The White Stuff

Hammerton station was like Poppleton, only lesser in every way.  There were still level crossing gates, but instead of a cosy signal cabin, there was a dowdy office and a hut painted Northern Rail purple.  There was seating, but no glass enclosure to keep you warm. The station house had been allowed to fall into disrepair.

And the tiny station sign was non-existent, leaving me to squat in front of the platform boards like a nutcase.  More of a nutcase.

After a terrifying moment where a fellow passenger pushed her pram onto the level crossing just as the train started to move (there was a fevered honk on the train horn) things thinned out.  The gates were restored to let the traffic (/one Nissan) through, the signalman ducked back into his little office and closed the door, and the station fell silent.  I was walking in the opposite direction to everyone else, away from the much larger Green Hammerton.

It was a lot lonelier this way.  I had the Kinks playing in my ears (sadly not The Village Green Preservation Society, which would have been appropriate) but it still seemed like there was a deathly hush around me.  Ray Davies was singing his heart out by I felt deserted somehow.  While Poppleton had felt at peace in the snow, this village seemed to be abandoned.

I entered Kirk Hammerton at a fair speed (a line which wouldn't be out of place in the memoir of a 1970s gay porn star).  Getting to the next station, Cattal, in an hour, was a bit of a stretch without me breaking into a sweat.  I was already doing the full I'm a little teapot arms to try and stay balanced; the speed gave me a camp mince that even John Inman would have called "a bit much".

It was obvious that I'd moved up the social scale when I arrived in Kirk Hammerton.  The cars by the side of the road, thick under a coating of snow, were Audi TTs, BMWs, hefty 4x4s with mud splattered up the side.  This was the kind of Yorkshire Jeremy Clarkson came from, the Yorkshire of public schools and hunting and women with a scarf and a fleecy gilet and a steely determination that could sink the Ark Royal.  A different Yorkshire to the cities of Leeds and Sheffield, a place for pony clubs instead of working men's clubs.

I mean, it was all very pretty, but I just didn't feel comfortable there.  I'd much rather have been in the Lord Nelson in Nether Poppleton, drinking my pint of Thomas Taylor and entering the Sunday night raffle (1st prize: £20 credit behind the bar).  Kirk Hammerton didn't even have a pub.

I passed the Methodist church; there was a postbox on the front for you to post your prayer requests, which struck me as appallingly lazy.  Say your own damn prayers instead of getting someone else to do it for you.  Besides, if He truly is omnipotent, surely you can say the prayer anywhere, at any time?  You could be stuck at a traffic light or on the loo and slip out a quick wish list while you're waiting.

The cottages got smaller as I reached the end of the village; one had a flag pole higher than the roof flying the Union Jack, which made me wonder if it was occupied by the Navy Captain from Mary Poppins.  Then the pavement ran out, and I was left with a bench and a village sign and a lot of snowy embankments.

Nasty font.

Have you ever tried walking quickly in snow?  Your feet and legs are fighting to gain some kind of purchase on the ground.  Each step is a wrench, pulling at your muscles in a dozen different directions.  I felt my calves strain as I pushed on, hoping that the station was round each corner, and being disappointed every time it wasn't.  I tried walking in the road, but just as I got comfortable, a Beemer would swing round behind me and I'd have to leap onto the verge.  The slow thaw had filled the gutters with a thick slush; every time a car passed I muttered "please don't splash me, please don't splash me".

And yet, I looked at all that virgin, untouched snow in the fields alongside me, and I had a mad urge to run around violating it.  Stomp all over it, defile it, make it messy.  Strip naked and roll around in it.  Lie down in it and make snow angels.  I didn't of course, because I am at heart deeply repressed, but the idea bounced around in my head for most of the walk.

I passed under the railway line, then back on myself, nearly getting mown down by a cyclist on the way (my fault, not his).  Cattal station was a tiny industrial hub; the goods yard had been turned into a wrecking yard, and there was a garage and some agriculture.  There was also a pub, the Victoria.  This must be Yorkshire's version of Jamaica Inn, a den of thieves and malcontents, a front for all sorts of nefarious activity, because I can't possibly imagine it gets many drinkers out there.

Cattal's little station building housed a tiny waiting room, which was warm and dry, if a bit rough round the edges; the signs inside still had the logo for Regional Railways in the corner.  Northern Rail clearly weren't too bothered about making this part of their empire.

I wandered out onto the platform to wait for the train to arrive.  I couldn't imagine that this scene had changed much for fifty years.  The rusting gates, the semaphore signals, the cold little hut.  A few more electric cables dangling down, perhaps, but the rest could have been cowering under the Beeching cuts.

One thing was very definitely not 1960s.  The door to the cabin swung open and a blonde woman walked out to operate the level crossing.  I know it shouldn't have surprised me that there was a woman doing the job, but it did.  Trains are boy's toys; I'd seen it a couple of weeks earlier at the National Railway Museum, with enthusiastic men and less enthusiastic wives.  It still feels odd to see a woman doing a role on the tracks that isn't customer service related.  Sorry.

Abandoning my horribly sexist preconceptions, I got back on the train to York.  My legs were tired (they still hurt now), my feet were wet, I looked a complete mess.  But that was another three stations done.

You've Got A Friend In Me

I'm a very good friend.  A wonderful, caring, lovely friend.  If you ask for my opinion, I'll gladly give it.  If you want someone to go to the pub with, I'm there.  If your boyfriend dumps you, I'll take your side and say all those rude things about him I'd kept quiet about.  And I'll never say nasty things to you, only ever behind your back, where you won't hear them.  I'm great.

