought I was travelling for a week!"  She's been visiting her daughter, looking after her grandkids.  Another ticket inspection, this time a smiling man; his aftershave lingers after he leaves.  

Everyone is eating now.  The carriage is thick with the smell of room temperature bread.  I wonder whether to eat my sarnies, feeling inadequate next to these two ladies with their home made snack boxes - I bought mine at M&S.  The new trolley boy looks like a young Kevin Eldon.  I decide to go for it with my ham and mustard while Crochet asks the age of Old Lady's grandchildren - "Seven and five.  A lovely age."

"But hard work."

"Ooh yes."

I'm amazed by their skilful small talk.  I just can't manage it.  My mind goes blank and I'm lost.  I answer the questions yes or no then scour my brain for follow up questions that never come.  

Nottinghamshire is hazy, swathed in grey.  The guard singsongs over the tannoy: "ladies aaaaaaaand gentlemen."  

Grantham's home of the Woodland Trust, apparently.  Growing up I thought that Margaret Thatcher was Northern, because I thought Grantham was in the north; it sort of is, and sort of isn't.  The Trainspotters get excited by a freight train waiting across the way, and there's the click of an iPhone camera as they preserve it for posterity.  

I've got pen on my arm.  I've been on this train for three and a half hours.  I'm not entirely convinced I'll actually be able to walk if I get out of my seat.  Middle-aged Son stands and stretches as we hover at Grantham, engine running, waiting for a train to pass on the main line.  Finally an HST burns by and we chug out of the platform.  

We'd been warned that the refreshment trolley is leaving at Peterborough and Small Bald has had a bit of a panic.  He walks down the carriage, first asking the guard, then nipping into the next car.  He finally reappears.  "He's coming down in a minute."  The ladies pull out purses for a final tea.  I've come out without any cash and I'm not going to pay for a cuppa with a card so I'll stick to the bottle of water in my bag.  (The Coke Zero was finished off somewhere around Alfreton).  

The trolley boy is a bit sweet, chucking out his pre-prepared lines as the older lady orders a latte with sugar - "white or brown, my love?"  That's another thing I can't do, the friendly little affectations, the chummy finishes.  I can. on a good day, manage a "mate", but it's usually attached to something a bit aggressive.  It's not parrotted the way some people manage - mate mate mate mate.  The guard returns through the carriage, hunched over, looking a bit like a cartoon character.

Big Bald is getting a footplate experience at the start of July, a birthday present.

"I thought it was a driving experience?"

"That was about two hundred pounds more."

I'm thinking about having a pee.  I'd have to interrupt Crochet Lady's crocheting but it's probably about time.  Maybe.  There's a queue so I can last.  I actually want a little sleep, but I can't doze on trains, I can't.  I'm convinced someone will steal my things.  The only time I dozed was after waking up too early on the Caledonian Sleeper and nodding off on the train back to Glasgow.  Fortunately that train was so packed no-one would've been able to run off with my bag.

Old Lady is reading Val McDermid while the Trainspotters lecture Small Bald about his tea making techniques - "the fat in the milk blocks the holes in the tea bag."  The Old Lady's two-sugared latte smells tooth destroyingly sweet.  I have a bottle of fizzy water.

Peterborough is signalled by a pretty waterworks building, and then the backs of retail parks.  The dome and tower of a mosque.  Some extremely noisy people board, but they're in the wrong carriage.  There doesn't seem to be any sign of the woman who should be sitting in the old lady's seat, lucky for her; she's all settled in.  There's no sign of whoever should be sitting the Trainspotters' luggage seat either.  

Middle-aged Son's fruit machine app pays out again.  Crochet Lady dumps her stuff on the seat and goes to the loo; clearly it's a sign that I need to go while she's out of her seat.  Finally burst through to the toilet.  Just a square with a scratched toilet seat on a metal cone.  I pee and hurry back to my seat, pleased my legs still work after all that time in one spot.  

Flat fenlands out the window, infinite and featureless, trees as landscapes.  Very much had enough now.

"Good book?" asks Crochet.

"Yes.  Very gruesome."

I'm keeping my eye out for Ely cathedral.  I've never seen it, but of course I know of its reputation for being huge.  I'm probably on the wrong side of the train.

