Time Squared

This is a broken country right now.  Brexit, the Labour Party - divisions are springing up everywhere.  We're split and bitter.

Fortunately there are still things that can unite us.  Disgust at Bake Off leaving the BBC, for example.  And, as I discovered at York station, sneering at Americans is still a favoured hobby.

As I stood on platform 5, an American tourist ran for her train across the tracks on platform 4.  She was straight out of Central Casting.  Generously built, with too tight clothes in too bright colours.  A baseball cap.  A bum bag - sorry, fanny pack - slung round her waist.  She ran as best as she could, but her size made her halting and slow.

Sneering at a woman late for her train is wrong.  That's not her fault.  What was her fault was her vulgarity.  As she ran, she called out to the driver of the train on the platform.  "HEY!"  "WAIT!"  "I HAVE A TICKET!"  "YOU HAVE TO LET ME ON!"  Every few metres, a new shout.  "DON'T GO!"

She got there in time, staggering up to the doors.  I looked around me at my fellow passengers, all of us quietly, politely, waiting for our train.  There were pursed lips and raised eyebrows and judgmental faces.  Common.  Rude.  American.  We all became Maggie Smith in Downton Abbey.  We were awful, horrible, judgmental snobs, but we were together in our snobbery, as British people have been for centuries.  Kind of warms the cockles of your heart.

A return to the old ways was appropriate, because I was headed for Malton, an act of time travel in itself.  Despite getting there on a fast, modern TransPennine Express train, I may as well have turned up on a clattering steam train.  Beyond the station was a square lined with modern houses in an old-fashioned style - bay windows and pediments over the door.  The back entrance to Asda was been hidden by a wooden gate with a wrought iron arch over the top.  It was recognisably inauthentic, new pretending to be old, but its true purpose was as a primer, a way to get me used to old and new mixing together.

A little further and there was a bus exchange.  A long, sturdy brick building with stands along one side.  Simple, municipal architecture.  The corrugated iron doors were open as I passed; inside, a man in overalls lazily hosed down the concrete floor.  If Reg Varney had appeared, fresh from sexually harassing some young girl, he'd have slotted right in.  Into the scene, not into the young girl.  I don't want to imagine Reg Varney as a sexual being, never mind his weird conductor mate.

Beyond was the river, and that was the clever part of Malton's journey.  Rivers are eternal.  The Derwent has gone through this spot for millennia.  It could have been any time period as I looked over the side of the bridge.

It meant that when I rounded the next corner, and saw two lads on a horse and cart outside a stout hardware store (est. 1845), I was ready.  It wasn't a shock.  Malton was just going to be that kind of place: old and new all at the same time.

There's something reassuring about a hardware store.  In my head it was full of gruff middle aged men, their beer bellies concealed by brown aprons, ready to sniff dismissively at every customer request.  You'd ask for a light bulb; they'd return from the store room - because there won't be anything resembling a light bulb on display - with a box covered in dust that will have an exact copy of the bulb you've just brought in.  While you're there, he'll quiz you about the state of the washers in your tap, and you'd end up leaving with your arms full of grommits and whatsits.

It is, in short, my absolute worst nightmare of a shopping experience, and I would head for the corporate blandness of B&Q every time, but I like that it's there.  It's a bit of retail past that's still stored in aspic, and I like that.

I followed the road round onto the main shopping street, where the familiars - WH Smith and Costa - were mixed in with smaller, local shops, and the Yorkshire chains.  There was a Yorkshire Trading Company - a kind of white rose Home Bargains - a Cooplands bakery, and. on the corner, a branch of Boyes, its logo absolutely refusing to cave into modern ideas about "style" and "corporate identity".  I imagined Mr Boyes, the gruff Yorkshireman who heads the company, pulling a cigar out of his mouth and barking at his marketing people.  "It's got me bloody name on it - what more do they want?"

In the town's Market Place, though, the time travel was complete.  While Thirsk's market square had been a wide echoing space, Malton's was broken, interrupted by sloping hills, the church, the town hall.  It clattered into place like you imagined a Medieval town would, a bit sloppy, but incredibly charming.

