Downward Spiral

Sometimes people say a tiny little phrase and it sticks in your head.  Sheffield residents Fiona and Ruth both refer to Sheffield's out of town megamall as "Meadowhell", and so I headed for it with some trepidation.  I was imagining a kind of hideous temple to Mammon, overstuffed, overlit, overpriced.

Instead it was a little time capsule of what shopping malls used to be like: the American model, shipped over wholesale and dropped on the edge of Sheffield.  I went to a large mall in Charlotte, North Carolina once, and Meadowhall gave me serious deja vu.  It was all there - the shiny marble floors, the pillars, the Roman Temple via Las Vegas decorations.  Two floors of shops with ample free parking.  And a dome, of course.  There's always a dome, so you can spot it from the motorway.  I've never been to the Trafford Centre, but I imagine it's just like this, only bigger.

I went up to the first floor, because the BF had asked me to get him a boiled egg slicer from Lakeland (don't ask), then back down again.  There was a waterfall between the escalators, its prettiness ruined by the heavy scent of chlorine.  I should imagine it was Meadowhell on a Saturday morning, when there were harassed mums and unwilling dads and bored teenagers hanging off the balustrades gobbing their chewing gum into the hair of passers by below, but on a weekday morning it seemed perfectly fine.  The main irritation for me was that it existed at all.  There were shops here that wouldn't open branches in Sheffield now; too close, too down at heel, too many hazards involving parking and so on.  I hope this kind of building is on its way out in this country as we rediscover the cities.  Liverpool One has shown how a new shopping centre can be open and attractive and an asset to the city without putting up barriers; the same for post-bomb Manchester.  America's malls are dying as shopping habits change, and this could be a real opportunity for Britain's cities to reassert themselves.

A brief pause at Greggs for a bit of lunch on the go - is it just me, or have Steak Bakes got smaller? - and then I headed out of the mall towards the Meadowhall Interchange.  That's a positive difference between Meadowhall and their US equivalents: if you don't have a car in America you just can't visit these shopping centres, and, to be frank, they don't want you.  I once tried to visit a mall in Charlotte on foot and it involved a dash across four lanes of traffic (there was no pedestrian crossing), a walk on a snow covered verge (there was no pavement) and a long trek across acres of vacant tarmac to get in (there was no footpath).  I was surprised they let people actually walk around the mall itself, and didn't just make the whole thing a drive thru.

Meadowhall Interchange combines rail, bus and tram into one super access point.  It could get even bigger if HS2 ever comes along; the plans call for Sheffield to have its station on the new line here.  That would be a mistake.  If HS2 goes to the fringe of the city then so will other services as a way of interchanging with it.  There will be a slow creep away from the main station and out to Meadowhall.  It'll cost more money and be more difficult to send the high speed line through the city centre, of course, but if the project is to really connect to northern cities it has to actually serve them, not a distant park and ride on the edge.  I hope the city council is pressing for there to be a change in the plans.

I was heading up the line to visit Swinton.  There are two Swintons on the Northern Rail map, and I'd always planned on visiting them on the same day.  However, the Farnworth tunnel works mean that the Swinton in Greater Manchester is just getting a bus service at the minute, and with no end in sight, I decided to just get South Yorkshire out the way.

The train slid past the county's last steelworks, now owned by an Indian conglomerate, and deposited me on an isolated platform.  Ahead of me was a woman and her daughter, arms full of bags from Meadowhall, already lighting cigarettes as they stepped down off the train.

I'll say this for Travel South Yorkshire, they're good at integrating their transport facilities.  Swinton had a generous car park and a turning circle for buses to use.  It also had, for reasons I couldn't fathom, a graveyard for dead bus shelters.

Years of reading Go Fug Yourself mean I have an automatic urge to write Swinton in all caps - SWINTON - as a tribute to acclaimed actress and demi-human Tilda Swinton.  It would certainly save any confusion over the two Northern Swintons if one was always written in caps, with the accompanying emphasis when you pronounced it.  Perhaps they could build a statue of Tilda outside, doing one of her regular activities - winning an Oscar, participating in a polyamorous relationship on a small Scottish island, communicating with her alien overseers.  Something like that.

I headed into SWINTON itself and found another of those ridiculously steep hills that South Yorkshire is cursed with.  There were not one, but two working men's clubs, the second advertising its bingo night with the phrase "bring yer dabber!".  A fine library had been turned into flats and was now "Carnegie House".  I felt like going back in time and telling Andrew Carnegie not to bother building all these educational establishments for the betterment of society; in a hundred years they'd just be flogged off and his investment would have been wasted.

