A Farewell To Arms

Here's another part of the post-referendum trip through Norfolk.

I hunted down the guard on the train at Great Yarmouth.  "Can you stop at Berney Arms please?"

He squinted at me quizzically.  "Berney Arms?  Are you sure?"

I smiled and nodded.

You don't get many people visiting Berney Arms.  It's famous for it.

The train coasted out of the station, across the flat empty landscape of the Broads.  Wide open spaces of reeds and water.  Swaying grass, browned in the summer sun.  We began to slow on the approach to the station and I went to the door with the guard.  He looked me up and down.  "You going to hang around for the next train?  It's not for a couple of hours."  

"Nah, I'm doing some walking."

"Fair enough."  The train came to a gentle halt and he opened the door.  A wink.  "Last chance to change your mind!"

"I'm alright.  Cheers."  I jumped down to the platform and watched the train disappear to a pinprick.

And suddenly I was alone.

Berney Arms is famous for being irrelevant.  There's a diamond of railway lines between Great Yarmouth and Brundall.  On the northern branch, there's stations at Lingwood and Acle; on the southern branch there's Berney Arms, Reedham, Cantley and Buckenham.  Trains alternate whether they take the northern or southern routes every couple of hours.  But Reedham, Cantley and Buckenham are also on the Lowestoft line, so they get twice as many trains as Berney Arms.

On top of that, Berney Arms is nowhere.  There's no road to the station at all.  There's no village.  You can get there by boat, mooring at the pub that gives the station its name, or you can walk there, but why would you?

The visitor numbers reflect that.  In 2016/17, the year I visited, it hit a high point of passenger numbers at 1126.  Since then they've plummeted, with 42 people visiting in 2019/20, though that was because the line was closed for most of the year.  Since the pandemic I doubt it's had a single visitor; going there is the very definition of non-essential travel.

Sometimes these old platform signs hang on thanks to the efforts of heritage groups.  At Berney Arms it seems to have persisted because nobody remembered to take it down.  There is a faded totem sign as well, for completists:

Now I was isolated and alone, the only human being around.  I trotted towards the river across pitted fields with ruts and puddles.  Cows raised their heads to watch me, bored.  The only landmark was the windmill at Berney Arms which slowly grew and grew as I got closer.

A couple of stiles and I was at the foot of the windmill.  It has been lovingly restored by English Heritage and keeps watch over the confluence of the Yare and the Waveney.  Of course it was closed when I arrived, but it's rarely open; as you'd expect, visitors are hard to come by out here.

Far more important was the pub.  Ian came here in 2012, but he didn't go to the pub; Robert visited the same year, and he did.  But neither of them are professional alcoholics like me - Ian doesn't even drink, meaning he has to deal with the nightmare of daily existence while sober - so I looked forward to casting my expert eye over beer list.

Oh.

Berney Arms wasn't just closed, it was shuttered and abandoned.  The pub garden was overgrown; the concrete full of weeds.  Signs in the window told me that everything of value had been removed from the premises.  It was very much an ex-pub.

This was annoying, and not just because I get tetchy when I'm promised a pint and I don't get one.  I was also thirsty and I had only half a bottle of water in my bag.  And I had about three miles to walk, along empty, unpopulated, paths.  This might get difficult.

The path soon rose upwards away from the empty marina and onto a wide flat embankment built as flood defences.  For the rest of my walk I'd be a raised figure, a single stick floating above the flat Norfolk landscape.  The Broads are a flat, marshy landscape, the remnants of medieval peat workings lost to rising sea levels, and they mix water and land without differentiating.  A path can turn to wet mush; a field slides into a bog.  And always low, a long stretch of green beneath a blue sky.

There was nowhere to hide.  The hot June afternoon sun beat down on my face and body.  The sweat leaked from my skin.  I slipped on a cap to try and stop my vast Tefal Head from turning red.  I drank the remainder of my water bottle, slowly, eking it out, but soon it was gone.  Out here there was no phone signal so I didn't know how far along the path I was.  All I knew was I had to follow this long, snaking river, and eventually, finally, I'd reach Reedham.  

There was the occasional boat, chugging past, its diesel engine providing a thrum to match my walk.  One of them was covered in lads - a stag do perhaps, half a dozen blokes in their twenties with cans in their hand draped across the roof and deck.  Another was far more genteel, piloted by an elderly man in a floppy white hat with his wife sat in the back, looking like Joan Collins at Biarritz.  