I circled the Market Place with a big stupid smile.  It was how an English country town should be - quiet and intriguing.  Busy shops and restaurants - a greengrocer, his fruit spilling onto the pavement, a butcher (This week's special: 3 Brace Pheasants), pubs.  Alleyways and side streets to tempt you as you passed.

If a woman in a hooped skirt had clattered out of an entry I doubt I would have batted an eyelid.  Passing cars were momentary intrusions before you slipped back into the past.  It was undeniably well off - there was more than one interior design store, the Farrow & Ball logo prominently displayed - but not ostentatious.  It wasn't vulgar with its money.

I looped round the Market Place two or three times, no doubt to the consternation of the pavement diners who probably thought I was a homeless person.  I was just enjoying drinking it in.  Malton has, in recent years, tried to reposition itself as a foodie destination, and certainly you couldn't move for cafes.  I'd just missed a food festival, a fact I learned when I passed Butterbees (Britain's only butter boutique) and saw that it was closed "because the food festival cleared us out!".  

Yes, you read that right: Britain's only butter boutique.

Finally I found a place for a cup of tea and a moment to relax.  All that smiling was straining my face - I'm not used to it.  

It wasn't all great, of course.  There was a fair few empty shops, gappy teeth in the town's smile.  The headline on the York Press was "Grandad Pointed Machine Gun At Driver".  And the residents of the district voted to leave the EU.  Even the past is imperfect.

I left the Market Place via a back street so I could take a look at the Palace Cinema.  Its ground floor had been converted into a kind of upscale flea market, but the upstairs still showed films.  The red doors ushered you up a staircase to a showing of Ben-Hur, as it probably had done in 1959, and maybe in 1925 before that.  

It was time to head back to the station, for a return to the modern world.  The front of Malton station looks impressive, a long Victorian edifice, but it's been filleted, the sides handed over to other, non-railway businesses.  It's a let down.

Inside, there's just one platform, taking trains to Liverpool in one direction and Scarborough in the other.  I'm sure there are long, tedious, extremely valid operational reasons for reducing a station down to one platform, but it always frustrates me.  People are easily confused.  Give us one eastbound and one westbound.  Keep the trains separate.

I could have got a train all the way home, right back to Lime Street.  I didn't though.  I had one more stop to make, at York.  This was the last time I'd be travelling this way for the blog, and I wanted to take one last look at its magnificence.  To revel in the cathedral of the rails.

Ok, that's a lie.  I wanted a pint of beer in the York Tap, the absolutely wonderful pub on the platform.

Time travelling takes a lot out of you.

All In The Head

If there has been one constant through the nine years of this blog, it's been my never ending love for smut.

If there has been a second constant through the nine years of this blog, it's been the ups and downs of my mental health.

Starting out as a relatively sane individual (as sane as you can be for a person who visits railway stations as a hobby) I gradually descended into a depressive, mentally unstable mess.  Then, quietly and slowly, I climbed back up to my current state of mind: fractured, prone to breakage, but back to something resembling human.  I get through the days pretty fine now, a change from the multiple breakdowns I'd endure a couple of years ago.  The worst of the depression is gone.  But there's still the anxiety.

Anxiety is a tightness round your brain.  It's a tiny voice at the back of your head that undermines you and wrecks you.  Anxiety looks at a given situation and examines all the ways it could go wrong, then whispers it in your ear.  "A night at the theatre?  Think of the crowds.  Think of the people everywhere.  Think of the tiny seats and noisy streets, the queuing, the noise.  And what if it goes wrong?  What if you miss the start?  What if you've got the wrong night?  Are your palms sweating yet?"

Monday started out fine.  A trip across country to York on TransPennine Express - first class of course, because that extra tenner is worth it for the space and the coffee and the calm.  We were on time.  We cruised into the platform with fifteen minutes until my train out again - plenty of time for me to nip up and over the bridge for a quick pee.  Then back for a different TransPennine Express train, this time headed towards Middlesbrough.

