Placemaking

Northampton may not actually be the furthest I've ever traveled for this blog, but it felt like it.  Somewhere like Newcastle or Carlisle or even Worcester feels like a part of the larger whole.  I can draw a thematic link from where I am on Merseyside to there.

Northampton, though?  Northampton felt like I was in The South.  It's not, technically, but it certainly felt London-adjacent.  The train I was on was headed to London; there were destinations like "Milton Keynes" and "Leighton Buzzard" in the announcements.  It felt like I was straying out of my bailiwick, which is odd, considering The South is where I was born and brought up.  Perhaps, after thirty years, I can finally say I'm a Northerner.

It certainly greets you with open arms.  While Rugby's 21st century ticket hall was perfunctory, Northampton was gleefully epic, a redevelopment in 2015 gifting it a proper welcome to the town.  Plenty of light, retail spaces tucked away, clean toilets and information boards everywhere.  It was fantastic.  In some ways, it's too good for a station that only gets four trains an hour - two to New Street, two to Euston. 

It also does amateur station art right.  Regular readers (hello you!) will know of my hatred for kids' drawings as "art" on stations.  It looks amateurish and it's mainly there because it's cheap.  Northampton had art by young people on its platform bridge, but it was final exam pieces from a local college and as such was way more interesting.  I had a pleasing wander down taking in the works.

Then there's the All Aboard To Northampton project, started by delightfully-named station worker Elliott Badger, where boards in the hall have been devoted to collecting tickets to Northampton from every station in the UK.  Started in 2020, it's a wonderful confluence of railway nerdism, public art, and just a genuinely nice thing to do.  I spent a few minutes looking for my local stations on the board.  I'm pleased to report that Birkenhead Central is there, as is Birkenhead Park:

...but the Liverpool side is less well represented:

If you're looking for something to do on a day off and you live by a relatively obscure station, there you go.  Head to Northampton.

You actually won't have a bad time while you're there.  I didn't expect this at all - and perhaps my expectations were lowered after Rugby - but Northampton turned out to be a little gem.  It'll never grace a 1000 Places To See Before You Die list, it'll never challenge other cities for tourist dollars, but it featured a neat, compact town centre, some pleasing buildings and was great to visit.

As you'd expect from a county town, Northampton has a long history going back to the Bronze Age, and its mishmash of architecture came from all points of history.  The beautiful central church, All Saints', dates from the 17th century; there's Victorian grandeur and more modern practicality.  Streets have names like "Swan Yard" and "Derngate".  It was busy with shoppers and, this being the school holidays, teenagers being disproportionately excited at being in town on a weekday.

At the centre of the town is the Market Square, an epic space recently upgraded.  It was a pleasure to stroll round, taking in the new, more permanent stalls.  A water feature to one side featured jets of water shooting in the air, much to the delight of gurgling toddlers, and it felt like a proper central space for the community.  I thought back to the continuing, slow motion tragedy of Birkenhead Market, where its redevelopment has been astonishingly unpopular no matter what the council try, and thought they should send a few people here to find out what can be done.  Never mind sticking traders in a converted Argos - make a place. 

I wandered for a while, feeling a little guilty.  I'd not had high hopes for Northampton - in fact, it had taken me a tremendous amount of effort to stop saying I was going to Nottingham.  It was, to me, a place that existed, and didn't really make an impression on anyone.  Could you find it on a map?  Could you name something interesting about Northampton?  I know I certainly couldn't.  It seemed like it had spent hundreds of years quietly getting on with being a decent place to live and work and not bothering anyone.

I paused for a pint.  Obviously it wasn't a perfect place; there was a fair amount of down at heel buildings and businesses.  I'd had to dodge a mass of Just Eat cyclists occupying the pavement by McDonalds and KFC.  There was a huge, hideous leisure development, incorporating a cinema and a gym that occupied a whole block and seemed to be pretty much vacant.  

I headed back to the station.  The board that recorded the passing bikes in the cycle lane had ticked off another twenty or so riders.  A pair of mums had a loud, joyous conversation while their kids played around them.  A spread of graffiti on a developer's hoarding was, for some reason, Alice in Wonderland themed - we're all mad here.  It was all good.  

Off Centre

Birkenhead Park is my local Merseyrail station, and I'm sneakily proud of it.  It's nice that my "home" station has a bit of history and prestige to it, rather than being just another tedious halt.  The ticket hall is a bit of a disaster, but that's not their fault: blame the Germans for that.  There's a little row of shops outside, as there should be by all urban railway stations, and it's got a fair amount of special treatment over the years.  Birkenhead Park has not one, but two ALFs, and some artwork by Stephen Hitchin.

