Far Away, So Close

Penrith is far.  Far from anything.  I realised this when I came back from Durham.  The BF and I decided to make a trip out of the return home, driving up the east coast to Berwick, across the top of England, skipping back and forth over the Scottish border as we went, then joining the M6 at Carlisle.  It was a long time, whizzing along at 70 mph, before we encountered the junction for Penrith, and even longer after that before we encountered the blessed sanctity of Tebay services for a Fairtrade coffee and a locally sourced scone.  Penrith is far.

Even on the Northern Rail map it looks isolated and lonely, only added in 2013 when they conceded that there was a quicker way to get to Carlisle from Preston than via Barrow.  Now it sits in the centre of white space, lonely.  It was a station I would have to make a concerted effort to visit and, since it'd take two and a half hours to get there and involve two changes of train (one of which was in Wigan) I'd never really broken my neck.

The trip home from Ravenglass, however, included three quarters of an hour waiting at Lancaster between trains.  Lancaster is also on the West Coast Main Line, so, even though I was desperate to get home, I jumped on a Pendolino and headed up to Penrith for a box-ticking exercise.  (I bought a ticket first, obviously).

It started well.  Walk out of the station and you're immediately presented with the ruins of the town's castle, an impressive "take that!" to arriving tourists.  There's not much of it left, to be fair, but it sits on top of a generous mound of earth and catches the eye.  I crossed the road and entered the park at its base.  It was empty, too late for the early morning dog walkers and too early for bored schoolkids on their lunch, and the flower beds were promising rather than pretty.  Better entrance to the town than a ring road, though.

The park deposited me, not in a bustling high street as I'd expected, but in a suburban crescent; I was still a couple of roads away from the centre.  I descended a series of steps down the hill.  I've always found steps in a town a weirdly exciting feature, like a bit of a Tuscan hill town has crashed into England.  Even if, as in this case, it was rather more concrete and rusted metal than elegant terrace.

 
It lead me to some busy back roads and the goods entrance of Penrith Sainsbury's.  It was built on the site of the football club (they were shunted out to the edge of town), and a quick Google search reveals that people weren't especially keen for them to arrive.  Presumably as a sop to the objectors, the supermarket was upgraded to be a bit more than the standard "big box with a lot of orange".  They got a stone portico.

It's a bit like trying to hide a nuclear missile by putting a bobble hat on the top.  The effect is so lazy, so perfunctory (they saved themselves a few quid by not having the stone part reach the top of the actual building, you notice).  It has the unintended side effect of making it look like Sainsbury's demolished some worthy piece of municipal architecture but were forced to keep the front.  It paints them as vandals, rather than charlatans.

The New Squares development behind the supermarket continues with the fake-heritage theme.  I'm totally in agreement that the Georgian and Victorian eras produced some beautiful architecture; the same with the Edwardians and a whole bunch of other bits of our history that weren't named after monarchs.  That doesn't mean that in the twenty-first century we should be building copies.  Instead we should be building our own heritage, twenty-first century buildings that look like they were built today, not Disneyland fakes. These buildings might be covered in cornices and arches and porticos, but they were designed on computers and built out of steel.  The "heritage elements" are just a thin skin over the modern bones.  Architects are so afraid of repeating the "mistakes" of the Sixties and Seventies, when people tried to create a new language - and whether they were mistakes or not is very much up for debate - that they've ended up not innovating at all.

I'm not saying that Sainsbury's should be allowed to just plonk an aluminium shed wherever they want, or that retail parks are somehow at the vaguard of cutting edge architecture.  I just want a bit of honesty and style and imagination.

New Squares had been promoted as a regenerative tool for the town but it didn't seem to be working; half the units were empty, with signs in windows pleading "Thinking of taking retail space in Penrith?  Don't!  Not until you've spoken to us!".  Funny how building a superstore that offers food, clothes and household goods all under one roof seems to put people off opening a rival next door.  There certainly didn't seem to be any local entrepreneurs, only the usual chains - Costa, Boots, mobile phone companies.