I settled into my seat for the fifteen minute journey to Thirsk, dropping my ticket onto the table in front of me while the guard went through his spiel.  He fancied himself as a comedian, this one, listing the "delightful" Thirsk and the "beautiful" Northallerton, before arriving in "Boro".  As he told us he was about to embark on a ticket check - "because I get lonely at the back of the train all on my own" - I noticed something written in tiny letters on my ticket.

Valid only on Grand Central services.

Prickling tension.  A surge of panicked adrenaline bouncing off every surface on the inside of my skull.  A sudden dryness in my throat.  Horror.

You might think this was just a small matter.  A quick word with the guard and that was fine.  "I didn't realise when I bought it, sorry."  In the real world, it turned out to be a complete non-issue.  The guard stamped my ticket, wandered back to his eyrie at the end of the train.  Didn't mention it at all.  (Thank goodness for those terribly designed new tickets, with their miniscule type).

In the fantastical landscape of my psyche, though, the damage was done.  My brain was fizzing.  The tension of watching him walk down the train, perhaps about to tell me I was wrong, I was mistaken, I was breaking the rules.  The knowledge that I had a return ticket, one that was equally invalid on the train I planned getting back to York.  Knowing that I had to either risk the guard missing the small print again, or I had to buy a new ticket.  Anxiety grabbed hold of my mind and squeezed it in its tight, nasty little hand.

You're sitting there thinking how over the top all this is, and yes, writing it down, it sounds horribly melodramatic.  A few calm thoughts and I might have been fine.  Perhaps I should take up colouring books; I hear they're good for the nerves.  But all that presumes I can tell my brain what to do, when it's actually my brain causing the problem.  It's like trying to put out a housefire using the hose inside the house.

I staggered off the train, behind a retired lady who was looking for Pokemon on her smartphone (it's a miserable state of affairs when people old enough to be your mother are more up on pop-culture trends then you are) and had a bit of a rest on the platform.  A few deep breaths.  A drink of water.  Then I clambered up and over the footbridge.  Thirsk is a kind of layby on the East Coast Main Line, its two platforms off to the side of the fast route.  A red and silver Virgin burned through as I went down the steps to leave the station.

The station is way out of town; if you were being geographically accurate it should be called Carlton Miniott, but that sounds like a character from a lesser Graham Greene so Thirsk it is.  Between the station and the town centre is a mile and a half of long straight road, past the empty Austin Reed HQ, abandoned since the company went into administration earlier this year.  A handwritten banner said NOW CLOSED, the felt tip running out mid-phrase, so only NOW CL had been coloured in.  Next to it was an industrial estate called Europark.  Rumours that it is to be renamed Winston Churchill HM The Queen White Cliffs Of Dover Blue Passport Park post-Brexit are entirely false (but only just).

The main landmark on that long, dull road was the racecourse.  On the social scale of racecourses I've encountered over the years, Thirsk seemed to be at the grubbier end, a bit more workaday than the grand enclosures of Aintree or the scenic location of Chester.  Its grandstand was in an uninspiring brick building that looked like a converted warehouse; parking was on a field across the way, currently used as grazing for a handful of sheep.  It was the kind of racecourse that bookies care about more than the general public.

I negotiated a mini-roundabout between a Lidl and a Tesco, cars spinning in and out of both supermarkets too fast to let you cross without a spurt and a wiggle, and headed into the town centre.  The road kinked past an arts centre and a cinema, the Ritz.  In a world of multiplexes and THX surround sound, the Ritz was proudly flying the flag for old-school cinemas, showing a film (Jason Bourne) on its single screen that had already been out in the rest of the country for about six weeks.  I've sort of stopped going to the pictures these days.  The anxiety kicks in again and again, convincing me that the screening will be full of yammering teenagers chucking popcorn and antisocial idiots texting on brightly lit smartphones.  It takes a Bond film to get me to the flicks these days; even my mental illnesses can't win against 007.  But I imagine the Ritz would be more my scene, too unglamorous for the teens, too old fashioned for the blockbuster crowd; just me and a half dozen pensioners watching something that everyone else torrented the day it came out.

No, the Ritz isn't under attack from aliens there; it was a very sunny day.

I passed a butcher's shop with a chalkboard advertising its Olympic sausage (so called because it was "full of Brazilian flavours", apparently, and nothing to do with tight running shorts) and entered Thirsk's medieval market square.