Plus, and I realise this may be something only I appreciate, it's symmetrical.  Come down the ramp from the ticket hall and the island platform is neatly mirrored on both sides.  Utterly pleasing.

Or at least it was.  As part of the "upgrading" of the station, Birkenhead Park lost its distinctive shelter, built in the Eighties, and instead received one of those off the shelf ones that are springing up all over the network.  Fair enough; the new one is a sealed unit, so it's a lot warmer on windy February mornings than its open predecessor (though I note that one of the doors is broken already).  Behind it, there's a secure cycle storage unit.  I have yet to see any of these cycle cages occupied by more than one bike at a time, but never mind that.  The important fact is, the two new additions are not centred on the platform.

The fault lies with the new passenger shelter.  It's been aligned with the bricks on the West Kirby-bound platform, rather than centred properly.  They might have got away with it if the rest of the platform were not so regimented in its symmetry; the noticeboards give you a plumb line that means you can spot a deviation.

The cycle storage - which is wider than the shelter - compounds the error.  It pokes out from behind, but only on one side.  On the other it's flush with the edge of the shelter.

It is absolutely infuriating.  Every time I walk down onto the platform I see it.  It makes my teeth ache.  It makes me angry.  If I was the Hulk I'd rip that shelter out of its footings and slam it back into the concrete about four inches to the right.  Sadly, I'm not the Hulk.  I'm just a slightly mentally ill idiot who might have to start using Birkenhead North instead.

Coasting

I'd marked down an hour's wait at Seaham.  It's to the south of Sunderland, but frustratingly far from anywhere else; if I'd tried walking to the next station it would have been a real trek.

I'd got an idea of its isolation on the way.  I'd not realised how close the rail cruised to the coast here, rugged cliffs, windswept fields of waving grasses and bleak river mouths.  It was coldly beautiful, enhanced by the chilly January weather.  It was an aggressive coast that fought with the North Sea for dominance, rather than letting the sea win.

Because I'm a generous soul, I'll believe that the New Year's storms were responsible for the Town Centre sign pointing the wrong way, not the local bored youths.  It meant that I took a curved, lazy route from the station into the town, through mostly residential streets.  Seaham was once a mining town - indeed, when the station opened it was called Seaham Colliery - but of course that industrial base is long gone.  Seaham's since re-established itself as a commuter and retirement town, with new housing developments springing up.  It reminded me a little of Rhyl or Prestatyn - those relentless strips of homes that string along the North Wales coast, almost but not quite boasting a sea view.

I finally came out on Seaham's little seafront.  When the colliery was here, this was an industrial port, but now it's a strip of green with paths and parks.  I crossed to the water side of the road, letting the sea wind batter at my face and cheeks.  There were hardy walkers out, mainly pensioners, arm in arm along the front.

I wanted some lunch - it was about eleven, but I'd been up since four - and there were plenty of small cafes and restaurants along the sea road.  I was anxious about time though.  I'd pictured myself relaxing with a bacon butty and a cup of tea, but the walk had taken longer than I'd thought, so I decided to just find a takeaway and snatch a sandwich.

At the town centre, there were signs that Seaham wasn't as resurgent as it could be.  There were empty, salt battered pubs, an ugly glass and steel shopping centre, pound shops and vacant fronts.  A drugs rehabilitation charity sat on the high street alongside the butchers and games shop.  The recovery is coming but slowly.

With a cheese stottie in hand (a kind of large, flat muffin that the locals swear by) I looped back towards the station.  This time I followed the old railway line; there used to be a branch down to Seaham Harbour station which closed in the mid-20th century.  Now there's a pedestrian path under the main roads, with the occasional bridge and terrace of houses hinting at its old life.

I passed up the opportunity for a "locally famous" vodka slush from the newsagents next to the station and instead sat on the platform to eat my stottie.  The line only gets one passenger train an hour, not least because it's a busy freight route.  An endless mineral train passed through ahead of my little Northern Pacer.

Between Seaham and Hartlepool there are even more stunning North Sea views, but I was completely unable to concentrate on them thanks to the passenger in the seat in front of me.  He was a young lad, in his early twenties, displaying the famous North-East resistance to the cold by wearing a thin jumper and jeans and not much else.  He was shouting into his Blackberry: "I just spent 36 hours in a fucking cell.  What for?  Two robberies.  One robbery and an armed robbery."  There then followed a long, impassioned, outraged denial, allegations of police cruelty, and pleas for sympathy.