Across the street, two women were walking a tiny dog.  As with most tiny dogs, it was yapping incessantly, until the younger one snapped and screamed, "shurrup, will ya!"  Surprisingly, this didn't placate it.

A dodgy looking Flat Roofed Pub (© Jon Dryden Taylor), a sports bar that advertised "credit crunch prices all day", a row of shops with one of the largest Bargain Boozes I've ever seen - SWINTON wasn't grabbing me.  Not even a house with a red phone box in its front garden could sway me.  Nor the fully dressed mannequin inside the phone box.

(That house is owned by a psychopath, yes?)

At the top of the hill, older SWINTON took over, with a charming chapel and an traditional pub with a sagging roof.  There was a pocket park with a piece of artwork in it that probably commemorated the millennium, or the Queen's Golden Jubilee, or something, but to me just looked like a load of metal they had left over from a real bit of art.

The road carried on uphill after that, and I realised I'd had enough.  It wasn't just that my aching ankle was nagging at me.  It was just all a bit miserable.  After the delights of Sheffield, this felt like a real comedown.  It didn't help that a couple of days before I'd been swooning over Hebden Bridge and Halifax, so the hangover was doubled.

There was a man over the road waiting at a bus stop, so I dashed over and, sure enough, there was a bus into Rotherham due any minute.  Since my ticket also covered buses - Travel South Yorkshire's commitment to integrated transport again - I thought, sod it, and jumped on board.

Incidentally, compare that with the picture of the Supertram I posted yesterday.  See what I mean about a bus on rails?

I'd not known it before I visited, but Rotherham was currently playing host to an important conference: The Annual Convention of Loitering Scallies.  Every street, every corner, came complete with a party of rough looking teens, eyeballing passers by and necking Red Bull.

I clutched my wallet close and did a circuit of the town centre.  It was in a bad way.  If Meadowhall had impacted a little on Sheffield, it must have been devastating for Rotherham.  There were pound shops, payday loan places, the lowest level of bargain clothes shops.  If you wanted anything better than a Bon Marche outfit, you'd have to head off to Meadowhall.  To make things worse, a huge Tesco Extra crouched on the ring road, right behind the bus exchange, giving you all your weekly food shop plus clothes, electronics, a pharmacy... You didn't need to go into town; you could get everything you wanted from that one store.

There were a few highlights: the impressive Minster, a couple of buildings that had been attractively preserved, a pretty square.  The rest was misery inducing.

I decided to cut my losses and headed for the station.  The River Don passes right through the town centre, and the addition of a canal behind it has created an island in the centre of town.  Anywhere else and this would be a huge asset, a spot for a restaurant quarter perhaps, or expensive flats.  Instead Rotherham turns its back on it: the roads don't shadow the river banks, and it was home to the town's Tesco until the Extra opened.  Now it's a car park.  The island's only asset is the fifteenth century bridge chapel, hidden away and ignored.

The station reinforces Rotherham's determination to be second class.  The main route from Sheffield to Leeds runs through the town, but at a distance from the centre so the station wasn't as well used as it could have been.  In the 1980s, a plan was drawn up to get the line closer to town, and a line was built branching off from the mainline to a new station by Forge Island.  The old station was then demolished.

The problem was, they left the old lines in place.  They'd made the Sheffield-Leeds line faster, by removing a station, and stuck Rotherham off over there.  A lot of the trains stop at Rotherham, but an equal amount of trains don't.  They quite literally sidelined it.

Even the station they built was inadequate; it only lasted 25 years before it was demolished and replaced with the current building.  The new one opened in 2010, and it's a good station - light and airy and a landmark.  You need a station to stand out.  People need to instantly spot it.

I headed down to the platform feeling sad about the state of the town.  It's hard being the junior partner in sister towns: being Bradford, not Leeds, or Birkenhead instead of Liverpool.  The best way to deal with it is to acknowledge your debt to the larger town and carve your own niche.  Rotherham was going about it the very worst way.  It was letting Sheffield take everything from it, like one of those vanishing twins who are absorbed by the larger foetus in the womb.

I needed something to cheer me, and once again, Sheffield came to the rescue.  The Refreshment Rooms at the station were abandoned in the 1960s, but a few years ago some investors took over the spot and refurbished it.

The result is the Sheffield Tap, a glorious real ale pub that serves wonderful beers in a fantastic setting.  I picked the Pennine Pale, pretty much at random, and immediately fell in love with its rich flavour.  You can buy cases of it here (also, it's nearly Christmas, JUST SAYING).