A wide expanse of cobbles and old fashioned shops utterly ruined by cars.  It could have been an impressive space - probably is on market day, when there are coloured stalls taking up all that space.  On a Monday morning though, it was just a car park.  A badly managed one, too, the side streets hurling automobiles into the mix at random to swirl and spin in the aisles.  There was a peppering of irritated horns under the growl of gunning engines.

The pavements weren't much better.  They were crammed with the elderly and the dawdling, tourists pointing at blue plaques ("apparently Wordsworth stayed in this Wetherspoons"), shoppers stopping dead to stare through shop windows.  People in my way.  My anxiety cramped mind couldn't bear it.  Too many bodies, too many noises, too much hectic.  It was a small country town but in my head it felt like Piccadilly Circus.  I ducked into a bookshop, hoping for a bit of quiet contemplation in the aisles, but it was a kind of bookshop/cafe hybrid, with the cafe part winning handsomely.  Clattering crockery and squeaky chairs and hissing steam and every table filled, the books relegated to the edge of the shop.

I headed back outside, crossing the road by the Hung Moey takeaway (see, always in search of the smut) and following the pavement round.  Hemmed in between shop fronts and a chain of small stalls selling garden statues and house signs.  Before I knew it I was back at the entrance to the market square, where I'd come in, and I took it as a sign and headed back to the station.

Sometimes, when it all gets too much for me, when I need a break, the best place for me to be is on a railway platform.  I sat on a bench for twenty minutes, letting the breath hiss between my teeth, calming myself down.  Anxiety quietly receding.  The healing power of stations.

(And yes, of course I bought a brand new ticket for the trip back to York to replace the Grand Central Only one.  It was the sane thing to do).

Return Ticket

Hello.

Yes, I'm back.  Miss me?  You don't have to answer that.  I always hate it when bloggers apologise for their absence and beg for the readers to tell them how empty their lives had been while the writer was away; it's so self-serving.  Mate, people aren't out there hanging on your every word - you're a blogger, not Peter Ustinov.  So yes, I've been away for a while: a whole load of stuff has been happening at home - good stuff - which has meant my opportunities to go romping around the north have been restricted.

But now they're done, so, finally, I got on a TransPennine Express train and headed to Northallerton.  It was the first time I'd been on the Liverpool-Newcastle train since the franchise was renewed.  The only on board difference I could tell was that the First Class breakfast muffin now came in a paper Carluccio's bag instead of an unbranded plastic one.

At the station however, I noticed that the signs were now emblazoned with the glamorous new TPE branding.  I don't like the font.  It's too informal, too game show, for a railway station sign.  Stick with Rail Alphabet - it's a classic for a reason.

Northallerton's a stop on the busy East Coast Main Line, so while it only gets a couple of services an hour, there's a constant stream of roaring London-Edinburgh trains burning through and threatening to suck you under the wheels.  I crossed under the tracks and headed out into the car park, past the Executive Parking Spaces - fancy! - and off to get my first station sign picture in ages.

The beard's not staying, by the way.  I let it grow through sheer laziness and I keep meaning to shave it off again but as I said: laziness.  Next time I take a sign pic I'll hopefully be a glowing pink cue ball.

I headed into town, past the grand entrance to North Yorkshire's County Hall, and along a street lined with neat villas and B&Bs.  There was a lovely looking pub, the Station Hotel, proudly displaying the coat of arms of the North Eastern Railway on its exterior:

Later that day I went into the pub for a pint while I waited for my train home.  The bar had been knocked through into one large room, rather than the old mix of lounge and snug, but there were plenty of original features and railway posters.  I can't recommend the pub unreservedly.  Firstly, the frosted glass windows clearly showed that the pub used to be the Railway Hotel, and the name change annoyed me.  If you're going to change the name to the Duke of Kent or the Roadside Tavern or Tricky's Booze Shack, fine, but if you want a pub name that's train themed, well, stick with the original.  It's on the window.