With that call finished, he tossed the Blackberry onto the seat in front and pulled out an iPhone.  In calmer, cockier tones, he told the same story to someone else.  His Teeside accent was so thick, at times it seemed like a foreign language; it was peppered with dialect words and turns of phrase, and snapped out at a speed that made me sympathise with the court stenographer on his case.  The armed robbery seemed to have been in Darlington, and his fingerprints were "somehow" found on the weapon; he was arrested in Sunderland, ready to be taken to Darlington for questioning, but his solicitor had intervened because the journey would "break his bail conditions."

I was trying hard not to listen, not least because I was worried about the implications if he confessed.  Was I required to tell the police if he said it was all true?  What about everyone else on the train?  Are we all witnesses if he suddenly shouted "yeah, of course I did it, but they can't prove it" into his phone?  It was an unnecessary source of stress, and I was glad when I got off at Hartlepool and he didn't.

It won't surprise you to learn that he had his feet on the seat.  I'd have locked him up just for that.

Hartlepool station's been charmingly restored.  The ironwork has been spruced up, the glass canopies have been cleaned and repaired.  A glass walled waiting area has been installed on the platform, between the Trainstop Cafe and the booking hall.

It was certainly a step up from the empty platforms at Seaham.  Inside, a whitewashed ticket office opened out onto the taxi rank.  Hartlepool station was doing its best to make a good first impression.

I stopped by the station sign for my picture.  You'll be happy to hear I've had my hair cut since this photo was taken.  I'm less happy, because I quite like having longer hair - it gives you something to play with - and I also didn't want to give any satisfaction to the many people who kept saying "when are you going to cut your hair?"  I'm extremely bloody minded, and the minute someone says I should do something, I make up my mind not to do it, even if I was planning on doing it anyway.  Still, it's all gone now, so the wind can no longer catch it and whisk it into comedy shapes like the one below.

Plus side: at least I'm not bald.

I've often mused on the priorities of "regeneration" schemes.  Different Northern towns in need of a boost spent their Government cash on different schemes.  In Barrow, the windows of empty shops were covered with large photographic murals to make the street look less abandoned.  Hull had turned its quaysides into a new residential and leisure destination.

One constant in all these regeneration schemes is that the street furniture will be replaced.  All the bins, lamp posts and benches will be ripped up, thrown out and new ones are cemented in.

Hartlepool seemed to have spent all its money on new lamp posts and paving slabs and signs and then given up.  I have never seen so many elaborate light fixtures outside of John Lewis.  Each one was peaked by a flying final and embedded in creamy white pavement.  Meanwhile, each of the adjacent streets had a high metal arch at its entrance, like the one welcoming you to Carnaby Street in London.  Except here, the arches were welcoming you to "Station Approach" and "Whitby Street", which don't have the same frisson of fashionable experimentation and Biba glamour.

I could perhaps forgive all that if I stepped out into a thriving, bustling town centre.  Instead almost the first shop I saw was occupied by the Hartlepool Food Bank (bloody coalition).  The proper town centre was off to the side, across the main road, and I was in a strip of grim pubs and closed takeaways.  I headed down Whitby Road, past pay and display car parks and a fishmongers' with a giant crab painted on the side, until the town just seemed to stop.  Lumpy houses and industrial units appeared, surrounded by acres of empty grass and mud.  There were still Christmas decorations in some of the windows ("Santa!  Please stop for Poppy-Letitia!") which made it seem even more grim.  After about December 27th all the joy and happiness seems to leak out of decorations, making everything tired and sad.

I just about managed to not get run over by a white van and headed for the coast.  Coronation Drive crosses over the railway tracks and then hugs the beach to the south of Hartlepool.  There was a generous promenade between the sea and the road, dotted with playgrounds and benches.

I stood above the sea defences and stared out across the water.  It was hard to believe that only a couple of days before this coast had been attacked, repeatedly, violently by storms and tides.  It was beautifully calm, looking like a summer's day; only the tingle in my nose and the tops of my ears gave a hint of the true season.

Off in the distance, the steelworks on Teeside belched out white clouds of smoke and steam.  They became somehow romantic: cloud makers.  I couldn't tear my eyes away as I walked south.

There was a cafe with an adventure playground in the front, quiet today, but still with a scent of chips to tempt the passing motorists.  A single jogger pounded the beach.  How wonderful, I thought, to have this as your local running track, the soft sand cushioning your sprint, the music from Chariots of Fire playing on your internal jukebox.

Seaton Carew rose up on the horizon.  The Staincliffe Hotel - no really, that's what it was called - caught the sun and formed a sinister silhouette in the distance.  In my head it became the kind of seaside B & B that has at least one escaped lunatic and probably a couple of sexual perverts as guests.  When I finally reached it, the hotel was disappointingly ordinary, advertising its availability for weddings and functions.