Unsurprisingly, Penrith's real town centre was far better, mainly because all those buildings were real relics from past centuries.  Streets twisted in and out of each other, the buildings almost bending over the pavements.  I felt resonances of other towns I'd visited across the Lakes and Pennines in the buildings and the people, a busy-ness, a hardiness.

Although I will never be happy with people parking all over the market square like it's the loading bay of B&Q.  One accidental reverse gear and that clock tower will be crushed under the weight of a white van.  It was still a busy centre for the town, with an absolute delight in the form of J & J Graham, who've operated in the town since 1793.  Take that, Saino's.

Also intriguing was this sign, affixed to a nearby lamp post and part of an Eden Arts project.

I immediately resolved not to do any twining, even though I'm not entirely sure what it is.  Are Penrith finally dealing with the scourge of yarn bombers?  (I'm not bothered by them, but the BF once spotted some trees in Greasby that had been dressed up with coloured wool and went off on an incandescent rant that lasted all the way to West Kirby).

I continued my circuit of the town centre, finding more delightful local stores; I imagine one advantage of Penrith's isolation is the lack of competition.  By the time a rival swaggers into town you've built up a loyal customer base.  Even some of the empty shops had their charm - one had net curtains in the window, as though hiding its shame.

By now I had a different aim in mind: an urge to pee.  It had become rather more insistent in the frosty February air and, not spotting an actual public convenience (and, if I'm honest, not really wanting to go in one of those grim tiled cells) I nipped into the Station Hotel for a pint and a piss.  From there it was a skip across the McDonalds' drive thru lane to the station itself.

It's a charming building, though quieter than in its heyday due to the loss of branch lines; it's only served by Virgin trains now.  They've infected the station with their "quirky" branding, and I'm sorry, this really must stop.  You're a public transport supplier, not a lower billed act at the Royal Variety Show: show a bit of dignity and composure.

So that was Penrith.  A fair old trek, but worth it in the end.  Probably not worth a revisit, but at least I can say I've been.

(Yes it does say Penrith station there, I promise.  Use your zoom.  And petition the town council for a proper sign).

Rat Trap

"Can you stop at Murthwaite, please?"

The guard took a step back.  "Murthwaite?"  I nodded, and he reached out and shook my hand.  "You're the first person to ever ask me to stop at Murthwaite.  Ever."

I was left feeling a little disquieted.  The first one ever?  It couldn't be that bad, could it?

It was the second day of my La'al Ratty odyssey, and having polished off the top half of the map on Saturday, I now had three stations at the bottom to do.  Pleasingly, they all began with the letter M: Murthwaite, Miteside, and Muncaster Mill.

Temperatures had plummeted the night before, leaving the landscape blue-tinted and icy.  Cold infected every part of it.  I hugged myself close in the open carriage, trying to keep the warmth going as we trundled up into the hills, pulling into the tiny Murthwaite Halt a few minutes later.  As I jumped down, the guard called out to me, "First person this year to get off at Murthwaite.  And probably the last!"

I'm sure he didn't mean for it to sound like a threat.

Murthwaite was no less than any of the other stops on the Ravenglass & Eskdale: a little bit of platform, a sign.  Its lack of use came from its isolation: surrounded by farmland, the nearest road 3/4 of a mile away.  There was, however, a bridleway that ran south from the halt, paralleling the railway, and that was my route back to Muncaster Mill.

I crossed the tracks and entered a field on the other side.  There were no public footpath signs, but once again I put my trust in the Ordnance Survey, and followed a rough track over the grass.  The cold had frozen the soil hard, and the unforgiving hillocks pounded at the soles of my feet.  It was like walking on sharp rocks.  I staggered onward, jumping the occasional frozen puddle, crossing streams by barely-there bridges.  At one I spotted this:

The footpath sign, broken and lying in a ditch.  I thought back to the lack of signs starting me on this path - not a coincidence, surely?  A landowner trying to stop legally mandated access to his fields, I assumed, and boiled slightly.  This wasn't a popular route, clearly; there's probably a dozen people a year using it.  But apparently this was too many.