The second reason I can't fully endorse the pub is because the barman and a couple of regulars had a good laugh when Some Girls by Rachel Stevens came on the jukebox.  They seemed to think that it was a terrible song, when it is in fact a stone cold banger.  I didn't pop up to correct them, and I still regret it; that kind of cowardice and failure to confront people with horrible opinions is what landed us in this whole Brexit mess.

It was clear that this was a town with a fair bit of cash in its back pocket, an impression confirmed when the first shop I saw in the centre was Laura Ashley Home.  There isn't a Laura Ashley Home in Birkenhead, though we have just got a new Farmfoods, so you know, it's not all bad.  It was market day, and the high street was lined with stalls selling all the usual - handbags, dog beds, hilarious signs that say Sisters are like fat thighs... they stick together!  I hovered over a second hand bookstall, but it was incredibly overpriced: a paperback of On Chesil Beach in not too-great condition was £3.99.  It's barely a hundred pages!

I weaved through the crowds, a mix of pensioners and people on holidays looking for something to do.  A woman in a fluorescent lemon skirt with a tropical coloured jacket barreled out of Betty's Tea Room and marched onwards.  She was wearing high heels that were highly inappropriate for a woman of her advancing years and carrying a couple of huge shopping bags; clearly she'd just had a fantastic morning of scoffing scones and knocking back Darjeeling with a couple of equally well preserved moneyed widows.  I followed in her fabulous wake for a while, then swung into Barkers department store, partly because I love wandering round provincial department stores, but mainly because I needed a wee.

Unlike many other small-town stores I've been to, Barkers was in rude health.  Clever displays and plenty of smartly dressed staff.  The huge number of bored looking husbands sitting on banquettes around the store showed how popular it was.  I headed up to the top floor for the gents, and found it was rainforest themed, with pictures of ferns in the cubicles and piped in cicada noises.  You don't get that in Debenhams.

I looped round the back of the fine town hall and back down the other side of the high street, calling in at Lewis and Cooper, an absolutely superb delicatessen.  I could have wandered its aisles for hours, coveting spiced sausages and fine cheeses.  It was so good, I'm even willing to overlook the fact that it had plum puddings on sale, despite it being, you know, July.

By the time I emerged, my stomach rumbling for exotic breads, there were spots of rain beginning to clatter on the canvas stall roofs, so I headed for the pub.  I picked the Tickle Toby Inn based entirely on its name.  As good a reason as any, I thought, until I got inside and realised it doubled as the local branch of Help the Aged.  All those pensioners I'd seen picking at slippers in the market had descended on the pub for their lunch.  I considered joining them until a waitress wandered by with two plates and I saw what the food was like (Beef baguette served with or without gravy - £6.20) so I just got a pint and sat down.

There was a particular woman in there who seemed to be doing her own recreation of Victoria Wood's Two Soups sketch.  In an innovative twist, the doddery old lady was the customer and not the waitress.  She tottered up to the till to order food for her and her unseen companion, only to keep staggering back with questions - chips or jackets?  Tea or coffee?  Oh, do I have to pay now, I haven't brought my purse, I'll just go and get it.  On her third trip back to the till she called out, "at least I'll have lost a few pounds!", overlooking the fact that she weighed about four stone anyway.

With the beer inside me, I decided I'd seen all Northallerton had to offer, so I rolled back to the station for a train to Yarm.

I really didn't want to go to Yarm.  This is nothing against the town which - spoiler alert! - turned out to be delightful.  I didn't want to go to Yarm because people kept telling me to go to Yarm.  When I decided to collect the additions to the Northern map, it was absolutely my intention to go there.  Then people kept mentioning it in the comments.  "Go to Yarm!"  "When are you going to Yarm?"  "Yarm!"

It got my back up.  I don't like being told to do things, not by anyone, not the BF, not my mum.  It brings out that childish, bloody minded, awkward side of me, the side that really isn't attractive, where I just think, "in that case, I won't go to Yarm.  See how you like that!"

I did, actually, have to go to Yarm though: I couldn't avoid it forever.  And with Northallerton out the way it made sense to go there.  It just got my back up.

Incidentally none of the people who demanded I go to Yarm offered to pay for my ticket.