I dropped down and sat on the embankment to root around in my bag.  I was absolutely parched.  Surely there was something I could drink?  At the bottom, I discovered a forgotten treat.  Back in Acle I'd bought a meal deal, mainly for the sandwich and the drink, and I'd picked up a pot of chopped fruit as an afterthought.  It was still there.  I chewed on the apple slices and orange segments, making them last, then tipped the juices that had gathered in the bottom of the tub straight into my mouth.  It was delicious.

For a while I sat there, my legs stretched out in front of me, the hairy sticks looking comically thin between my baggy shorts and my chunky walking boots.  Like a Beano character, knobbly knees poking out at right angles.  I let the gentle breeze drift across the landscape, freshened by its touch from the river, cooling me down.  I closed my eyes under the sun until I started to get comfortable.  Then I clambered to my feet and walked on.

Reedham appeared on the horizon, the ordinary, plain world of humans reappearing in my view.  I went down a side road, surprising a couple walking their dog - they clearly didn't expect anyone to arrive from that direction - and headed towards the bridge.  My phone had once again got the barest signal which meant I was able to find The Ship, down by the river.  I ordered a pint of beer and a pint of orange juice and went and sat in the garden outside.  The orange juice was gone before I sat down.

The Ship sits beneath the railway bridge.  It's a swing bridge and still opens three or four times a day - there's a lot of sailing boats on this stretch of the river that are too high to pass underneath.  Plenty of boats were moored up for an afternoon pint, but none that would need the bridge moving.  I watched a pair of dogs play while their owners sipped glasses of wine.  A train passed over the bridge, tooting its horn as it went, and a couple of people in the garden raised their hands in a greeting.  I mulled whether to get another drink and then a later train, but I could feel a stiffness setting into my joints, the familiar sign of my body feeling all that exercise now I'd stopped, so I hauled myself off the bench with a groan and began the walk to the station.

If I were a superstitious man this would be the point where I'd blame the evil spirits for turning on me.  Without warning, out of nowhere, the skies darkened from perfect blue to gunmetal, and a deluge fell on Reedham.  Sudden, heavy, colossal rain, hammering at me, drenching me in seconds.  The drains quickly filled, unused to monsoons, and I was walking in puddles that a few moments ago had been hot bare tarmac.  Worse, Reedham seems to be built on the only hill in the entire county of Norfolk, so I was walking up to the station while water cascaded down and over my feet.  It was bizarre and yet strangely exhilarating.  A turn from perfection to hell in a matter of minutes.

I made it to the station without drowning and hid under the footbridge, listening to the noise of the heavy drops on the metal above my head.  I was drenched but refreshed.  I hoped conditions would be better when I returned in the morning.

Led Astray

I have to apologise to Cramlington.  I was keen as mustard to have a look round the town before I arrived.  It's a New Town, developed in the 1960s for Newcastle's residents, and New Towns are always interesting.

Unfortunately, as I got off the train, my phone rang.  It was the BF, calling to let me know that he had arrived in Berlin.  (Yes, while I was trekking around the North East he was gallivanting in the German capital for a week with his mate Peter.  No, it isn't fair, is it?).  Normally this would just be a brief phone call, but it turned out that his EasyJet flight had some interesting passengers - namely, the British diving team.

If you're not aware, the diving has a significant... following among the homosexual community.  I'm not sure what appeals to the gays about well-toned men in Speedos performing acrobatic feats while leaping from brave heights, then emerging dripping wet from the water - perhaps it's an appreciation for swimming pool architecture.  All I know is that we were glued to the men's diving during the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics, while completely ignoring, say, the Track and Field events.

The sight of half a dozen of our nation's finest divers sent the BF into raptures.  He launched into a lengthy monologue about who he saw, how they were dressed, how Chris Mears was asleep, how Jack Laugher was listening to his iPod, how he pretended to go to the loo just so he could get a better look... Basically he sounded like a twelve year old girl who's just spotted Harry Styles in the corner shop.

(Before you ask, no, Tom Daley wasn't with them, and no, I'm not really a fan of Team GB's divers.  I'm much more of a Vincent Riendeau from Canada fan).

Anyway, twenty minutes later he finally got off the phone (presumably to write Mrs James Denny over and over on his pencil case) and I was left with a conundrum.  Walk into the town, and not give it my full attention so I could be back in time for the next train, or just hang around the station.