Soon after, I left the field through a gate and walked alongside the track itself.  There was a broken down workshop for the railway, a roofless shed and a single orange plastic chair beside piles of fencing and pipes.  The path ducked down between overgrown bushes - I wondered what kind of skinny horses they got in this part of the world to call this a "bridleway".

I crossed the track via a pair of wooden gates, complete with signs warning me that the railway was not a footpath.  I briefly imagined a gang of happy wanderers thinking those long bits of iron were just a kooky design feature for their walk, only to be mown down by a tiny steam train.  Then I was climbing upwards, onto the hillside.

It wasn't so much a path here, more of a stream.  Water poured down the mountainside, then pooled in the flat of the path; when it overflowed, it formed a little rivulet of its own.  Each footstep was now a splosh.

Higher and higher up the hill.  The railway track below me disappeared into the trees.  I was moving at a pace, hoping to reach Muncaster Mill in time for the next train; Miteside was closer but that would have been too easy.

The waterlogged path, initially stony, now gave way to mud.  So much mud.  Unlike the exposed fields, the frost hadn't taken hold here, so there was just a wide, thick trek through soft soil.  I tried to hop round it, find the hardest paths, but then my foot would sink and I'd feel a splatter of brown up the back of my calf.  My trousers, barely dried from the previous day's walking, were soon damp again.

It was tiring, and dispiriting, because it slowed me down.  I began to doubt I'd make it to Muncaster Mill in time, which raised the spectre of a one and a half hour wait.  Worse, the later train would probably be manned by the chirpy guard, and he'd see what a state I'd made of myself in the interim.

I was lucky, though.  I'd overestimated how far there was to go, and so the sign for Muncaster Mill took me by surprise.  I gingerly descended down the slope, slipping a couple of times but grabbing hold of nearby foliage to steady myself.  I didn't so much walk onto the platform as stagger, a mess of arms and legs.

There's still a mill here, the building dating in parts back to the fifteenth century, and it used to house a tea room and a shop.  Now it's a private residence, however, with the accompanying stern signs warning you not to wander too close.  It's a lovely spot, but it's a shame that there's no longer a tourist attraction here.  So few of the Ravenglass & Eskdale's intermediate stations serve a purpose beyond "there's always been a stop here"; most are simply halts in the middle of countryside.  There's no real reason to do anything except than ride from one end to the other.

I used the wait for the train productively, scraping my boot at the edge of the platform and trying to kick the worst of the mud away.  To the residents of the Mill, I must have looked like a demented Riverdancer.

The train was late.  I found this unforgivable.  It was the train's first trip of the day; it had come straight out of the depot.  And yet it was late?  Rude.  Finally it appeared, steaming round the corner and blowing its whistle, and I boarded one of the open carriages to ride to the top.

There was still Miteside, but I was cold and it was lunchtime.  I took the train all the way up to Dalegarth.  The rogue sheep that had plagued the services the day before seemed to have been returned to her farmer; either that or it was mutton stew on the menu at the station cafe.

I'd felt bad about going all the way to the end of the line and not visiting the nearby village of Boot, so this time I turned left out of the station.  I say village: Boot has a population in the low double figures, and is merely a few houses strung along a tiny road.

Oh, and a pub.

I'd managed to arrive not long after twelve, so the pub was still fairly empty.  I ordered a burger and chips - forgoing the Sunday Roast - and chomped my way through it.  Halfway through the barmaid appeared and asked if I was enjoying it, then told me I had someone else's order and I was eating onion rings that didn't belong to me.  I ate them anyway, then ordered a second pint and leaned back in my chair.

The truth was, I wasn't really enjoying myself.  I'd been anticipating this trip for a while.  It had been something to look forward to amidst the winter gloom.  A weekend of walking and stations in the beautiful countryside.

It had ended up being a disappointment.  The distance between stations was too small for me to get a decent walk going; when I did arrive, it was at a barely there halt.  La'al Ratty's appeal was very much train based and, as someone not really interested in engines, it had left me cold.  It didn't help that every request for a stop was a little anxiety bomb inside my head.