I crossed the busy road outside Yarm station and dived down an alleyway signposted "Town Centre".  I was immediately dropped into a sedate, calm suburban still.  Silent cul-de-sacs curved off winding avenues, their lawns cropped, their letterboxes shining.  Neat semis surrounded patches of communal green; each home had its own gardens, front and back, but the planners had dotted the estate with wider areas for the kids to play football and to give breathing space.  It was wonderfully civilised.

Even when I reached a main road, with bus stops and a care home, it felt relaxed and unhurried.  A tiny stream shadowed me, diving under the roadway, while maisonettes and a community centre were hidden behind trees.  The centre's noticeboard spoke of sweet residential living - Tuesday: Coffee morning with raffle, Thursday: Brownies.  Even the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting on Sunday was probably full of sherry drinkers.

A swing past the newly refurbished gates of Yarm School, which dates back to the sixteenth century, and I'd reached the town centre.  It stands on a bend in the Tees, and the High Street was lined with discreetly expensive shops and Georgian homes.

If Northallerton had a few pennies, Yarm only dealt with the folding stuff.  The cars parked here were BMWs and Audis and convertibles; the women sat at the outside tables of the coffee shops clutching elegant white cigarettes in manicured fingers.  There was a shop selling both equestrian and ski wear, for the ultimate upper middle class fix, and even a Bang & Olufsen for anyone who wanted over-designed audio gear.

It was all really quite lovely, and I felt guilty for despising the people who wanted me to come here.  They were right: it was absolutely worth visiting.

I walked up to the stone bridge over the river that peaks the town centre.  A plaque on the bridge informed me that it was built in 1806 to replace an iron one from 1805 that collapsed; I imagine the town council had a very interesting discussion with the engineers after that.

The bridge is also a great spot to gaze at the magnificent railway viaduct that bypasses the town,  Finished in 1851, it's crowned by a magnificently boastful plaque commemorating everyone involved.  It's Victorian arrogance at its zenith, though I bet a little part of them was praying this bridge wouldn't fall down too.

You may have noticed that, for a town with such a lengthy history, Yarm had a bit of a rubbish station: just a couple of platforms and a shelter.  That's because it's actually the second station to serve the town and only opened in 1996.  The original station was at the far end of the viaduct, on the opposite side of the river in Egglescliffe.

Readers with long memories will remember that I passed through Egglescliffe before, last year, on my way to Teesside Airport.  I had in fact walked along the road that leads to Yarm.  When I spotted this, I realised I had to cross the bridge so that I could connect the two trips in my mental map.  It was non-negotiable.

As a plus, I got to see the old railway station building.  I wondered if the closure had as much to do with it being on the other side of the river as anything else.  Rivers are funny things.  Humans have bridged them for millennia - we're quite good at it by now - but they still act as a mental barrier.  Look how many hackneyed comedy routines there are about taxi drivers refusing to go "south of the river".  I still have friends in Liverpool who blanch at the idea of having to go "over the water", though to be fair that may be more to do with them not wanting to see me than a prehistoric antipathy to crossing the Mersey.  Still, it was interesting that when they built a new station, they didn't put it in the same place as the old one, even though it was far more convenient for the town.

I cut round the back of the apartment buildings that now occupy the old station's sidings and up onto Urlay Nook Road.  Click! went my brain, knotting the new and old geographies together, meshing the memory of a tense Sunday morning heading for a rarely served railway station with the current reality of a warm, comfortable Wednesday afternoon.  My mind joined up the highlighted routes so they touched.  Then I turned around and went home.

Less Than The Sum Of Its Parts

The BF and I celebrated the anniversary of the day we met last week.  Yes, nineteen years ago, I got drunk and talked to some random in a pub.  Memories.

Anyway, to commemorate this momentous occasion, I made a suggestion.  "Why don't we celebrate?" I suggested.  "Let's go away for a mini break, a few days in a four star hotel near a historic English city?  Let's indulge ourselves."

...Nope, sorry, that's a lie.  What I actually said was, "I've got to get Durham and Chester-le-Street stations.  Do you want to come or do you want to stay at home?  Up to you."

Romance.