A howl of the horn.  I wonder how many train drivers we've had.  Travelling this far is unacceptable for drivers but fine for passengers.  The guard comes over the speakers to tell us "we're approaching... Ely... for services to... Cambridge."  He's astonishingly laid back.

Ely cathedral is hugely impressive and hugely out of place.  It floats over the rooftops, completely out of proportion to the town below.  

"There are loads of people getting on at Ely," DILF warns.  "Best move your things."  They stow them behind the seat backs and a teenager slips in their place.  He moves off though, and a terribly posh girl whips out her laptop and takes his place.  Surprisingly we then reverse, and I'm going backwards again.  Old Lady's phone burrs and tinkles but she doesn't notice; when she does she holds it with the delicacy of a woman afraid it may explode.

Posh girl is now chatting animatedly to Small Bald about Steeleye bloody Span and Quadrangle.  There is no escape for me.  They went to see them at the Royal Exchange.  DILF is disinterested, confirming his status as the Best One.

In the sky, a fighter jet, flying so flat, so fast, not doing that thing where planes seem to go slow in the distance.  This is fast.  It banks and curves away.  

Now Posh Girl is chatting to the guard about the flooding.  Everyone can just make chat.

Lakenheath!  Octopussy!  Ridiculously thrilled.  Explains the fighter jet anyway.  Posh Girl and Small Bald are really deep in conversation now.  Meanwhile Crochet and Old Lady discuss knitting.  "Do you knit for your grandchildren?"

"No.  They're allergic to wool, for a start."

Thetford station, advertising the Dad's Army museum.  Penultimate but still three quarters of an hour to go.  There's nothing.  Nothing in between.  It's different to the north where there's landscape and scenery and life.  Houses in the middle of nowhere.  Here it's just emptiness.  Fields and trees.  Little life.

Middle-aged Son has pulled on a bomber jacket; he's ready to leave.  His mum has woken up too, and stares out the window.

I've had enough.  Also Small Bald's voice is starting to go through me.  I feel awkward for the girl.  When the men were talking it was fine but now it's weird.  They explain their story to Meryl (that's her name) - that they went to grammar school together and now they meet up once a year to do something train related.  They're embarrassed, and Meryl picks up on it, but Small Bald doesn't, and tries to get them to whip out their old pictures.  They refuse, so he describes the picture instead; black and white, four of them, at Carlisle station trainspotting.  They're meeting three friends so I wonder who was left out.

The ladies have packed up their reading and their hobbycraft; we're all ready for the end.  Finally I give in and put on a podcast again, RHLSTP, because I can't take any more.  I adjust my seat and realise the ladies are dozing.  All this way and right at the death they decide to sleep.  Anxieties again; do I wake them at Norwich?  Although I have to because I'm trapped.  I keep catching Middle-aged Son's eye, or is he catching mine?  He doesn't seem happy either.  Have I missed something?  Have I done something?  Unless he snuck a look at my notebook while I was in the loo.  Could be possible.  Now I feel a bit guilty.  Sod it; I'm never meeting these people again.  

The endless skies are darkening now as we approach Norwich - hopefully not a sign.  My phone power is low.  I glanced over at the Old Lady and she opened her eyes at that exact moment, which was awkward.  Farms, a load of chicken coops.  Small Bald goes to the toilet and the conversation dies.  Big Bald is forced to lean in and take over the chat.  Horses gathered under a bridge.  Big Bald appears to be explaining the etymology of the word "tramp"; I missed how this came up and now I'm desperately trying to work it out.  A gravel plant as we come into Norwich, crossing the river and passing the depot.  Time to wake up and go.

Tunnel Bore

For a city built on rock at the edge of a river, Liverpool is surprisingly porous.  There are tunnels and passages threaded throughout.  The Mersey Tunnels, of course; two for road traffic, one for rail.  There are bore holes and subways; there's even the remains of a pneumatic tube system, used to ferry messages from office to office before telephones became common.

The tunnels that catch my imagination, though, are the Victoria and Wapping Tunnels.  Running from Edge Hill to the city centre, these two (well, technically three: a cutting separates one of them into the Waterloo and Victoria Tunnels) abandoned routes under the city are magnets for transport enthusiasts, historians, urban explorers and ambitious architects.