It hadn't captured me.  I should have just visited Dalegarth.  The ends of the line were easily the highlights: Boot's pretty pub and the Stanley Ghyll, Ravenglass' beautiful estuary and stunning views.  Between had been mostly mud and too little to engage me.

I walked back down towards the station, but ended up in Boot's other pub, trying to drink my way out of my funk.  This pub was rougher round the edges, more of a locals' pub than a gastro-destination, with a stuffed fox wearing a hat perched on the roof of the bar.  I drank another pint, and mulled the unbelievable: skipping Miteside altogether.

My misery had infected me to the extent that I no longer cared.  I didn't care about Miteside, or La'al Ratty any more.  I wanted to go home.  Not back to the B&B, where I still had another night ahead of me, but real home, back where it was warm and comfortable.  I didn't want to ride the tiny trains of the Ravenglass & Eskdale any more.  I wanted a trip on a proper, purple, Northern train.

I headed to the platform and decided to leave it to the fates.  If the guard asked me where I wanted to stop, I'd say Miteside.  If he didn't ask me, I'd go back to Ravenglass and pack my bags.  I took up a seat in one of the carriages and waited for the Gods to decide.

The guard appeared - not my mate from that morning, a different one, one who I'd seen on a couple of other trips over the weekend.  "Oh, it's you," he said.  "Where do you want us to stop this time?"

My fate was sealed.  "Miteside, please."

I waved goodbye to the train for the last time.  For decades, Miteside Halt had an upturned boat as a shelter; a rough solution to a the Lakes' violent weather.  The shelter had been revamped, but they'd kept with the principle, delightfully:

It was a pleasing note to end my station trips; a happy tick through the last one on the line.

Now there was just the walk back to Ravenglass and, more importantly, Ravenglass' pubs.

It was another halt isolated from civilisation in general, so I happily began talking to myself.  I had imaginary arguments with people who really deserved it - you'll be unsurprised to hear my forceful rhetoric always won them over - then, as I turned onto a bare farm road, I planned my Oscars speech.  It was the Academy Awards that night, and I considered what I would say when - not if - I won both Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor at the same ceremony.  (I may be deluded, but I'm not deluded enough to believe I am leading man material).

I was mulling what political cause to gracelessly insert into the proceedings when I reached the main road.  Ravenglass was to the left, but I was enjoying the walk, so I decided to take a more circuitous route.  I turned right, uphill, then took a shortcut down another bridleway.

Big mistake.

More mud.  More hidden puddles.  By the time I emerged at the other end, I was panting from the effort of leaping around the path like a demented leprechaun.  I did another little dance on the tarmac to shake off the worst, then continued on my way.

This road was silent.  It lead only to Saltcoats, a hamlet by the sea, and soon I was walking in the centre of the way.  Tiny white snowdrops winked from the verge as I passed.  Up ahead, a level crossing loomed.  The crossing man's house was now a private residence, with the man from the railways exiled to a hut on the far side.  I wondered what he did all day, in between moving the gates across the road every hour or so.  Does he have other jobs?  Is he given loads of paperwork?  Or is he just left to read his book, watch the telly, text his mates?  If it's the latter, sign me up.

Saltcoats was determinedly unglamorous.  One home was pumping something out of the house and into the drains; it had a SOLD board outside, and I wondered if the new owners knew that they'd need a lot of extendable hosing for their new dream life?  There was a caravan park, and a farm that smelt like a farm, only more so.  But then I reached the estuary.

The low afternoon sun shimmered across the landscape, touching each part of it with magic.  I stood and took in the stillness, the unforced elegance of it all.

With the sun behind me, I headed towards Ravenglass.  The rays illuminated the tiny houses, perched on the bay.  It was like the village at the end of the rainbow.

I crossed the bridge over the Esk, a footpath hunkered under the railway line.  That was the ending I needed.  That was the proper way to finish off La'al Ratty.

