The Definitive Ranking Of Merseyrail Lines

This is an homage* (*blatant rip off) of the excellent Buzzfeed post by Tom Phillips you can read here.  He's a bit harsh on the Northern Line, and I wouldn't have put the DLR first because it's not a Tube line, but anyway: at least he is satisfyingly cruel and cutting about the Arabfly Dangleway.

THE DEFINITIVE RANKING OF MERSEYRAIL LINES

Note On Methodology: for the purposes of this evaluation, the lines are broken down into sections, based on their terminus - so there are four entries for the Wirral Line, and three for the Northern Line.  Otherwise this would be a very short list, and I would miss the opportunity to waffle on.  I'm also going to deal only with the bits of lines that exist entirely on the Merseyrail map, so if you want to hear complaints about the points work at Manchester Oxford Road you'll have to go elsewhere.


19.  That annoying bit of red line between Earlestown and Warrington Bank Quay

It's too short, it has a stupid kink in the middle, and it doesn't really relate to any proper services.

18.  Ellesmere Port to Helsby and beyond

Because it gets about four trains a month, and to get one you have to clamber up and over the bridge at Ellesmere Port like a hamster in a run. It's like they don't want you to use it.

17.  The line to Blackpool North.

A route which exists purely to carry low-rent stag parties to fun pubs, and which never quite shakes off the smell of stale booze and unspent testosterone.

16.  Ormskirk - Preston

Everyone tumbles off the fast, frequent, electric Merseyrail train and wanders up to a manky Pacer that's chugging like a tractor running on pig manure instead of diesel.  It'll be rammed, no-one will be happy, and it takes forever.

15.  City Line to Wigan

With the exception of the rather fantastic St Helens Central, this is a stream of boring stations with odd names ("Thatto Heath"?  You're just making these up now).

14. Kirkby to Wigan

It's a line for people who want to go to either Wigan or Kirkby.  It might get a branch to Skelmersdale in the future.  Must I say more?

13. The Mid-Cheshire Line

It connects Chester with Manchester, it goes through some very pretty countryside (including the Delamere Forest), and it's got some very posh bits.  Usually full of nice old ladies going out for tea and lunch in Altrincham or somewhere equally glamorous.

12.  Crewe and Runcorn

Ok, it's got nice fast whizzy trains, but they don't always stop at Winsford and Hartford, and Acton Bridge is practically a ghost station.  That's just rude.  Also the trains tend to be full of twats shouting into their mobile phones to let you know they're very important.

11.  Southport to Wigan

Because my friend Jennie used to live in Parbold, and so I have a great deal of affection for this line.  It's my list, alright?

10.  Wirral Line to Ellesmere Port

Get your own damn line, Ellesmere Port, and stop stealing Chester's trains.

9.  Northern Line to Kirkby

Fun fact: the Queen was made to ride the line out to Kirkby when she opened Merseyrail in the Seventies.  I bet she was overjoyed about that.  Now it's just a little stub, and you have to sit on the platform for what feels like forever before the train leaves, all the while hoping that those scallies bounding down the ramp towards the platform aren't going to sit in your carriage.  They always do.  And they always decide to try and compete with one another for who has the most offensive and misogynistic rap music on their phone throughout the journey.

8.  City Line to Warrington

Liverpool South Parkway makes this a surprisingly useful line, busy and interesting.  You can interchange for a whole lot of more fascinating places.  Also: Widnes.  Oh yes.

7.  Wirral Line to New Brighton

Like the Kirkby line, it's too short and stubby, but it's got the seaside at the end, so at least you can have an ice cream.


6.  Wirral Line to Chester

This would be a perfectly fine line if it didn't have Chester on the end.  Chester is a big succubus of snobbery and pretension, and doesn't deserve to be on the same route as perfectly respectable places like Bromborough and Birkenhead.  Also, I'm pretty sure you get radiation poisoning every time you go through Capenhurst.