A pint of fine beer in a beautiful station pub.  To me, that's perfection.

A Sheaf Of Happiness

Sheffield is just below Newcastle in its ability to make me swoon with adoration.  It's a wonderful place.  Step out of the station and you have that fantastic square, with stainless steel and fountains.  It's a city that's big enough to give you everything you want, to let you lose yourself, but small enough to feel fun and bohemian and friendly.

Just walking past the Crucible gave me a little thrill; my dad was snooker obsessed in the 1980s - there were bound copies of Snooker Scene on the shelf next to the telly - and so the Crucible is woven in and out of my childhood.  It's probably why snooker is one of the few sports that I find acceptable, even entertaining.  (Please note: while snooker is great, pool is an awful Yank abomination).  I remember being surprised to learn, somewhere in my teens, that the Crucible was a theatre.  I'd always assumed it was the Wimbledon of the game - it still feels odd to me that one week they're hosting an international sporting tournament and the next it's An Inspector Calls.

Across the way is another of Sheffield's tiny pieces of genius, the Winter Gardens.  It's just an arcade with a few plants in it, really, but it's such a wonderful idea.  It's a sheltered place for people to just... sit.  That's all.  There are cafes round the edge, yes, and a hotel and an art gallery immediately adjacent, but there's no obligation to spend.  If all you want to do is enjoy the trees and plants, you can, and no-one will stop you.  Such a refreshingly egalitarian concept.  There should be Winter Gardens in every city.  Instead of making us consume, make us enjoy.

Of course, this is all part of Sheffield's unabashed leftiness and dedication to the working classes.  The square outside its Town Hall - a Baronial confection that looks like it's sitting on top of the Batcave - isn't named for some Victorian entrepreneur, but is instead called the "Peace Gardens", while the fountains are dedicated to a Chartist rebel.  Sheffield does have a vested interest in promoting international brotherhood, given that it was ground zero for a nuclear attack in Threads.  I watched just the trailer on the train over and it's one of the most harrowing pieces of film in history; the actual programme makes you want to (a) find a nice comfortable corner somewhere to cry out all your bodily fluids and (b) donate all your money to CND.  It's absolutely horrific, and you should see it, although I wouldn't watch it if you're on any kind of anti-depressive.  Or you live in Sheffield.

One thing that baffles me about Sheffield is: how are there any overweight people in the town?  Up and down you walk, entire streets built at sixty degrees from the vertical, hills appearing from nowhere and rising straight up.  You think a building is perfectly normal, then walk round the back of it and find a sudden drop down to the car park.  I walked from the station to the City Hall at what felt like a constant uphill rise and I was drained when I got there.  The last time I was in the city for a wander about was with Diamond Geezer, and we'd been out wandering in the Peak District: that was a pretty dance among the flowers compared with the slog I'd just experienced.

That's Jessica Ennis' gold post box!  Seriously, it's becoming a new obsession.

I was crossing the city in search of one of Sheffield's other selling points: its trams.  Opened in the mid-90s, the network suffers from one of the worst websites in the world (seriously guys, it's 2015) and labours under the name "Supertram", but it's otherwise a real asset.

I headed out to the University of Sheffield stop.  I'd like to pretend this was because I wanted to experience the city just a little bit longer, but in fact it was because I completely missed the City Hall and West Street stops.  The northbound ones had shelters and grand signs, but the southbound ones just had a bit of metal stuck in the ground; I managed to walk right past them both.

It turned out to be for the best, because the University of Sheffield stop is right next to a tunnel exit, and you know how excited I get about tunnels.  Yes, I do know it's very Freudian, I have A-level Psychology.

On board, the trams are sort of... odd.  I'd been on the Metrolink only a few days before, and Manchester's network is the gold standard for British trams.  They're clean, efficient, fast, and constantly expanding.  Supertram is a weird bus on rails.  There are steps inside, for a start, which I'd seen before on the also disappointing Birmingham tram network.  The Stagecoach livery has permeated every square inch of the design, so it doesn't feel that different to a double decker.

You don't buy tickets from a machine before boarding, as on Metrolink.  Instead there's a conductor selling tickets from his little machine like it's 1935.  And all the stops are request stops.  The tram will only pause if you ring the bell, like a bus, though in practice the tram actually stopped at every single halt on the way.  So that was a bit of a waste of time for everyone.