I'd always wanted to trace their paths under the city, so, on an idle weekday a few weeks ago when the weather wasn't too bad, I set off along the Strand to walk to what was once Park Lane Goods Station.  From 1830 to 1972 this was the head of a freight line, plugging the city centre into the national railway system.

Now it's a mess of businesses that gravitate towards big patches of open land in city centres.  A surface car park, a car hire place, a builder's merchant.  At the back, some Portakabins acting as site offices for the nearby development projects, with health and safety notices and hard hat area signs.  I followed the footpath right to the end of the street.

There it is: the tunnel portal.  If I'd got some bolt cutters and some spelunking gear, I could've walked straight to Edge Hill station - not much over a mile in a straight line.  As it was, I turned round and headed back down the road, past a lad from the builder's yard on his fag break, and turned into Blundell Street.  The McDonald's there was filled with hi-vis jacketed builders, their fluorescent bodies shining through the windows.

It was a reminder that this part of town was changing rapidly.  For decades it's just been a sea of empty warehouses and industrial units and abandoned, rotting shells, but now it's the Baltic Triangle: Liverpool's hottest new address.  The City Centre has spread southwards, and those warehouses first filled with artists and club nights, and then they became tech industries and startups, and now they're becoming apartment buildings.  The gaps in the landscape, there since the Luftwaffe did their own bit of town planning in the forties, are starting to be filled with steel and brick and glass.

It's a bit of Liverpool I've never really gone into.  For a long time there was no reason to head down here and now, as it becomes the place to be, I don't feel at home here.  I don't have an asymmetric haircut and skinny jeans.  I don't listen to the newest music.  I did once have a coffee in the Baltic Social and, while it was a wonderful space and everyone was very nice, I did feel like the chaperone at a teenage party.  And that was at lunchtime; goodness only knows what it's like in the evening.  It also means I'm far too self-conscious to venture into Sonic Yootha, a club night in Kitchen Street which sounds like just my kind of thing.  I mean, it's named after Mildred Roper.  Yootha is wasted on the young.

Across St James Street and into the network of cul-de-sacs that were built by the Council in the 1980s, and which now seem incredibly out of place.  In a few years these will be a enclave of desirable homes in the city - a garden and a driveway five minutes walk from Liverpool 1! - but now they're a clunking bit of suburbia that somehow got dislodged and floated inside the inner ring road.  I dodged the man on a child's bike, circling round and round, waiting for a rendezvous that I very much doubt was legal, and went into Great George Square.

It's odd that a building as huge and dominant as the Anglican Cathedral can sneak up on you, but there it was, suddenly looming over me.  Good cities always surprise you.  Liverpool does it better than most.

Good cities also have oddities in the corners, curiosities in plain sight.  The Wapping Tunnel was built in an age of steam trains and all that billowing smoke had to go somewhere.  The engineers built four brick shafts to ventilate the route, and three of them are still there.  And they're huge.

I'm willing to be that most of the local residents don't even notice that.  A four storey brick tower poking out of some waste ground and it just becomes part of the landscape.  I headed back into the square, following the path of the tunnel as it passed under Chinatown.

If you're the kind of person who loves railways - and if you're reading this blog, you probably are - this is the most frustrating part of the Wapping Tunnel's route.  Beneath Great George Street, in the shadow of the cathedral, right at the tip of Chinatown, the Wapping Tunnel and the Northern Line cross over.  Two underground railway lines intersecting without a station; that's the kind of thing that gets a certain kind of railway fan frustrated and angry.  I'm one of them.  But I'll come back to that later.

I crossed by the Chinese Arch, where a man was explaining its history to a group of enthusiastic primary school kids, and disappeared into the Georgian back streets.  Given that I was only a few minutes walk from the centre of the city, they were oddly silent, and I walked down the centre of the road without being troubled by any traffic.

The Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts crowned the top of the street at its junction with Hope Street.  I could hear a full-throated choral performance echoing from inside; the windows on the corner were filled with racks of spangly costumes.

Across the road and I found another of those ventilation shafts, neatly fenced off behind a nursery school.  I wonder if the well-off merchants who lived in these streets when the tunnel was built were consulted about its construction?  Was there a planning procedure in the early 19th century?  Or was it just, "we need to build this.  Shut up."