5.  Northern Line from Southport to Hunts Cross

It's too long.  It takes an hour to get from Hunts Cross to Southport, and boy, don't you notice it.  Somewhere around Freshfield fatigue sets in and all those level crossings and golf courses become a blur, until next thing you know the guard's waking you up back in Hunts Cross because you've slept there and back again.


4.  The Borderlands Line

There's town (Bidston, Upton, Heswall, Wrexham).  There's country (a lot of unpronounceable places in the hills).  It's got a river crossing, it's got posh bits, it's got rough bits.  And did I mention that it goes to ANOTHER COUNTRY (ok it's only Wales, but it counts)?  Points are however deducted for  terminating in the middle of the marshes at Bidston. 

3.  City Line to Newton-le-Willows

It's the first intercity railway in the world.  If this line didn't exist, we'd all still be stuck in tiny villages, eating mud and marrying our sisters because no-one could go anywhere else to experience new things like cauliflower and eggs and people with less than eight fingers on each hand.  It's railway history, no, legend, and poor old William Huskisson died in the process.  You should doff your metaphorical hat every time you travel on it.  HUSKISSON!

2.  Northern Line to Ormskirk

I'm not just putting this second because it's my old home line: the Ormskirk branch is a veritable roller coaster of emotions and experiences.  SHIVER as you pass Walton Gaol and the Ashworth High Security Hospital!  THRILL at the idea of crossing the track on that really really high footbridge between Walton and Kirkdale!  LAUGH as you speed past all the poor queuing cars at Switch Island!  PERVE at the many attractive students who take the train on a daily basis!  ENJOY the sweet spot between Sandhills and the plunge into the tunnel where for the briefest of moments, the two cathedrals and the Radio City Tower are in perfect alignment, and you fall in love with Liverpool just that little bit more. 

1.  Wirral Line to West Kirby

You board at a petite Victorian terminus in a charming seaside town.  There are fast, regular trains, that take you through classy suburbs and expanses of golf links.  At Moreton and Leasowe, there are actual biscuit factories, like Willy Wonka but crunchy.  Under the motorway and past the docks, then a stop at Birkenhead Park - the oldest public park in the world - before you go to the modern, shiny Conway Park.  Then you're underground, through Hamilton Square and under the River Mersey into the Loop.  Four stations to take you pretty much anywhere you want to go in Liverpool city centre.  And before you know it, you're back on the way out again, heading back towards the sea.

We have a winner.

Thanks to Sean for suggesting this.

And The Hoscar Goes To...

I was riding Gracie Fields.

I have to admit, this was a first for me.  I'd been on Red Rum and John Peel, and I'd seen the Beatles, but never Gracie.  Gracie Fields is a real generational thing, isn't it?  Like Tommy Steele, or clackers.  It's sort of impossible to comprehend her appeal from the 21st Century.

Anyway, Gracie the train took me off through Lancashire.  Luckily they didn't play Sally the whole way.  I was off to finish that last bit of the Wigan-Southport line, the overlooked station at Hoscar.  To be frank, it's easily overlooked; I'm not sure National Rail is entirely aware it still exists.  It's north of Lathom, in the middle of flat fields, and not far from a sewage works.  No-one will mistake it for St Pancras International.

 
The station spreads across the level crossing, with a platform on either side, but this isn't the original layout: wander down the Southport platform and you'll see the remains of an older one on the opposite side.  It's now grown over and sitting in a farmer's field.

I also saw the neatly decapitated corpse of a pigeon.  You might not be so lucky.

The station building is still there. but it's a private house now.  The Railway Inn was closed at that time, too, though it got a crisp delivery while I sat there.  It was all very quiet and peaceful, even when the fast trains sped through and the level crossing beeped and whined its way into life.

This is normally the point where I trek off to a different station, or a place of outstanding local interest, or a canal or something.  That didn't happen at Hoscar.  A clue to why can be found in the Local Area Information map at the station:

Plenty of features to enjoy there.

Instead I wandered to Lathom, and my friend Jennie picked me up, and we went out for an afternoon of coffee drinking and bitching at Cedar Farm.  It was a bit of an anti-climactic way to finish off an entire line on the Merseyrail map, but it's that kind of place.