Still, it was a thrill to be on board a tram, to hear that gentle electric purr as we whizzed through the streets.  After Fitzalan Square-Ponds Forge stop we crossed the road on a bridge - past one of the least enticing tourist signs I've ever seen, directing visitors to the Cholera Monument - and giving us a view of the Brutalist joy that is Park Hill flats.  The route was less attractive then, curving behind industrial estates and through deep embankments.  For a while we shadowed a canal, then there was the giant bulks of a retail park and a stop called "Valley Centertainment" which made me furious.

I got off the tram at Meadowhall South/Tinsley, and struggled to fit all of that in a sign pic.  A tram route in the UK is something we should treasure, but I feel like Sheffield isn't making the most of it.  There are tentative plans to build a new route to Dore, if HS2 ever gets this far, and a tram-train pilot to Rotherham that may happen one day, but beyond that nothing much.  The tram needs to work a bit harder if it's going to be as fabulous as the city it serves.

Low Winter Sun

There are rumours that Darnall railway station is marked for closure.  It's not hard to see why.

Some stations fail because of their location, or because of neglect.  Some fail because they're abandoned.  Some just don't feel right.

Darnall has a single, wide platform in the centre of two running lines.  There's no ticket office and there's no human presence.  Just a long strip of concrete and a lonely shelter.

I was the only person to get off the train from Sheffield.  As it departed, I was left in a hollow centre.  Even though there were houses and flats all around me, they felt miles away, because the railway lines isolated me.  It was quite disconcerting.

Worse, the only way off the island platform is via a dark, unwelcoming subway.  Northern Rail have managed to save themselves a few quid by not turning on the lights during daylight hours.  On paper, this makes perfect sense; it's only four or five metres long, it's not a high traffic area, there's wide entrances at either end that should let the daylight in.

In reality you descend from the platform into a black hole, with a blind corner to negotiate.  I was intimidated, and I'm a reasonably healthy man; I wouldn't want to be a lonely woman, or a pensioner, and using that exit.  The CCTV cameras were no reassurance - they're only good after the fact, so the police can put the pictures of your murderer's face on Crimewatch.

I hurried up the exit ramp and into Station Road, a strip of red brick terraces, for the sign picture.

A quick right, a dart across the ring road, and I was on my way to the next station.  The road rose gradually as I moved out of the Sheaf valley.  At the end of the streets there were more parks - it really is a very pretty city at its best - but here, at the roadside, there was choked up traffic and litter.  A 4x4 swung onto the pavement ahead of me, narrowly avoiding running me over, apparently under the impression it was just a fancy form of off-road parking.  Further along, a man was unloading the boot of his car, balancing as many carrier bags as possible on his arms before he trekked up the high steps to his front door.  Those Yorkshire peaks might make the city look attractive but it means there's almost a vertical climb from the kerb to your kitchen.

The sun sparkled in my eyes, as high as it was ever going to get at this time of year, warm but not hot.  It cast the right hand side of the road into moody silhouettes.

I passed garages and back gardens before reaching a flyover.  The Sheffield Parkway crashed past on its way to the M1 with an impressive junction; impressive for cars, that is, but not so good if you're a pedestrian trying to cross.  I darted across the entrance and exit ramps, convinced that I was about to be knocked down by a truck.

On the other side, a strip of undistinguished houses were punctuated by a blue plaque: In a cottage close to this site BENJAMIN HUNTSMAN invented Crucible Steel in 1742.  His invention helped make Sheffield rich, the home of steel and industry.  Beyond that, an Asda started off a strip of shops, car showrooms, a McDonalds.  There were flats and houses in amongst them: on a noticeboard, the South Yorkshire Police advised that community forums had been cancelled "due to low attendance".  A closed public toilet had a "for sale" sign on it, and I tried to imagine who on earth would buy it.  "I've got the most amazing bargain - it's eight square metres of urinals on a busy main road!  It could be our dream home!"

Still, there was a definite upward swing in the social class of the area, one that became even stronger as I crossed the lights by Kay's Kabin.  The houses were bigger and greener.  Some were raised up above the road on little terraces of their own; meanwhile, green pathways lead through to recreation areas and playgrounds.

I turned away from the main road to head for Woodhouse.  It was originally a little farming and mining village, until redevelopment in the 1960s saw it turned into a new suburb for the city.  Now there were long streets of square houses, grass verges, and oblong schools advertising their Ofsted results.  Flockton Park advertised itself as the home of Woodhouse Juniors FC, Enjoying football since 1962.  The South Yorkshire fire service had their HQ here too, in a building that looked an awful lot like my old high school; giant tanks of flammable material for training purposes were temptingly close, making me wish I had a match so I could indulge my pyromaniac side.  I'm not a psychopath, honestly.  