This is another bit of the city I don't really know.  In general, if there isn't a railway station close by, I don't know anything about that part of town.  I was chatting to a friend the other day, and he mentioned he'd been to a market in Old Swan; I genuinely couldn't tell you whereabouts in Liverpool that is.  On the other hand, I could probably find Cressington or Old Roan with my eyes closed.

I do know that whenever I end up north of Hope Street I'm enchanted by it.  What's not to like?  Quiet streets of pretty Georgian houses, discreet mews, trees and cobbles.  It's a wonderful part of the city centre that feels like a secret.  Perhaps not for much longer; again, there were the cranes and scaffolding of new developments, luxury apartments, exclusive town houses, as the recolonisation of the inner city continued.

I ducked down Bedford Street, coming out by what had used to be Myrtle Parade.  That had been a low, concrete 1970s precinct full of takeaways.  Now it's been replaced by a block of redbrick student housing, with the inevitable Tesco Metro at its base.  You know how in London, you're never more than six feet from a rat?  In Liverpool, you're never more than six feet from a Tesco Metro.

There used to be a ventilation shaft for the Wapping Tunnel here, too, on Chatham Place, but that was demolished some time ago.  Now it's just a lot of student flats.

Behind the acres of university accommodation, however, there's a spot of green open space.  Crown Street Park is a bit of open land that could be anywhere.  Some grass, a couple of playgrounds, some paths.

For the railway fan, it's a far more important site.  It's basically a place of pilgrimage.  Firstly, there's the Wapping ventilation shaft.  Perhaps the biggest of the lot, or maybe it just looks that way because it's surrounded by open land.  Once again I was taken by how completely incongruous it is, and yet everyone accepted it.  You know how in Doctor Who, they explain that people just ignore the Tardis - that it's just there, and people look round it?  It's like that.  Metres of tall brick towering over the landscape, and people just walked their dogs, like it was completely acceptable.

More importantly, Crown Street was the site of the world's first intercity station.  Stephenson's Rocket took off from here in 1830 and changed everything.  The station lasted for six years, but it was too far from the city centre.  There's a high ridge of rock that encircles Liverpool - most obvious at Everton Brow - and so Crown Street was the easiest place to site the station.  Passengers were forced to transfer to carriages for the final part of the journey.

Everyone realised this was a bad idea almost immediately, and so they dug the series of cuttings and tunnels that are still in use today to get the railway to Lime Street.  Crown Street only lasted six years; the site was converted into a goods station, which lasted 140 years before closing in 1972 and becoming the park.  It's a bland stretch of grass, oddly shaped, with uneven contours; it seems to be a park because that was the simplest way of dealing with a messy spot.  There is a single piece of railway line still here though, a stretch of track that juts into a cutting to allow trains to reverse at Edge Hill if necessary.

Edge Hill was Crown Street's replacement, a sop to the district now that the important people were going elsewhere, at the head of the rail works.  I came here in 2009 and it hasn't really changed.  It hasn't really changed in 180 years, let's be honest.  The same bricks, the same low slung, discreet buildings, constructed before a railway aesthetic had developed.  No-one knew what a railway station should look like back then.

I had a wander down to the platform level.  This is where the lines split in three.  To the south, there's the Wapping Tunnel.  In the centre, the routes to Lime Street, the path recently closed by a collapsed wall.  To the north, the entrance to the Victoria Tunnel.

It's a sad station, Edge Hill.  Too close to the city for commuting, too far out for a decent journey.  Most trains passing through miss it entirely.  But it's huge, spreading across four wide platforms, line after line stretching away.  It's empty and mostly silent.

I walked around for a while, snapping photos, the only one about.  Then I walked back up the cobbled street to Tunnel Road, to return to town via the Victoria and Waterloo Tunnels.

This is another bit of town that's being transformed.  Huge swathes of terraced streets between Wavertree Road and Edge Lane were demolished, replaced with smaller, tidier town houses and apartments.  It's been a clunky, badly executed change though, slow to catch on, meaning that homes have been surrounded by empty space and building sites for years.  On the south side of the road was the first of the Victoria Tunnel's ventilation shafts.  Smaller and much less impressive than the Wapping Tunnels, its little conical cap turning it into a turret in search of a castle.