This is my friend Jennie.  We've known each other for years, and she's now a lecturer, who occasionally has to travel all over the country to hold tutorials.  When she told me that she was dreading the long trip cross country to York for a session, I volunteered to accompany her.  This is because I'm basically a fantastic person.

NO I DIDN'T GO JUST SO I COULD COLLECT SOME STATIONS HOW DARE YOU.

After tea and toast in the lovely Me and Mrs Fisher cafe, where I derived great pleasure in listening to the ladies at the next table talk about internet dating ("He said he was in an open relationship, but I doubt he's told his wife.  It was only a fling anyway"), Jennie went off to the University and headed for a bus stop.  I was slightly hampered by York City Council's decision to not grit or clear the pavements; the trudging of Saturday afternoon shoppers had turned the snow into thick grey slush.  It was only a ten minute walk but when I reached the bus stand I had soaking ankles and damp socks inside my boots.  They wouldn't dry out all day.

I was headed for Poppleton, a village just outside the city which sounded like it had escaped from Winnie the Pooh.  I was able to watch the slow evolution of York as we drove away from the centre.  It's like a series of tree rings, each one marked by a particular era in its architecture and layout - the medieval core, surrounded by Georgian grandeur, followed by Victorian villas and 1930s suburbs.  Finally there were 21st century boxes, and we were crossing the ring road.

The bus dropped us in Nether Poppleton at 1:19, four minutes after my train had left.  It meant I had an hour to kill.  What to do?

It wasn't my fault.  The bus dropped us off right outside the Lord Nelson; it would have been rude not to.  I had a quick pint in the silent atmosphere of the village local.  There was no music, no tv blaring, just a couple of pensioners eating fish and chips in the "restaurant" part, not talking, just staring slightly past each other.  The only other patron was a young lad with blonde hair nursing a coke; he kept jumping up and peering through the window, nervously waiting for someone.  The air was thick with the fug of a deep fat fryer.  The dart board had a hand-written sign saying that flights were available for 40p at the bar; I could see them in a biscuit tin marked FLIGHTS in permanent marker.  It was a snug little place, a bit threadbare, not at all glamorous, but pleasant and warm.

After a quick pee in the tiny toilet I ventured outside.  The paths here weren't even sludge, just trodden down snow, and I took care not to slip, while being aware that I had to get to the other end of the village for the train station.  Main Street curled round a corner, brushing up against the Ouse, a bench ready for summer.

I was following a family of three, towing a sledge.  Mum pushed on at the front, briskly calling back instructions over her shoulder - "watch the path here!  Don't run!".  Dad was pulling the sledge, a little skip in his step, and the kid was resolutely unamused.  He was a porky little fellow, and I guessed that this was his parents' idea, to get him away from his Nintendo XBoxStation.  Now he was making everyone regret it, moaning about the cold and the wet.  The pink sledge probably didn't help.

Poppleton was really quite lovely.  A delicate stream, almost frozen, ran between trees and past houses; soft white gardens lead up to well-maintained porches.  The snow absorbed the sound, so all I could hear was the trudge of my boots.  There was a library, and a community centre; a sports field and a surgery.

I was already having good thoughts about the village, and that was before I hit Upper Poppleton, the second half of the settlement.  Then it developed into full blown love.  A wide open village green was bisected by the main road, looked over by a war memorial and church.  A pub, a post office, a red telephone box, and in the centre of the green, an actual Maypole.  It's the first time I've ever seen one for real (the one put up in the school hall at Juniors' doesn't count) and I was surprised by how tall it was, a stripy rocket bursting into the grey skies.

I passed the kids leaving the general store with a twist of sweets clutched in their hand and pushed on out of the village.  I only slipped once, but managed to stop myself from doing a complete somersault.

Poppleton station was a wonderful surprise in many way.  The station building was no longer in railway use, but they'd done something clever with it: glassing over part of the platform so that it created a sort of conservatory waiting area.

I've never seen this done before.  It's a brilliant idea.  It provides a secure, architecturally pleasing space for waiting, as well as some cycle racks.  It means a station structure isn't left to rot.  It'd be better if there was a ticket office in there (or even a ticket machine) but still - well done Northern Rail.

As the sign above indicated, there's a level crossing at Poppleton.  It's not got flashing orange lights or a siren or even automatic barriers.  Here, they do it old school.

A signal cabin.  Gates that have to be wheeled across the track, gates that I've never seen for real in my life, only in my Hornby railway set when I was a child.  When the time came, the grey haired signal man pushed them into place by hand to block the road.  There was something so quietly civilised about it.

Before I got my train, however, I had time to take a look at Poppleton's other claim to fame.  There was a time when railway companies had plots of land devoted to horticulture - growing flowers for stations, plants to shore up embankments.  British Rail slowly reduced the reliance on these, and privatisation killed them off completely; it's easier and cheaper to simply buy flowers in bulk.

At Poppleton, they've reversed this trend.  The local community have reclaimed the abandoned railway gardens and are slowly resurrecting them.  Their excellent website shows how these neglected patches of land, the greenhouses and sheds are now being turned into facilities for the whole village.  The coal yard alongside the station even retains an old wagon.

It's a wonderful idea, well executed, and my only regret was that I was seeing it at the very worst time.  I imagine it's a joy to see in summer.  I left Poppleton full of optimism, a smile on my face, a strange feeling coming over me: happiness.