 
Lancashire's got some beautiful areas - the sandy coast, the Pennines, the desolate beauty of the moors.  The area of West Lancashire round Burscough is not in the same league.  It's utterly flat and boring.  The towns and villages are small and uninspired.  It's a grey region; a place to live and commute from.  My visit to Hoscar hadn't felt any different to New Lane or Bescar Lane or Appley Bridge.

But that's another significant part of the Merseyrail map gone.  In fact, in that entire square above, I only have Leyland and Euxton Balshaw Lane still to collect.  Remember when I hadn't even touched the red and grey lines?  That was a long time ago....

Still Waters Run Deep

Sitting on a platform, waiting for a train, gives you a good deal of time to ponder life's eternal questions.  Like, how can Lulu really pretend she's never had plastic surgery when she looks like that?  Or, why do women make such a fuss about leaving the toilet seat up?  And, how come no-one can agree how to pronounce "Meols"?

This last one was particularly pertinent as I was sat on the platform at Meols Cop, in Southport.  It's pronounced like it's spelt - meels.  While about twenty miles away, on the Wirral, is the station at Meols.  Pronounced mells.  How did two communities, so close together, come up with such an unusual place name, then disagree on the pronunciation?  Couldn't they have got together at some point and worked out who was right?  In fact, I'd have made it one of the first jobs of Merseyside County Council, as was.  I have sat down the Wirral and Sefton councillors and told them they weren't getting any biscuits until they hammered out an agreement on pronunciation.

If I had to chose, I'd go with mells, mainly because I like places whose pronunciation confuses Americans (see also: Gloucester, Leicester).  My walk to Meols Cop had also revealed that it was sited in a somewhat tedious suburb of Southport, unlike the coast and country location of Meols.  Long straight streets of redbrick houses, with corners taken up by tiny one-off businesses.  Chippies, hairdressers, taxi firms, general stores.  A kitchen fitter that, improbably, featured a quote from the Bible on its sign.  Becky's Blinds.  A minicab driver dozed in his car on the forecourt of Ladbrokes, his bluetooth headseat still rammed defiantly in his ear.

The line from Wigan is ramrod straight, but at Southport it makes a sudden diversion, curving northwards to reach Meols Cop, before swinging back on line to reach Chapel Street.


View Larger Map

It's all down to a combination of Victorian railway competition and our old friend, Dr Beeching.  In the 19th Century, two competing train lines entered Southport from the east.  Meols Cop was built by the West Lancashire Railway on its line to Preston; another branch was later built to send it south.  At the same time, the Manchester and Southport Railway company constructed the railway line via Wigan we still use today.  At Blowick, it shot like an arrow straight into the town centre.

The problem was, the Manchester and Southport Railway were cheaper than the West Lancashire.  They sent the line across at ground level, putting in crossing gates where it met roads, including on the busy Meols Cop Road.  The West Lancashire Railway, on the other hand, built road bridges over their line.  Come the Sixties, with the car now king and one of the branches due to be closed, the more direct route was chopped so they could get rid of the level crossings on the route.  As a pure sideline it meant that Meols Cop survived closure, though its Preston services vanished completely.  You can still follow the old M&SR route through the town, tracing where new semis and industrial buildings have been built over the line of the railway.

Now it's an orphan station: in Merseyside, covered by Merseytravel, but not on Merseyrail.  After Meols Cop you get the red rose of Lancashire, but here there's still the M in a circle.  It's a bit weird to see a Merseytravel shelter painted Northern Rail purple.  The Colour Tsars must be furious as hell.

They managed to get a yellow information board on there, but it's filled with posters from the Friends of Meols Cop Station, rather than useful timetables and bus routes.  They've done a nice job: lots of friendly pieces of A4 with details of a monthly clean up operation at the station, and black and white photocopies of the station in older times.  Back when it had a booking hall and proper station buildings.