There was a little square, almost a village green, with a red telephone box and a parade of tidy  houses around it, before I turned up Station Lane.  I liked Seaton Carew, not least because it sounded like a character from a James Robertson Justice film.  It was a bluff, unpretentious seaside town, one that had given up on attracting holiday makers for a week and had repurposed itself as a cheery day out.

The station wasn't actually on Station Lane, but was instead down a little side path.  On the platform you could see the track recede into the distance in both directions, off into the horizon.  There was also a mosaic on the platform, which I thoroughly approve of - more of this sort of thing, please.

Alright, I'm not actually sure what it is - a man in a onesie on a boat?  A sort of furry figurehead?  The first all kitten voyage to the New World? - but it's better than just another set of Northern Rail posters about violence to the staff and rail replacement buses.

(Also, why is there a tree in the sea?)

Content Warning

Content.  It's the buzzword, the idea, the concept behind many of the biggest websites around.  Every time Buzzfeed prints another of its 12 Characters from Harry Potter Who Would Totally Rock If They Were Disney Princesses lists, or the Huffington Post plays host to another serious think piece about Miley Cyrus' tongue, it's content.  Marketeers look at the infinite spaces of the internet and think "we really need to fill that with a load of crap".

Content is why, when your little girl swallows furniture polish and you go to the website to find out the ingredients, you have to battle through a Shockwave animation, sign up for their Facebook and Twitter feeds, and watch a YouTube video of the cast of Geordie Shore buffing up their sideboards.  Someone in the PR department persuaded the company execs that they wouldn't be taken seriously unless their website was filled with content.  It's their fault that you're playing a Flash game involving anthropomorphic chamois leathers while little Molly is choking to death behind you.

I've never really been bothered by content before.  I just write stuff when I feel like it.  I go out and visit places when I have money and a spare day.  I sometimes feel bad about dragging stuff out - it took me way too long to write up the Esk Valley Line - but it's my blog, so I'll just do what I like.

Then I got nominated for an award (voting link is on the right, cough, thank you) and I suddenly panicked.  I had no plans to go out in the nomination period so I'd have no new posts going up.  New visitors would come here and think I couldn't be bothered writing anything.  I needed some new content.

An opportunity presented itself when I went to Altrincham.  I was there with the BF, and our friends Norman and John, to visit the Art with a Heart exhibition I posted about a couple of days ago. 

It's actually a great little exhibition, in a really interesting space.  The contributors have dealt with the "no automobiles" themes in different ways, so while there are Jim's oil paintings of trains on one wall, there are also collages of bicycles, and plates painted with tickets.  There's also historic maps of the Altrincham area's railways and exhibits on loan from the Manchester Museum of Transport. 

After half an hour in the exhibition, we nipped over to the second hand bookshop across the road.  I found a copy of the More Great Railway Journeys book, featuring that wonderful Victoria Wood Crewe to Crewe epic, so I was happy.  And then I bid them all farewell, even though they were going for a delicious sounding lunch in a local Italian, so that I could go out and get some content.  You see the sacrifices I make?

I headed for Hale, rather than Altrincham station.  There are three stations bunched together along the Mid-Cheshire Line in the town (Navigation Road is the other) and I thought I would get them in the "wrong" order.  Just for a change.

I was predisposed to dislike Hale.  From what I understood of the place, it was one of those towns that were quite sniffy about being incorporated into a metropolitan district.  Hale was Cheshire, like Heswall is Cheshire, and they really don't care what you or the Council or the Post Office say about it.  I was ready to prick their pomposity by sneering.

Unfortunately Hale is really lovely.  I was so disappointed.  But yes, it's got a nicely modern Millennium clock tower, some historic buildings with new ones interwoven unobtrusively, a thriving retail centre.  Pubs and restaurants were opening for buoyant lunchtime trade.  It was all very pleasing.

It also has a lovely railway station.  It straddles a level crossing, a level crossing which was refusing to open for some reason that day and slicing the village in half.  Pedestrians were forced to cross the tracks via the station footbridge, which doesn't sound too inconvenient until you see some poor mother clattering a pram down the steps.

It opened in 1862 as Peel Causeway, exhibiting that Victorian genius for calling your railway station the wrong name entirely.  150 years later it's pretty much unchanged, though the southbound platform building is now home to a physiotherapist.  But there are still pretty glass awnings over the platform, and wooden benches for passengers.