I hung around the station.  Sorry Cramlington.  I'm sure you're lovely, but I fancied a bit of a sit down and a drink (my legs were still protesting after the previous day's walk).  I took up a position on the platform and waited for the train to take me to my next station.

Manors suffers from the same affliction as Edge Hill in Liverpool and Ardwick in Manchester.  It's just a little bit too close to the main city terminus to be useful.  By the time you've worked your way to the station, waited for your train, and then got out of Newcastle Central, you could be halfway into the city centre on the bus.  Or you could even walk it.

It leaves Manors with a desolate, unloved feel.  It's an island between the tracks, with a multi-storey car park on one side and the backs of some apartments on the other.  There's no lift for the disabled, because what would be the point?  Just a metal footbridge to clatter over to the main entrance: a gate behind a 1980s business park.

More of that terrible signage as well.

Another reason for Manors' relative quiet is that there's a Tyne & Wear Metro station a two minute walk away.  Theoretically this should be an ideal interchange spot; in reality, anyone in the area just uses the Metro because that goes to far more useful places than the train.

Obviously I was ecstatic at the opportunity to ride the Metro again.  It's a brilliant network, all fast, efficient trains and lovely underground stations and that gorgeous Calvert font.  Manors is underground, with a pleasingly clean and spacious ticket hall leading down to two platforms.

Part of me wanted to just lark around on the Metro for the rest of the day.  I have a feeling that someday I'll have to come back for round the Metro we go.  It's just too tempting, especially now there are direct Newcastle trains from Liverpool every hour.  I doubt it would take too long to do either.

There were two side platforms with the tracks running inbetween; an unusual arrangement in the UK, where we tend to prefer separate tunnels for each underground track.  It reminded me of stations in Barcelona, which have a similar layout.

The only thing that stopped me from riding the Metro all afternoon was that I was incredibly tired.  I'm used to having a bit of a nap in the afternoon - this is a depression side effect, sadly - and combined with the 20 mile walk the day before my body was in full on protest mode.  I changed at Monument and got the train to Newcastle Central, where I could find my hotel and have a bit of a kip.

Observant readers will have noticed that in all this time I haven't actually collected Newcastle Central mainline yet.  I've been through it a few times but I haven't waxed lyrical about it.  This is because it's been undergoing significant refurbishment works all the times I've visited.  They're nearly done now, but the street outside is still a mess and some of the retail is all over the place, so I decided to leave it for another day.  I need to come back some time to collect Blaydon, anyway, the only other Tyne & Wear station I haven't yet been to.

If you're the kind of person who likes reading transport related blogs - and if you're reading this, you probably are - you'll have also read Robert's Station Master blog.  He's trying to visit some of the more obscure and poorly served stations on the network, and as part of that, he visited the Chathill line.  He even asked me along, but when I suggested walking between stations, he turned pale and said perhaps it would be better if he went on his own.

This lead to a certain amount of competition between us.  Admittedly it was mainly on my part; I can't bear to be second (or first loser) at anything.  We'd both visited the same stations, we'd even stayed in the same hotel, so there was a little bit of rivalry about who would have the best time.  It didn't help that he sent me texts like the one below:

So if you're keeping score, Robert got a room with a view of the station, but was in Acklington too early to visit the pub.  I had a view of the street outside my hotel room, but I got to have a couple of pints in the Railway at Acklington.  A draw.  Possibly.  Personally I think being able to drink alcohol is worth five points at least.

That text meant that I had to do one thing at Widdrington, and one thing only: eat chips on the platform.  I got up from my nap and dashed over to the platform for my train.  It was - for the first and only time - busy.  Finally I saw the point of the service to Chathill.  It was full of commuters on their way home, plus a smattering of bored teenagers finding ways to kill time during the holidays.  People were actually standing.

At Morpeth, though, most of them cleared out.  The jammed train became distinctly deserted.  Only a couple of us alighted at Widdrington; I should imagine the rest were waiting for Alnmouth.  I headed immediately for the chip shop - or, to use its proper name, The Widdy Chippy.

It was a real, proper working class chippy; there was none of that pretentious food you get in some other places.  My local chip shop offers curry, chinese, kebabs; the Widdy had spam fritters on its menu and that was about as exotic as it got.  The drinks were bottles of Tip Top and there was a Kid's Special Snack Box with a free frisbee (sorry, "flying disc").  It was packed.  A constant stream of punters came in for their Friday night tea.