Now I'm Following You

I wasn't sure how to get to Fisherground Halt.  I mean, I knew where it was.  I just didn't know if there was a publicly accessible route to it.  My Ordnance Survey map showed a couple of paths that went sort of in that direction, but none that actually reached it.  There was a campsite between the platform and the road, so I doubted there was a footpath in amongst the tents.  I was a little stumped.

Finally I just walked up the drive of the campsite, clutching the OS map, hoping that the landowner would realise I was a slightly stupid rambler.  I walked with purpose, like I knew what I was doing.  There was a farm building, and a couple of holiday cottages, then a gate.  Not one of those twee little country stiles, but a big metal gate.  I unhooked it and wandered into a field of sheep, aware that I hadn't seen any footpath signs.  I could, at least, see the platform shelter, up on an embankment.

As I crossed the field, I became aware of a rumble behind me, accompanied by plaintive mewling.  I turned round to see that the flock of sheep in the field seemed to have identified me as their alpha, and had started following me.

This was embarrassing.  Firstly, I was used to sheep fleeing, not following.  Secondly, I worried that the farmer would poke his head out of his window, spot me leading his livestock away, and think I was a rustler.  Thirdly, I wasn't sure how I was going to get out of the field.  I could see a wire fence at its perimeter, with a stream on the other side.  Was I going to have to vault that?  I realised I might end up trapped in the corner of a field, hemmed in on all sides by dopey sheep.

I sped up.  They sped up.  I stopped.  They stopped.  I tried staring them down, but they just stared back.  More were joining at the rear, their little hooves hammering at the mud, a stream of wool flowing across the field.  

Then, I spotted it: a little gate leading to a bridge.  I hastily nipped through, hammering down the latch as hard as possible so that the sheep couldn't follow, and crossed the stream.  The sheep kept coming.  They crammed into the corner of the field, watching me leave, and I felt a little guilty.  I waved them goodbye and crossed the empty campground to reach the station.

There's not much to it.  A shelter and a sign.  Further down was a water tank for refilling the steam trains, and a tiny mountain beck trickled down the hillside and under the track.  I hoped the driver would see me and stop the train; since the campsite was closed, I wasn't sure he'd expect anyone to be there.  He did.

I asked the guard to stop at Irton Road for me.  "Ah, changing for the steam, yes?"

"No," I said, a little confused.  I realised that the majority of lonely men who traveled up and down the line did so to see the trains.  They were here to travel with as many of the engines as possible.  I wasn't bothered.  The train I boarded at Fisherground was a diesel, and that was fine by me.  If it had been a steam train, that would also have been fine with me.  I wasn't really fussed.

After slowing down to avoid killing the still-lost errant sheep from that morning - seriously, couldn't someone nip down and guide him to safety? - we pulled into Irton Road.  Most of the line is single track, but at Irton Road there is a passing space, and two platforms.  The diesel waited and then, a few moments later, the steam train came in.  

I was hovering in the area, because I wanted the trains to leave before I took the sign pic.  There aren't any roadside signs - why would there be, this isn't a commuter hub - so I had to rely on the platform signs to prove I'd been here.  I didn't fancy taking a picture with all those tourists sitting there watching.

Instead I waited for the steam train to depart, then dashed down for a badly framed photo designed to show off as many of my chins as possible.

Trouble was, all that larking about gave people time to disembark from the steam train.  Which meant that when I headed for the footpath to take me back to Ravenglass, I found myself shadowing a couple and their two dogs.  

This was awkward.  We were in an isolated part of the Lake District, and instead of enjoying the quiet majesty of the landscape, we were all aware that there was an uninvited guest at the party.  I tried slowing down, taking a couple of pictures, so they could get on ahead, but then their dogs would lark about and they would stop too.  We were all walking at about the same speed, so there was a constant twenty yard gap between us.  It was embarrassing.

I couldn't stand it any more.  I put on a heavy burst of speed and energy and ploughed past them at Mo Farrah speeds, leaving them in my dust.  It wasn't fun, it wasn't very "calming countryside stroll", but it meant I put them behind me and that was the most important part.