I cut down the side of Taskers, one of my favourite local chains.  Their branch at Speke is a true treasure trove.  On the one hand, it's a DIY store, with cement and floor tiles and chainsaws.  On the other, it's home to some of the most ghastly home furnishings you have ever seen.  It's aisle after aisle of bejewelled, glitzy tat, and it's utterly marvelous.  Sequinned lizards?  Portraits of Marilyn Monroe with a tattoo painted on her arm?  Mirrors with frames that Louis XIV would have thought a bit over the top?  All these can be yours!  It's the epicentre of a very Scouse brand of bling, and it is to be cherished.

Round the back of an industrial unit, tucked away in the yard, I found the next ventilation shaft.

I walked down the hill back into town.  This was the slightly less glamorous approach to the city centre, thronged with disheveled council houses and abandoned pubs.  The cuttings to Lime Street broke up the landscape, creating holes over and over that fragmented the streetscape.

On Smithdown Lane, near the police station and behind some more student homes, I found a quiet mews with this plaque:

I'd quite like to be called a "pioneer of tunnels".  All I need is some unemployed men and an eccentric mind.  Joseph Williamson set the men to work building a network of tunnels under his home, a network that is still being uncovered today.  No-one is entirely sure why.  Most think it was a job creation scheme, but there's also a strong argument that Joseph Williamson was just a bit odd.  It's a strange, curious place I've never actually got round to visiting, so I looked forward to checking it out - except:

Story of my life.

Instead I continued to the back of what was once Archbishop Blanch School.  They moved to a new site a few years ago, leaving a massive plot of land right on the edge of the city centre just begging to be redeveloped.  The school buildings were demolished leaving the two Victoria ventilation shafts exposed, listed structures and unmoveable:

This is going to be a new district of offices and technical buildings, supporting the university and the new hospital over the road.  The Royal College of Physicians are going to open a new northern outpost here, there's an international college about to start construction, plus a series of specialty medical buildings.  It's all very impressive.  To support it, Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson has suggested there should be a new railway station which has caused both excitement and confusion.

As is obvious, the Victoria Tunnel runs right under the site, making it perfect for an underground station.  It's also obvious that the tunnel hasn't been used for nearly fifty years, is single track, and is partially flooded, so it would be expensive to build.  Perhaps he meant a new station on the Lime Street route?  That also passes close by, with a cutting behind the University's vet school:

But that would mean opening out the route into Lime Street, which is incredibly expensive, and sticking a new station right in the way of all the fast trains into and out of Liverpool.  It doesn't seem to make sense either way.

The tunnels were planned for Merseyrail use once before.  Back in the Seventies, when the Link and the Loop were under construction to bring underground rail to Liverpool, a third phase was planned.  The trains that currently form the City Line would be sent into the Victoria Tunnel after Edge Hill, then into a new bit of tunnel to a University station under the Student Union, then into the Wapping Tunnel to get it to Liverpool Central from the south.  I've turned to highly expensive CGI to show how this would have happened:

True artistry, I'm sure you'll agree.

It didn't happen, because the Link and Loop overran and no-one in the 1970s had any money.  There were header tunnels built to the south of Central, ready to accept the new trains if the route was ever built, but nothing ever happened.  In a way, it was lucky, because Central is already hopelessly under capacity, its island platform handling 15 million people a year; stick the Huyton services in there too and things would get dangerous.

It all leads to hope, though, and hope is a dangerous and powerful drug for a railway fan.  Tunneling under a city is an incredibly expensive and difficult task.  Liverpool has two railway tunnels just sitting there, waiting, unused, and it leads to imagination and fantasy.  Do a quick google search and you'll find loads of ideas for "extending Merseyrail", maps and diagrams and even full on plans of stations.  And it's lovely in a way - it's great that people care and have imagination.  I fully admit to letting my mind wander now and then, imagining new metro lines beneath the city.  It all comes from love.

It can go too far.  Someone told me about the term crayonista, a person who draws lines on a map and says "let's just do that!"  The Victoria and Wapping tunnels encourage those extreme crayonista tendencies, because people think you can just build a metro on the cheap because there's a tunnel there already.  You can't.  The most expensive part of a metro is the station, for a start - building and fitting out a deep underground hole for access to that tunnel.  As I walked the routes I went through some wonderful, untouched spots of the city.  Would it be great if there were underground stations to give them access to the wider transport network?  Absolutely.  Would the cost of building them be in any way justified by passenger numbers?  I doubt it.  But there are furious debates and angry justifications all over the place as people shout at one another about how much better it would be for everyone if there were metro stations on every corner.  Railfans want more railways, and they get very passionate about their ideas.