He picked the "may as well come with" option and we made our way across England to Durham.  Trainspotters will be disappointed to hear we went by car.  I did float the railway option, but after roughly eight milliseconds of thought, the BF said "no."  He loves to drive, always has, and the thought of a trip across chilly hills excited him far more than three hours aboard a Class 185.  I'm not bothered; either way I get to sit back and do nothing while someone else does all the actual work.

After a night's rest in a Durham hotel ("yes, we do only need one room, and yes, we do know it's a double, we've already said actually, thank you") we headed into the city centre for a look round.  I'd been saving Durham because I wanted to do it justice.  I'd passed through it on the train many times, and spotted the colossal edifice of the cathedral perched on top of a rocky outcrop - a stunning view, and part of the World Heritage area of the city.

We got the park and ride into the city centre, alighting opposite the blank brick face of the Gates Shopping Centre.  The narrow streets seemed like any other town, lined with Boots and a second hand video game shop and an ugly Starbucks.  Round a corner, though, the Framwellgate Bridge took you over a wide river, a weir churning wildly downstream.

From there the road rose steeply, cobbled and slippery, clambering up the hill.  Durham's historic centre is surrounded on three sides by water.  A tongue of hard rock forced the river to flow round it, creating an almost-island that was a perfect, easily defended spot for a city.  The Normans built both the castle and the cathedral in the 11th Century, and for hundreds of years Durham existed as a city-state within England.

The Market Square provided a moment of rest, then we climbed another hill, pausing now and then so the BF could have a wheeze.  He has both asthma and dodgy knees (a result of years of football playing, and evidence for my theory that no good can come from sport) so steep climbs are an agony for him.  When we visited San Francisco I basically had to load him on a sledge and drag him round behind me.

Passing a branch of my nemesis, the Edinburgh Woollen Mill, and not one but two Waterstone's, we finally reached the Palace Green.  At one end, Durham Castle, and at the other, the Cathedral, with the ancient university library sandwiched in between.  It was undeniably impressive, so long as you ignored all the plant vehicles doing some kind of work on the grass in the middle.

Like the eager little tourists we are, we gamboled up to the Castle to get our fix of Norman fortifications.  We were immediately struck by our first disappointment.  The Castle is in use as a college of Durham University, and about a hundred students actually live there; as a result, the only way to look round is by guided tour.  As unabashed cheapskates we declined the tour and instead turned our attention to the Cathedral.  At least that was free to get in.

This where I should write dozens of paragraphs about the awe-inspiring beauty of Durham Cathedral.  About its huge, calming space, its intricate stained glass, the history dripping out of every piece of stone.  The giant columns holding up the roof, the feeling of dizziness when you stand under the tower and look up.

I'm not going to do that because I spent my whole visit seething.  Photography is banned in the cathedral.  Anywhere.  There's no reason for this, of course, other than they want to flog you postcards.  The website is pretty unabashed about this:

That's shameless gouging, and very disappointing.  I would've loved to have shown you some of the delights of the cathedral, enough to intrigue you and make you plan your own visit, but instead, I'm just going to tell you it was pretty and a bit cold.  There you go.

We wandered out of the undercroft of the Cathedral, declining to spend any money in the huge gift shop, and into South Bailey, a road that snakes its way down to the river. There was a plaque on one of the buildings commemorating the home of Revd. William Greenwell; he was described as a "Minor Canon", which I'm sure is a theological term, but just sounds like the historical society was calling him insignificant.

The main University campus is to the south of the river, so as we walked downhill we encountered a lot of fresh faced students coming uphill.  For a while, as a teen, I fancied going to Durham University.  I wasn't brave enough to try and get into Oxford or Cambridge, so I thought Durham was an acceptable compromise - kind of like I was aiming for bronze.  As it was, when I filled in my UCAS form, I wasn't even brave enough to put it down.  I failed my A-levels anyway, so I would've gone through a rigorous application process for no reason.  (My cousin Lucy eventually went to Durham, because it is the destiny of younger family members to make you feel inadequate).