I decided not to go with the fish, and instead ordered a battered sausage, onion rings and chips.  A few minutes later, with a smattering of salt, I was on the platform.  Obviously I texted this victory to Robert.

(He's not a smackhead, by the way; he'd just had wisdom teeth removed).

The chips were gorgeous; soft, fluffy, with a deliciously tempered batter.  The onion rings crunched satisfactorily.  The battered sausage was something else.  The batter was fine, but when you bit into the centre, it wasn't really a sausage at its heart; it was more a soft, slightly cold collection of mashed pink stuff.  It wasn't tightly packed inside the sausage skin and flopped onto the tongue.  I couldn't eat it.  I took a couple of bites and then it went into the bin with the polystyrene tray and the scrag ends.

I had a bit of a wander round the immediate vicinity of the station.  The chip shop was housed in a parade of turn of the century stores, next to a Co-op and round the corner from an Indian takeaway.  Behind it was a wide recreation ground which was, for some reason, Stones of Blood themed.  I'm sure it made sense to the playground designers to lay out a space for a pagan stone circle, but I'm not entirely on board with their logic.

As I stood, bemused, a woman appeared at the gate of her house overlooking the recreation ground.  "Simon!  Tea!" she yelled, and a little blonde boy immediately detached himself from the group and legged it towards the house.  Meanwhile, a half dozen teenage girls appeared over the hill, stinking of perfume and over made up, and they took up position behind the bins at the back of the shop.  They were there for the rest of the evening, just hanging out, casting bitchy glances at passers by and sharing packets of crisps.  Friday night in a small town.

I headed back to the station.  The building's a private home again, and you can stare right down into their back yard from the platform.  I put on a podcast - Dennis Hensley chatting to a friend about Partridge Family 8-tracks - and waited for my train.

I'd done it, then.  The whole of the Chathill branch crossed off.  It was always going to be a challenge, I thought, but in reality, it was pretty simple.  A bit - alright, a lot - of walking.  A bit of hanging around.  It had been fun.  And most importantly, I did it better than Robert.

The Furthest Reach

There's a unique alchemy at work in near empty railway stations.  I was in Newcastle Central not long after it opened.  Most of the shops were closed.  The ticket barriers were unmanned, their gates folded back.  There were no trains passing through.

That's where it became magical.  A railway station without trains is holding its breath.  Each part of it is ready to spring into action; it just needs the first grind of a train to make it happen.  Platforms offer promise.

I clacked across the tiled floor, my walking boots echoing in the empty space.  The other people about were still half-asleep.  They wanted to be somewhere else, at home, in bed, being cuddled.  It was too early to be lively.  The exception was two lads sat on a table outside Costa, fizzing with excitement and energy. They had backpacks at their feet and were playing cards, whacking down hands, laughing, ready for their adventure.

My train was waiting for me on the platform, but it was dead.  Silent and cold.  I bought myself a chai latte from the sole open store - Costa - and took a seat by it.  After a few minutes, the driver arrived, and he coaxed the Super Sprinter into life.  The diesel engines coughed, a thick gruff clearing of the throat, then it began to throb.  A pulsing clatter over and over.  I felt a strange moment of nostalgia for it.  Electrification means that these diesel workhorses are going to be pushed to the edges of the network; they'll be on the fringes and won't visit the big cities any more.

A flicker and the white fluorescents of the carriage came to life.  They were the brightest light around; yellow downlights pooled subtly on the shiny floors, but the train was a bar of glowing phosphorescence.  Then another kind of light: the orange circle around the "door open" button.

This was the 0555 service from Newcastle to Chathill, and I was the only passenger.  Not surprising.  It's a token service that no-one really uses.  The train travels over the East Coast Main Line, the route from King's Cross to Scotland, and there are larger, faster, more important trains that need to use the rails.  A dinky stopping service calling at quiet Northumberland villages is an inconvenience, but no-one has the heart to kill it completely.  Instead they run a token service: one train north in the morning, one in the evening, and the same going back.  A loop just beyond Chathill lets the train reverse.  It's useless to all but the most committed commuters.

The guard checked my ticket with disdain before heading to the front of the train and staying there.  I guessed that he and the driver saw this as a nice easy way to start their day with no passengers getting in the way.  I pictured them sat in the cabin sharing a flask of tea.