When my train finally turned up, it was green.  Bit of a shock.  It seems Northern Rail had adopted an old Central train and still hadn't got round to properly refurbishing it.  Since Central Trains ceased to exist four years ago, it does make you wonder what they're waiting for.  Is purple paint really so expensive?  All they'd done was pull off the transfers with the old company's logo on.  Inside, the only sign you were on a Northern train was the new safety notices, stuck up alongside the old ones; everything else was green or in an alien font or covered in swirly Cs:

I tried not to think about how if they couldn't be bothered changing the seat moquette, maybe they couldn't be bothered examining other parts of the train.  Like, for example, the brakes.  Luckily I was only going one stop.

Three of us got off at Bescar Lane.  An old couple climbed down further along the train, and stopped to stare at me for getting off as well.  I couldn't decide if they were surprised to not be alone, or disapproved of me.  They stumbled off while I took pictures of the station, its platforms splayed either side of a level crossing.  Another local group had kept the floral displays going on the platform, though I can't help noticing that while the Friends of Meols Cop had embraced desktop publishing, the Friends of Bescar Lane still seemed to be working off an old Olivetti typewriter.

There was a nice old station sign as well, in a distinctive, pre-War font.

Getting a photo of the real station sign was a bit more difficult, though.  It was positioned in a little alcove, under a tree.  Combined with me having to use my rubbish camera phone, it took about a dozen tries before I could get a shot with me, the sign and the station name all in one.

You might have noticed the soft-focus backgrounds in some of these shots.  That's not a camera effect; the whole county seemed to be blanketed in a thick, white mist.  It was like being in a Kate Bush video.  That part of Lancashire is incredibly flat, and so everywhere I looked the landscape pretty much vanished instantly: there were no trees or hills to break it up.

Bescar's actually some distance from the station; it means it's stayed a small, picturesque village, instead of growing into a commuter haven like Burscough or Parbold.  There are still trees in the main street, and a church and village hall at the centre; a row of old almshouses are placed in the middle of the main street, with cottage gardens growing in front.  In some places it looks like a 1950s time capsule.

The old exchange and the land was up for sale; no word on whether you got the bus with it.  It'll probably be a "luxury architect designed executive home" soon, like the ones further down the street on Culshaw Way.  I sincerely hope this road isn't named after Ormskirk's least funny son, "impressionist" Jon Culshaw.  I can see it being the kind of thing media-whoring local councils and developers would do.

Beyond the village the road became entangled in woodland.  The quickest route from Bescar Lane to New Lane is via footpaths across the land, darting between the fields of turf growing for garden centres, and down tiny lanes.  I decided not to go that way, instead taking a long diversion south, through the Dam Wood.  The trees closed in above me, and even though I was sticking to the road, it became strangely moody and dark.  The signs warning me to stick to the road - Private Property!  Guard dogs run free! - didn't engender a happy atmosphere.  The chill of the morning slipped under my coat and cooled my flesh.

The road twisted round, occasionally throwing up a cottage or gatehouse, before the end of the wood came in sight.  With the white mist it looked like a hole in the sky: a white void on my path.  I felt like Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, stumbling out into the snow-covered Narnia.  I would totally have been Edmund if I'd been in that book, selling out my family for Turkish Delight.  Let's face it, the White Witch was ace.

I was heading for Heaton's Bridge, over the Leeds & Liverpool Canal.  In the flat farmlands the arc of the bridge was quite a landmark, with a pub obligingly placed beside it.  I headed down shallow steps to the towpath.

Again, this wasn't the quickest or easiest way to my next station.  But I was bored of trudging alongside roads, and this way would be quiet and peaceful.

Too quiet.  There's a melancholy stillness to canals.  It's utterly unmoving, except for the occasional ripple of wind across its surface.  It's a thread of cold, unfeeling water, indifferent to its surrounding, inviting the unwary to slip underneath and never be seen again.

The path was narrow and badly formed - more a track than anything else.  Occasionally I'd slip on the wet surface, and I thought about how close I was to the water.  I could plunge into that canal quite easily.  I'm not a good swimmer at the best of times, never mind wrapped in jeans and an anorak and carrying a backpack.  No-one knew where I was, exactly; I could fall into the grey and vanish forever.