Walking back round the peninsula at riverside level, the BF and I agreed that Durham was... alright.  It was a bit of a let down.  In our heads, we'd imagined it to be like York or Chester - a non-stop parade of history and heritage.  It turned out it was an island of staggering beauty in amidst a very ordinary town.

Returning to the town centre only reaffirmed our view.  The buildings built across the river were almost aggressively ordinary, no doubt the result of successive planning committees refusing anything slightly interesting so it wouldn't "detract".  After a couple more circuits, we decided we'd had enough, and got the Park and Ride bus back to the car.

After a brief visit to some statue or other...

...we went to Chester-le-Street.  I had two stations to collect in this part of the world, and, unless I took a train, it didn't count.  The idea was that the BF would drop me off in Chester-le-Street, I'd get the train south, and then he'd pick me up at Durham station.

Before that, we thought we'd have a look round.  As its name implies, Chester-le-Street is threaded along a main thoroughfare, and we wandered up and down it, looking in shop windows.

It was not great.  The shops were small and grim.  The pubs were "boozers".  The regenerated market square at the southern end of the town, all new brick and stone, ended up looking like a bare windswept expanse without any stalls.

After a moment of horror where I misread a shop called Nelglo as Negro (a misread that probably says more about me) we turned and walked back up the main road.  There was an "arts space" called Willy Nilly, and a closed nightclub called Soda still advertising its New Year's party ("comedy drag show/male stripper/karaoke" - surprisingly queer for a town in mining country), and an e-cigs shop with banners outside and posters in the window calling for free parking in the high street:

I do love a shop with an axe to grind, and the BF and I stood outside and read the entire rant until the owner appeared in the window and stared at us.

The highlight of Chester-le-Street was the post office.  Make of that what you will.  It was a clean, 1930s brick building, nicely styled:

The real highlight was in the corner window:

A rare Edward VIII insignia, showing that the post office was opened during that brief period between him becoming king and abdicating.  I found that far too exciting, to be honest, which probably shows you what a disappointing day it was turning into.  It was time to draw and end to the visit.  I waved the BF off and headed for the station.

Chester-le-Street has a booking office and a waiting room, but they're not run by Northern Rail.  Instead, the responsibility for the facilities lies with Chester-le-Track, a private organisation.  It's a weird set up (they also run Eaglescliffe station).  It's hard to shake the idea that it's a lot of boys playing trains, an impression not helped by the staff in the ticket office both looking like teenagers.

It's all missing the polish and the professionalism you get from a proper train company.  Bless them for trying and everything, and let's be honest, if they weren't running the booking office here there wouldn't be one at all, but it was a couple of degrees off what you expect from a 21st century railway.  It was all a bit 1980s British Rail.

I'm not 100% sure why Chester-le-Street is a Northern Rail station at all.  Both it and Durham are mainly served by a combination of TransPennine Express and trains, with the odd service from CrossCountry and Virgin East Coast.  Northern trains are restricted to the odd stopper in the morning rush hour.  They seem to have been given responsibility for the station because no-one else wanted it.

Pleasingly, the train that arrived to take me one stop to Durham was the Liverpool train.  It was odd getting on board a train headed for my home city and not slumping, exhausted, into a seat with a three hour journey ahead of me.  Instead, in a matter of minutes, I was hopping off again.

Durham station has been conspicuously smartened up, with ticket barriers and plenty of staff.  It's at the top of a ridge on the edge of the city centre, so glass walls have been installed to minimise the winds, and also to give you a perfect view of the cathedral:

All very nice, I'm sure you'll agree, but absolutely nothing as far as I'm concerned because it doesn't have a station sign.  Not a one.  There are signs saying "station" on them, and a big British Rail logo on a staircase -

- but nothing that actually said Durham on it.  I ran around in a slight panic - the BF was double parked, waiting for me to get in the car so we could go back to the hotel - looking for anything that would pass my strict station sign criteria.  In the end I headed back inside.  The ticket barriers meant I couldn't go onto the platform, so I ended up squatting on the concourse, capturing a platform sign through the glass wall.

A bit of a let down.  Not quite as good as it promised on first glance.  Underwhelming.  It seemed an appropriate way to finish my Durham visit, somehow.