Of course, if I'd let them go first the whole way, they'd have been the first ones in that field and I'd have discovered what kind of mood the bull was in.  Fortunately he didn't seem to be home.

I trudged through a muddy farmyard, marveling at the many lethal looking devices they had stored in the barns.  I saw at least three vehicles that could have torn me apart without even having to go up a gear.  A couple of turns, and the gravel path became a gravel road.

As the trees folded in around me, I realised I had gone the wrong way.  Or rather, the less interesting way.  I'd planned out a route that would follow the River Esk down to the sea, but this was going higher and darker.  I'm too stubborn to turn back, and besides, I'd finally lost the dog walkers, so I trudged on.

The forest thickened.  The breeze moved their branches in a long, unending hiss, the multiplied shhh! of a thousand librarians.  The road became more broken and thick with muddy water: I was in a logging area.  I turned a corner and the woodland just stopped, stripped, cut down and bare.

It was brutal.  The violence wreaked on the landscape, the cold, unflinching way the trees had been torn down.  They were now logs stacked in high piles either side of the road.  I thought that maybe they were destined for a higher purpose, that they'd form playground equipment for needy children or something, but no:

I had to remind myself that this was how forestry worked, how farming worked: you grow it, you cut it down, you grow it again.  Over and over for a thousand years.  But the shift from the cool pine forests to this torn up mess had unnerved me.  I pushed on, to where the trees resumed again, and took comfort in the forests in the distance.

A couple of tiny self-catering cottages marked the end of the woods.  I thought from here it was just a simple walk, but suddenly there was a flurry of signs, one after the other, guiding me carefully onto the correct path.  It soon became clear why,

A golf course.  Right here, in a part of England renowned for the beauty of its untamed nature, someone had flattened the hills and planted boring grass and kept it tidy.  It was annoying and ugly.  Worse, the owners were clearly furious that they had to maintain a right of way through their precious greens, and so sent walkers off on a side path.  A boggy, waterlogged side path. 

It looked fine, a rougher grassy route, but each footstep produced a squelch and a trickle beneath my heel.  Every now and then my feet sank completely into a pocket of mud and repulsion.  Luckily my boots maintained their water tight seal, otherwise I'd have been left with soggy socks, but it was still a strain to drag my feet through the dark mess.  Worse, it smelt, rotting leaves belching up a noxious scent that clung to my trousers for the rest of the day.  I hammered my way through, cursing Scotland, Sandy Lyle, Auric Goldfinger, and anyone else who had been involved in the pestilent game of golf at any time since the day it was invented.

Finally I was on tarmac again, dropped onto the A595 as it crept up the hill.  There wasn't a footpath, of course, so I wedged myself in as tight against the hedgerow as possible while cars zoomed by.  It was a particularly messy hedgerow too, filled with McDonalds Happy Meal packages and empty Sprite bottles and Tesco sandwich boxes.  I'm not a fan of the "Clean for the Queen" movement, what with it being grossly patronising and servile, but couldn't we clean for ourselves?  Couldn't we, as British people, just take a moment to realise that chucking your shit at the side of the road is disgusting behaviour and makes our lovely country just that little bit crappier every time?  

Tired and moist, I climbed up and over the hill, past Muncaster Castle.  A couple of people had recommended I pay it a visit, but it was still operating its winter hours: the castle was closed to visitors, as were the cafe and the gift shop.  If I couldn't get a cup of tea and an overpriced tea towel I didn't see the point of visiting, even if it did have an "Owl Centre".  

I was soon descending into Ravenglass village, stiff and tired.  I'd thought about going out that night, a Saturday; treating myself to a decent meal in the posh restaurant in the village.  However, a look at their menu revealed that it was written in a "comedy" style, plus they had signs like this outside:

I'm sorry but I just can't support those levels of linguistic terrorism.

Instead I headed back to the B&B and collapsed on the bed with a packet of Quavers.  Not quite the luxurious Lakeland experience, but it worked for me.