Carrying this cheery thought with me, I struck along the way.  It was incredibly quiet.  The mist deadened any noise until finally, the alien beep-beep of construction traffic entered my consciousness.  There was a crane in the distance, and through the mist I could see the silhouettes of hangars.  This was the former HMS Ringtail, a wartime Naval air base which was now being redeveloped for industry.  It ceased to be MoD property years ago, but the runways proved useful for crop dusting, until finally the aerodrome was mothballed permanently.  The hangars, however, are in the possession of the Merseyside Transport Trust.

I finally turned off the canal by a neat row of cottages.  For the first time, I saw some boats, moored up against the bank.  I wonder why all canal boats look like they were built in the nineteenth century?  Surely there must be a market for modern canal boats, ones made out of fibreglass, with all mod cons?  Not everything has to look like it comes with a Toby jug and a beard.  There was a swing bridge across the canal, with complex instructions attached to tell you how to work it.  I love the "stop" sign on the span; you know, just in case you decided to risk squeezing through that two foot gap.

From there it was a short wander up to New Lane station.  It was another one with its platforms either side of a level crossing, but at least it still had its old station building - albeit now a private home, with the access to the platform bricked up.

The level crossing's automated as well now, so I was the only human presence on the station.  (Well, I say "human").

I was feeling pretty pleased with myself.  With New Lane, I'd completed the stretch of line between Southport and Wigan.  Every station was under my belt, and another vertice could be struck from the Merseyrail map.  Funny how it ended in such an obscure place, I thought.  I settled into the shelter to wait for my train.  My friend Jennie was joining it at Parbold, and we were going to head into Wigan together for a coffee.  I thought of the gingerbread latte I would buy from Starbucks, with extra whipped cream, as a celebratory treat for achieving this milestone.

We passed through Burscough, as I floated on a cloud of unbearable smugness.  There was a slight pause as we stopped at the next station on the line, Hoscar.

Wait - where?

Hoscar?

Hoscar?


HOSCAR?!?!


Bollocks.  Still one to go, then...

Less-than-Thrilling Cities

There are moments in everyone's life when you take a step back and evaluate things. Such a moment happened to me at around nine o'clock on April 7th, 2011. I was reading Ian Fleming's classic collection of travel essays, Thrilling Cities. The legendary spy writer was travelling to Hong Kong:

The first soaring leap through the overcast was to ten thousand feet. There was a slight tremor as we went through the lower cloud base and another as we came out into the brilliant sunshine... The mind adjusted itself to the prospect of twenty-four hours of this sort of thing - the hot face and rather chilly feet, eyes that smart with the outside brilliance, the smell of Elizabeth Arden and Yardley cosmetics that BOAC provide for their passengers, the varying whine of the jets...

Up again over the Arabian Sea with, below us, the occasional winking flares of the smuggling dhows that hug the coast from India... More thunderstorms fluttered in the foothills of the Himalayas while BOAC stuffed us once again, like Strasbourg geese, with food and drink... the heavenly green pastures of Thailand, spread out among wandering rivers and arrow-straight canals like some enchanted garden... we began to drift down to that last little strip of tarmac set in one of the most beautiful views in the world.

I, meanwhile, was on a train passing through the endless abandoned sidings of Edge Hill, en route to Wigan, with a Burger King breakfast inside me. It was hard not to feel that my life was in some way, inadequate. Why wasn't I being attended to by a beautiful stewardess in a cheong sam? My train didn't even have a trolley service. I sipped at the ridiculously hot coffee and tried not to get gloomy about my relative lack of achievement.

On the plus side, unlike Fleming, I didn't have an obnoxious New Zealander sat next to me, and I didn't have to spend 24 hours in the same chair. The only excitement on the train was a bushel of enthusiastic Japanese tourists, taking photos of one another sitting on Northern Rail's finest. The train's ultimate destination was Blackpool North, and I got the feeling they were off to sample the British seaside experience. Poor sods.