Woodhouse village itself had been ruthlessly stripped of any charm; Market Street ran behind maisonettes and past a parade of ugly shops.  The old village's market cross, weathered and green, looked out of place.  I headed for Station Road, where the nursery had just chucked out its "morning only" attendees; young mums stood around chatting while hyperactive toddlers bashed into one another.  The houses here were a little older, and round about the station they were properly Victorian.  The Junction pub stood beside it, closed and empty.

For some reason, even though there's a bridge right over the line, the actual station is a couple of hundred yards further down the track.  It means you have to get to the Lincoln-bound platforms via a path round the back of people's gardens, which feels wrong, like you're treading on their personal territory.

As far as I was concerned, the best thing about Woodhouse at that moment in time was its warm, enclosed waiting area.  Even though it seemed bright and the skies were blue, it was shockingly cold, a sneaky chill that you only notice once you stop moving.  I dashed inside the platform building and ate a sandwich with shuddering fingers.

The local transport executive have clearly spent a little bit of money on the station, bringing it into the 21st century with nice floors and glass doors.  No ticket office, obviously - the information board informed me that the nearest manned station was "Sheffield - six miles", just to rub it in my face - but certainly a better place to wait for your train than Darnall.  I was particularly taken by the shiny red paint used to cover the platform buildings, a glossy clay colour that seemed invulnerable.  It looked less like paint, more like a kind of sprayed on red Kryptonite.

My train finally arrived, with a chirpy guard singing to himself, and dropped me off at the next station, Kiveton Bridge.  It was a lot better used than the two previous stations, with well-to-do ladies disembarking with department store carrier bags.  They flirted with the guard as they climbed down onto the brick platform.

I get the feeling that Travel South Yorkshire can't really be bothered with their train stations.  They always seem a bit abandoned and unloved.  I suppose it's like Manchester; they've got a load of trams to play with - why bother with boring old trains?  It's an irrational prejudice, but when you get up to the street and find that someone has half-unpeeled the station sign, it doesn't fill you with pride.  Perhaps it would help if they didn't make their signs out of sticky backed plastic.

At some point I'd crossed from Sheffield into Rotherham, and I have to be honest, you could sort of tell.  Kiveton seemed a bit more down at heel and grim than the areas I'd walked through earlier that day.  Rotherham is doomed to forever be in the shadow of its bigger neighbour, I know, but as I walked down Station Road, I thought there might be a good reason for that.

There used to be a colliery at Kiveton Park, but it closed twenty years ago, somehow surviving Thatcher to finally shut up shop in 1994.  Now it's just another commuter village.  Slowly the houses began to disappear, and I had to check Google Maps on my phone: was I actually going the right way?  I'd read that Kiveton Bridge station was built because the council thought that the older station, Kiveton Park, was too far from the village; I didn't realise they meant it was in an entirely different district.

Soon I was on a country road.  I could hear the noises of industry echoing up from the valley below, but I couldn't see it; all I could see were hills and misty fields.  I wondered if this was the same mist I'd seen in Dore that morning; that it was so cold and damp out here the low winter sun hadn't been able to drive it away.

I was still unsure whether I was going the right way when I rounded a corner and practically walked into the station.  The council definitely had a point; Kiveton Park station is no good for anyone.  There was a pub over the road, but sadly it was closed for refurbishment.  Apart from that, the only neighbours were a canal and a cement works.

I killed a bit of time by wandering along the towpath, but it didn't seem to go anywhere interesting, and I was put off by the sign from the local anglers saying that "no firearms" were permitted.  I wondered if this was a big problem; if they'd had a spate of fishermen with double barreled shotguns trying to blast the sticklebacks out of the water.

I headed back to the shelter.  There was a sealed area, with a door, but it didn't have any seats in it, just a pole to lean on.  This was no doubt to discourage anti-social behaviour, but it just seemed mean to me, a passenger who had half an hour to wait for his train and who didn't fancy getting cramp in his arse.  Still, if the anglers are wandering around with Uzis, who knows what the local scallies carry with them; probably best not to give them somewhere to loiter.

Last trip of the year, I thought sadly.  Funny how it stopped being "something to do" and became "something I really want to do."  I wandered over to the Northern Rail map.  Where to go for the first trip of 2014?