As we tore out of Newcastle and into the countryside the skies changed from violet to grey.  Night receded to leave the odd glimpse of sun behind thick clouds.  It felt as though we were travelling impossibly fast.  The engine was a constant drum in the background as the train was pushed to its maximum; InterCity speeds being wrestled out of a rickety old lady.  The driver must love it.  This is why he became a train driver, not to pootle around brown suburbs, but to burn through the countryside.

A level crossing whizzed past, barely more than a track and a gate.  Morpeth came in a blur of flat roofed extensions and conservatories.  The wheels protested loudly at being forced to stop.  There were no passengers, just as there had been none at Cramlington before it.  Two stations down, two to go.  Then we were out at maximum again, the driver doing whatever the railway equivalent of foot-down driving is.

Alnmouth appeared alongside, embarrassingly pretty, a tiny town huddled on a curve in a wide estuary.  The station brought the first sign of other passengers - on the opposite platform, mind, but it was nice to see some life.  On a distant hillside, a herd of cows clustered, determined to create dramatic silhouettes against the morning sky.  The second East Coast train of the morning crashed by; the line was beginning to fill up, and soon there wouldn't be room for this little purple interloper.  I pictured furious Scottish 125s stacked up behind the Sprinter, tapping their wheels impatiently, shouting for it to get out the way.

"This is Chathill, where this train terminates."  It was the first time the guard had spoken - he'd seen my ticket, he knew where I was going; there was no point in announcing the other stations.  Chathill is as far north as Northern Rail goes.  It's not the furthest north station in England - Berwick-upon-Tweed, nudging up against the border, holds that distinction - but Northern aren't allowed to go there.  Only the fastest trains, electric ones, are allowed past this point.

I put a line through the station name on the Northern Rail map I carry around in my head.  If I achieved nothing else that day, I'd done this, one of the most obscure, most difficult to reach stations.  Job done.

The station building is a private house now, of course.  I tiptoed by and out onto the road, not wanting to make any noise at such an early hour.  I crossed over to the southbound platform to have a look in the shelter.  Normally these quiet stations have nothing much in the way of facilities - you're lucky if you get a seat - but Chathill has a proper shelter, with a heavy sliding door to stop the birds from nesting inside.

Inside, the locals had put up British Railways noticeboards and filled them with pamphlets for local attractions.  There was a history of the line and the station, and a small book exchange (mostly historical romances).  And there were postcards.  Robert visited the station a couple of months ago, and so I was forewarned that I could buy a souvenir of my visit; there were only two left in the plastic wallet.  I put some coins into the envelope and crossed back to the house ("drop it through the letterbox").

There was a train back into Newcastle in a few minutes; I say "a train", it was the one I'd come on.  I wasn't getting it.  I'd decided to walk to the next station along the line, just twenty miles or so away.  Surely it couldn't be that hard?

Daddy Cool

The problem with being a homo is, you can't have kids.  Not without adoption, a volunteer uterus or a major lifestyle readjustment.

As a result, I have no-one to pass my knowledge down to.  Who can I educate in who are the best and worst Bond girls (Tracy and Lupe, respectively)?  Who can I teach how to make superb omelettes, my one culinary gift?  Who will carry on my work of visiting obscure railway stations after I'm gone?

Fortunately, this last question has sort of been answered.  Robert's followed in my train tracks with his Station Master blog - subscribers will be happy to know it'll be getting an update in the next month or so - and now there's the pitter patter of another railway station blogger's tiny feet in the form of Will.

Will lives in the North East, and has turned this disadvantage around by starting A Well-Dressed Quest.  He aims to visit all the stations on that gorgeous, huge tiled map of the North Eastern Railway that can still be spotted on the network:

That's an example I spotted at Middlesbrough.

Where Will's mission differs from mine is that a lot of those stations aren't there any more.  Never mind getting a train to them; in some cases all he's got is a map reference to tell him it was ever there.  He's therefore spending a lot of his time walking along old track beds, down country lanes, and taking pictures of roadkill (don't ask me why - it's his blog).

Another way he differs from me is that he's doing it all in marvellously well-tailored outfits.

I go out in my saggy Tu by Sainsbury's t-shirt and my frayed jeans; Will goes out in a smart white shirt and a tweedy jacket that I am seriously coveting.

So there you are: the blog has spawned, and I couldn't be more proud.  I'm slightly teary in fact, though that might just be the rampant hay fever I've had all morning.  Go to Will's blog; support him; applaud him; tell him off for driving a car between stations because that's cheating.  Just don't tell him he's better than me.  I may be proud but I'm still needy and jealous.