I got off at the grim hovel that is Wigan North Western, and crossed to the much more pleasant Wigan Wallgate. Unfortunately, I'd just missed the train to Southport, so I had to wait half an hour on the platform for the next one. Never mind - plenty of time for some more Thrilling Cities:

...it was obvious to Dick and me that only one question remained: where to have dinner before repairing to the Central Hotel [Macao's finest casino]? We were advised to choose between the Fat Sin Lau, the 'Loving Buddha', in the Street of Happiness, noted for its Chinese pigeon, or the Long Kee, famous for its fish. We chose the Loving Buddha, dined excellently and repaired to the Central Hotel, whose function and design I recommend most warmly...

At Wigan Wallgate, an elderly lady left her friend to use the toilets. She emerged moments later, saying to her companion, "I can't use that. It bloody stinks."

My plan was to get the Southport train to Gathurst, then a gentle wander through the countryside to Appley Bridge station. I'd planned the route out with my Ordnance Survey - the footpath was close to the station, and simple to find.

I hit an immediate problem when the train failed to stop at Gathurst, and sailed on through. I hadn't studied the timetable properly. The services after the hour didn't stop there: only the "all stations" trains.

I was immediately befuddled, and I whipped the map out to try and work out how to find the path from Appley Bridge. It seemed simple enough, so I got off there.

Turn right out of the station, and the footpath should be down a cul-de-sac on the right hand side. The key word being "should be". Do you think I could find it? For fifteen minutes I wandered up and down the road, desperately hunting for anything that looked like a public right of way. Nothing. There were some generic new-build executive homes, and a little private road, but no way through.

I was starting to get funny looks from some of the villagers, so I decided I'd just have to stick to the roads instead of an interesting country route. I was glad to get out of Appley Bridge anyway. It was less a village, more an industrial estate with some houses attached: trucks rolled past with depressing regularity, and there seemed to be an overload of workshops. Even the abandoned railway building was accompanied by a garage and MOT centre, giving the station a distinctive smell of oil and fuel. And behind it all was an old quarry, filled with water. Signs warned of the danger of swimming in its cold depths, but I don't know why you'd want to: it looked dead, disturbingly still and silent.

The road out of the village wasn't very cheery either:

I didn't really have much of an idea where I was. I was still disappointed that my stroll in the country was foxed: walking alongside a busy road just isn't the same. The OS map again seemed to indicate a right hand turn which would get me back on the footpath, but it wasn't anywhere I could see. Bad tempered, irritable, I stomped on, sucking in the exhaust fumes of eight wheelers and buses.

Soon I was in Shevington Vale, an unappealing little suburb, and it didn't seem to be getting any better. The houses were ordinary semis, all with their wheely bins out front for collection. In the distance were high green hills, but that was miles away. But wait - that looked like a right turn. And at the end of it:

As though my iPod sensed the sudden shift in my fortunes, ELO's Mr Blue Sky came on, one of those joyous little tunes that can't help but cheer you. The path threaded between paddocks full of disinterested looking horses, who watched me pass with undisguised indifference. They were far too busy munching on the grass to care about me. I was tempted to go over and pat them - I've always loved horses - but I strongly suspected they'd walk in the opposite direction. They looked the type.

The weather was making an upturn, too, with the grey skies starting to be speckled with blue. It was a shame it had rained that morning, because it meant that the puddles in the fields were still fresh, but I managed to negotiate them and ended up at a stile.

The public footpath carried on, over the stile... and onto a golf course. I hate walking across private property like this. I know I've a right to roam, and the path was no doubt there a long time before the links, but it felt like a violation of other people's privacy. I'd hate to have a footpath across my land. I'd come over very Madonna and stick up a load of fences to stop them.

Still, that was the way I needed to go if I was going to get to Gathurst, so I clambered over.

Dear Gathurst Golf Club: it's a lot easier to stick to the path if there actually is one. Once I was on the other side the path, and any signs indicating where it went, vanished. All around me was nothing but springy, close cropped turf and the occasional bunker. "Right," I thought. "I'll just walk in a straight line... that way".