Sometimes I wonder if the tunnels should just be filled in.  Just take away that hope.  It'd cut down on a lot of internet arguing.

(For the record: my fantasy would be a short tunnel from Speke via the airport to South Parkway, then above ground along the City Line to the Wapping Tunnel, building new stations at Bedford Street for the university, Chinatown for interchange with the Northern Line, and a terminus at the King's Dock.  It's a brilliant plan, and would totally work, and anyone who argues is wrong.  Also this line would be called the Scott Line).

South, past the new Royal Liverpool Hospital, which I still can't decide if I like or not.  Is it bold or clunky?  Is it impressive or a mess?  I can't decide.  It's certainly different to the old, grey shell of the 1970s hospital, but I'm not sure if different actually means "better".

Pembroke Place has now been almost completely colonised by the University, with teaching buildings on one side and the dental school on the other.  At its foot, however, it opens out into a brief square outside the venerable Liverpool institution that is TJ Hughes.

I have to confess, I've never actually been inside TJ Hughes.  It's just a little bit too far out of the city centre for me.  If only there was a railway station here... NO.  STOP.

Down a side street to another cleared site, ready for development, and the last of the ventilation shafts.  It used to be at the back of the National Express coach station, but they relocated to Liverpool 1 a couple of years ago and the building was levelled ready for a block of - yes - student flats.

I headed down Islington, the huge swathe of dual carriageway that sweeps you up from the tunnels towards Edge Lane.  The pavement narrowed, then narrowed a bit more, and soon I was on a barely there strip of pavement with trucks and cars speeding past.  I was happy to slip beneath the concrete overpass, into a strange netherworld of empty ground and parking spaces at the back of the World Museum.  It felt like a space that should be used for something, but I'm not sure what.

A series of traffic lights shepherded me in a right angle so that I could reach the other side of the road.  Slightly set back from the road, with a patch of green around it, there's a brick wall.  This is actually the edge of a cutting, the point where the Victoria Tunnel meets the Wapping Tunnel: a void leading underground.

The water fountain is of course broken and unused.  Now it's a handy bin for antisocial arseholes.

I stepped away from the swirl of traffic on the Scotland Road and into another quiet estate of 1980s houses.  The clunk between city and suburbia is even more pronounced here; playgrounds and bungalows right next to masses of apartments and office blocks, with more to come.  I wondered how comfortable it was to relax in your back garden on a sunny summer Saturday when you're aware that eight floors of residents can all see you spread out on the lounger.

I crossed the mad whirl of traffic that is Leeds Street and wandered up Pall Mall.  The building site was empty and silent, its construction halted by rumours about financing and dodgy deals.  The Waterloo Tunnel broke cover here, rising out of the ground then under Great Howard Street to the Waterloo Goods Station.

Great Howard Street crosses the line on a bridge.  Even though there aren't any trains using it any more - and probably never will be - that bridge is being rebuilt right now, closing off the bottom of a busy route into the city.  Like I said: block up the tunnels.

The goods station closed in 1972, and is now a Costco and a Toys R Us, their enormous flat bulks slotting neatly into what was once a massive space for railways.  It wasn't the end of the line though.  The trains continued across Waterloo Road and on to the Prince's Dock.

In the days of trans-Atlantic passenger ships, the Victoria and Waterloo tunnels gave a convenient route for boat trains.  They'd cross the road and then pull into Riverside station, on the Prince's Dock, right next to the departure point for the ships.  It was a huge transport interchange that was killed by aeroplanes.

And now there's nothing left.  The dock is a quiet, sedate strip of land by the river, surrounded by apartments and hotels, a canal route marked out through its centre.  There's nothing left of the old Riverside station, which was only demolished in the 1990s.  It boggles my mind to think that if I'd arrived in the city a couple of years earlier I could've seen the rusting hulk of an abandoned station here.

Liverpool is a beautiful, wonderful city.  I've lived in this part of the world for over 21 years now, more than half my life, and it still delights and surprises me.  I loved wandering round bits of it I'd never seen before, tracing the routes of a couple of tunnels most people don't even know are there.  Will they ever see trains again?  I doubt it.  But it's always thrilling to know that there's a secret world beneath your feet.