You can read A Well-Dressed Quest here.

Rugby Lads

In a recent blog post, Robert referred to our friendship as "the greatest double act since PJ and Duncan".  I don't necessarily have a problem with this reference; Let's Get Ready to Rhumble is obviously a high water mark for Western civilisation (the "h" in Rhumble deserves a Grammy all of its own).  My objection was that he didn't say who was who.  Am I Ant, the taller, balder one?  Or Dec, the shorter, fatter one?  I can't actually decide which one's better.  It's not like Morecambe and Wise, where one is clearly a genius and the other one is good but not that good (by the way, the genius was Eric, and if you think otherwise, please leave this website immediately).  In the end, I think I'd prefer to be PJ, as his blinding at the paintball game was a significant moment in children's television for my generation, up there with Zammo slumped on the floor of a toilet high on scag and Five Star being asked why they were "so fucking shit" on Going Live. 

I had the opportunity to ask Robert who was the Ant and who was the Dec on Saturday, when we took a train to Manchester together.  He said he didn't have a specific role for either of us in mind, which is probably a lie, and so for the rest of this blog I will refer to him as "Tennille", which makes me "The Captain."  Equilibrium is restored.

We were in Manchester to visit a rarely open station: Manchester United Football Ground.  Or, as the BF (a former Liverpool season ticket holder) calls it, "that shithole".  He wasn't at all keen on me visiting the station, perhaps believing I'd come home with Manchester Fleas or something.  I pacified him by explaining that the trains weren't actually being run for a football match: it was the Rugby Super League Final that afternoon, between Wigan and Warrington.

And that is the end of my knowledge of the subject of rugby, unless you count Ben Cohen's arms and an appreciation of the annual Dieux de Stade calendar.  I went to the least athletic high school in the world - my year couldn't scrape together eleven boys willing to play football against other schools, so we just didn't have a team that year - and rugby was only on the curriculum for one year.  There was a Science teacher who apparently had a minor in rugby and who taught us the basics on a freezing cold field in November.  Then he left the school, and I went back to being a really distant fielder in rounders so I could have a nice sit down.

Manchester United Football Ground is tucked away behind the South Stand, and only receives limited services on match days.  It's a hangover from the days when there actually used to be "football specials", four carriages of drunken violence and hooliganism that crossed the nation ferrying louts to the next match.

I've read Awaydays; I know that trains to football stadiums are full of bovver booted maniacs pulling up the seating and spitting on passers by.  I began to get more and more anxious.  It had started earlier, when I tried to find a neutral outfit that wouldn't imply allegiance to either team, and now it was growing.  What if someone asked us who we were there to see?  Or a more technical question?  What if they started a singalong, and took issue with me not joining in?  What if we were the only sober people on board?  I don't like crowds at the best of times, but things are so much worse when you're jammed in the armpit of a twenty stone rugby fan who's been knocking back the Tennant's Extra since 8 that morning.

Adding to my anxiety was Michael Portillo on the platform, looking supercilious in a bright pink jacket (nice way to battle those rumours about your sexuality, Mike).  In my experience, where a Tory politician goes, disaster is sure to follow.  It didn't help that, purely coincidentally, Robert Tennille had actually mentioned Portillo in conversation moments before, raising the very real prospect that he is a minion of Satan who can be summoned just by uttering his name.  Like the Candyman.

If I'd had more wits about me, I might have gone over and demanded that he stop making that Great Railway Journeys programme.  The concept of the programme is fine, it's just his halting, uncomfortable presence as a presenter I can't stand.  The sight of him in a hairnet, attempting banter with some jolly production line worker as they turn out some historic Devon fudge, then pretending to eat it on the Tarka Line, turns my stomach.  Probably because I suspect that his Damascene conversion to liberalism is all a front, and if David Cameron offered him a front bench role which involved herding the first born of welfare claimants into a large pen and dropping them off Beachy Head he'd be right in there.

Still, there's always this.

We finally made it on board the train, which wasn't too busy; we got a seat, at least.  Most of the matchgoers got on at Oxford Road.  A hefty Wigan fan, Carlsberg in hand, installed his two kids in the seat in front of us and then bellowed down the carriage for the rest of the journey.  Much of what he said was either boorish or incomprehensible; apparently he didn't mind if Wigan lost, so long as one of the Warrington players got his leg broken, which doesn't strike me as being a good sport.