I felt ridiculously conspicuous. I got quite a few odd looks from the golfers, and I think one of them tried to see me off at one point: I deliberately feigned deafness, not difficult as my iPod was playing a random Hindi track (a homosexual listening to Indian music? On our golf course? Fetch the hounds!). I stared straight ahead, dodging around the greens as best as I could - I wasn't sure if you was allowed to walk on the putting area: I had a vague recollection of Bond wearing special shoes for his match - is it like a bowling alley? My entire knowledge of golf is based on that game in Goldfinger. If no-one's got a mute Korean caddy, I'm lost.

I was starting to get panicky, worried that I'd be wandering around the course for the rest of the day and have to set up an overnight camp on the eighth fairway, when I spotted another "Public Footpath" sign pointing into a copse of trees. Hurray! Avoiding another evil looking golfer, who was regarding me with undisguised contempt (why are golf players such tossers?), I pushed into the woods and down a little slope, only to end up with this:

I knew I was going to have to cross the M6 at some point, but I thought it would be via a nice, high level, sturdy-looking bridge. Or even better, a tunnel underneath. Not via a footbridge that looked like it had been made out of the bits of cement that were left over, with a handrail constructed from old shopping trollies. It was either cross the bridge or risk the wrath of the golfers, though, so onwards.

Readers with long memories will remember my terrifying ordeal crossing the Runcorn bridge. Well, this was like a shorter, intensified version of that trip. The drop was as vertiginous, the span seemed as pitifully constructed, only instead of the gentle lap of the water beneath me, I had six lanes of roaring, noisy traffic.

I clung to the handrail so strongly, I actually became concerned it'd break off in my hand. My chest became wet with sweat. Over and over I repeated, "don't look down... just look ahead... keep going." I felt sick. I felt terrified. I kept having visions of an enormous Tesco truck sweeping underneath me, and the back rush whisking me over the side to certain death under one of Eddie Stobart's fleet.

Finally, I was able to stagger down the steps at the far end, and I was able to pause and take a breath and recover in a tiny alleyway.

The walk to Gathurst station after that wouldn't be anything but a breeze. I was there in a few minutes, crossing a canal en route before finally spotting the station. Two hours after I'd meant to be there, I'd arrived.

Now, I'm going to give GMPTE (as it was; it's just changed its name) a bit of kudos here. Gathurst was a well maintained, clean station. It had plenty of useful posters, including one that told you how many minutes away other stations on the line were. There was no ticket office, of course, but the station building had been turned into a pub, so it wasn't all bad.

There is a massive "but" coming. The station's a couple of hundred metres away from the main road, up a side street that slopes upwards. I dutifully got to the top, only to find out I was on the Manchester bound platform. The Southport platform was across the way, and to get there, I'd have to turn round, walk back down to the main road, and under the bridge there.

How about a sign, GMPTE? Just a little one? Just to let me know that I was about to waste my time walking all that way? And the pub wasn't even open for me to drown my sorrows. Shame.

My final stop of the day was Parbold, and happily, the train I caught actually stopped there. I wasn't there for tarting purposes, but instead to visit my incredibly heavily pregnant best friend, Jennie:

She's just days away from dropping her second child, so I went round to keep her amused on her maternity leave before the house got filled up with dirty nappies. We went out for a gorgeous lunch, gossiped, and generally put the world to rights before I had to go and get the train back to Southport.

On the train back to Southport for the journey home, I turned to Fleming again, who had by now reached Japan. We were pulling into the station as I read:

...back to Tokyo by the most beautiful train I have ever travelled in - a streamlined aluminium affair in bright orange that looked as if it belonged to Mars, but in fact was operated by the Odawara Express Train Company, a private enterprise which, with its soft, piped music and its pretty girls in claret uniform dispensing tea and Japanese whisky (very good, though I, a Scot, say it), could teach British Railways a thing or two.

Perhaps there were no liquor dispensing minions on my Northern Rail train, just a portly ticket inspector. Perhaps Southport can't compare with the glamorous Orient. But my life wasn't all bad. I'd had a trip in the country, a good lunch with a great friend, annoyed a few golfers. It could be worse. I could be dead. And that is at least one thing I have over Ian Fleming.