The station is on a little bit of side track alongside the main line, which is why it has to have special trains and they can't just let the mainline ones stop here.  TfGM have suggested closing this station and building a new one nearby which could be served by regular services and be more of an asset for the local community.  Their proposed name for this station is "White City", after a nearby retail park, which needs to be stopped for being unoriginal.  There's already a White City station, Manchester, and has been for over fifty years.  Get your own name.

We let everyone else alight from the train then found a handy sign for our photos.

That's another rarity knocked off the map.  The rest should be dead easy.

Now we had the problem of getting out of the station.  The crowds had thinned, as passengers had passed through the turnstiles.  Turnstiles.  I worried that as we didn't have match tickets we wouldn't be allowed to go through, and we'd be stuck on the platform until the reverse services started up after the match.

Luckily the turnstiles were a relic of the old stadium, and were unmanned.  We passed through and emerged in the shadow of Old Trafford, its high glass frontage and bright red signage everywhere.  Even though it was a Super League final, they hadn't really bothered covering up its footballing day job; I thought there might be some banners or signs to celebrate the rugby match but there were still vast portraits of Wayne Rooney everywhere you looked.

I texted that picture to the BF, with a message saying "Look where I am!"

"Does it stink of shit?" came the extremely mature reply.  Football can turn grown men into 13 year old boys.

Now we had to get away from the station, which was difficult, because we were going in the opposite direction to everyone else.  Waves of fans were streaming closer, good natured enough, but still a hefty mass.  We dived down a side street and found ourselves in what seemed like a perfectly ordinary suburban avenue.  It would probably be quite nice living here, I thought, apart from the absolute hell of every other Saturday.

As though to emphasise the point, two women emerged from a patch of vacant ground, hoisting their knickers up.  "There'll have been loos in the ground," said their friends, waiting politely on the pavement.

"I know," said one of the al fresco pissers, "but I just couldn't hold it in any more!"

Pure.  Class.

We were headed for Trafford Park station for the train home.  We'd considered staying in Manchester, but on top of the Super League final, Manchester City were playing Everton at home, so we decided the city would probably be nightmarish.  We were also trying to time our return visit so we wouldn't get Everton fans on the train, or Crystal Palace fans at Lime Street, or Liverpool fans in the city's pubs; Saturday afternoons are a minefield if you can't stand sport.

Chester Road's a big, busy thoroughfare here, so I was fascinated by the idea that they'd close it on match days.  I should imagine the inconvenience to traffic is worth it to get 60,000 people out of the way as quickly as possible.

There were still signs that a big event was happening.  Crowds of supporters passed us, dressed in their teams' strip (I still didn't know which one was which, and the presence of away kits just muddied the issue).  Outside a social club, the car park was crammed with people clutching plastic glasses of beer, and at the kerbside men in high-vis jackets beckoned passing cars into private compounds behind hotels and pubs.  They lazily rolled their arms, over and over, like really bad interpretative dance.

Meanwhile, there weren't so much shopping precincts, as strips of grease.  Chippies, kebab shops, Indians, Chinese - every kind of takeaway was here to ensnare the passing fan with tempting wafts of fried food.

Down a side street, we got another sign of the horrors of being a local resident: parking permit signs with dot matrix indicators to tell you when the next match was.

I quite liked that.  I always find it thrillingly futuristic, a little bit of Blade Runner come to the present day.  I get similarly excited by LED screens showing ads; if that one outside Lime Street ever featured a massive Japanese lady putting a pill in her mouth I'd be ecstatic. 

Tennille was at my elbow, complaining, doubting my navigational skills.  It was not a little triumph that I pointed at Trafford Park station on the horizon; of course I knew where we were going.

It was a sad little station.  A ticket office had been constructed when it first opened at the turn of the 20th Century, but it had been closed a long time ago.  For a while it was a taxi office, but now it seemed to be abandoned altogether.  The windows were boarded up and iron bars were over that.

Behind the building was a long pathway up to the platform level.  The station doesn't get much of a service, and there was a real peace to it.  When we reached the platform level we were hit by a bright orange sun, lighting the platform and the tracks.

Tennille hammered away at his phone - he's just got an iPhone 5C, and needed no excuse to bash at it - while we waited for the train home.  The rest of the line could wait for a quieter day, some time when I wouldn't have to run the gauntlet of burly men in shorts.  Back to Liverpool we went, for a pint or two.

You can read Robert's account of the trip here.