I crossed the tracks for the station sign, trying to get it quickly.  The village was full of public schoolboys from the nearby Altrincham School, unleashed on the shops in search of lunch, and they were definitely staring as I tried doing my selfie.

Also behind me was a set of fine gates which lead into what was now the station car park.  Obviously they were closed and bolted.  It infuriates me when architects have designed an impressive entrance to a building, but modern planners create a "more convenient" way in - in this case, a hole in a brick wall.  Couldn't they at least open those gates as a pedestrian way into the station complex?

I went back to the northbound platform to wait for my train, alongside two girls with pink hair who seemed to have no plans to leave.  They were giggling at the end of one of the wooden benches and drinking something from a bottle: I'm guessing it wasn't Lucozade.  When the train came in, neither of them even stirred from their seat.

Navigation Road has two platforms as well, but the track arrangement is very different here.  I'm not aware of any other stations where there's a through platform on one side for trams and a through platform for trains on the other, though I'm sure there probably is somewhere.

The Metrolink took over the direct route from Altrincham to Manchester in 1992, so the "up" platform became the home for all the tram services, and is now painted in the distinctive (robbed off Merseyrail) yellow and grey.  The "down" platform remained for the Mid-Cheshire line, and carries trains in both directions; hence it being painted in standard Northern purple.  It's a clash of two different styles, with different fonts and facilities staring at each other across the track.

Still, yellow and purple were my old school colours, so I felt quite at home.

I darted across the level crossing, feeling quite daring as a tram was just pulling into the platform at the same time.  A man on crutches got off the tram and followed me down the street.  Disturbingly, he managed to keep pace with me as we walked, his crutches clattering on the pavement and never letting up behind me.  I had visions of him as some kind of physically impaired Freddy Krueger before he finally turned off down a side road.

Grosvenor Road connects directly with Altrincham town centre; it's barely half a mile.  In fact, the distance between Navigation Road and Altrincham station is so small you wonder why they bothered keeping it open when the trams arrived.  I expect it was just less hassle to have the trains continue stopping there than go to the effort of closing the railway platform.  It was a reminder that being a MetrolinkTart wouldn't be much fun; between the frequent services and the closely spaced stops I could probably polish off the entire network in a couple of days.  Not that I'm necessarily ruling it out.

As I walked under the high retaining wall tram after tram passed, making me jealous of the superb public transport Manchester enjoys.  I want some trams near my home, clean whizzy trams to take me somewhere interesting and fun.

In Altrincham town centre for the second time that day, I headed towards the station.  I found a building site.

The station at Altrincham was home to one of Manchester's earliest efforts at an integrated transport hub.  I'd seen a leaflet promoting the original plans in the Art with a Heart exhibition.  In 1975, a bus station was opened in the station forecourt, while a concrete footbridge was built over the road to allow direct access to the shopping precinct over the road.  Unsurprisingly, after nearly forty years, it was all starting to look a bit tired, and now the forecourt had been ripped up ready for a new bus station and travel centre.

If I'm honest, I felt let down.  I was collecting Altrincham station when she wasn't at her best.  I resolved to come back when the works were complete so that I could see it in its full pomp.

After negotiating a seemingly endless maze of temporary access routes I found myself on the station platform.  There are four at Altrincham, two bay platforms for the trams - it's the original Metrolink terminus - and two through platforms for the Mid-Cheshire Line.

It was all very much a work in progress.  In some places the paint was peeling and the concrete was broken; in others, there was the gleam of recent works.  The ticket office, for example, was brightly painted with white walls and glass sliding doors.  I hope they're going to fill it up with some seats or something; at the moment it looks a bit empty.  Stepping through the glass doors and walking up to the ticket window feels like approaching the headmaster's office.

I'd thought I'd be able to get some lunch at the station - there was bound to be a cafe.  It turned out the catering facilities extended to a milkshake and frozen yoghurt hut.  I actually wanted a sandwich, not something that would give me a frozen brain headache.  There was a little shop, but it was filthy inside, like a black walled cabin, and smelt strongly of penny sweets.  The waft of artificial flavourings was so overpowering it actually made me nauseous, so I bought a bottle of water and a packet of sour Skittles and crossed to platform 4 to wait for my train.

I texted the BF: Three stations down - two to go.
 
He replied: Okay.  We're just looking at the dessert menu.  Had a great salmon risotto.  We should come here again.

Bastard, I thought, and glumly chucked a Skittle in my mouth.

Incidentally, the builders at the Interchange should be proud of the work they did bricking up the wall where the footbridge to the shops used to be.  It was a really professional job.  See if you can spot the join.

We passed out of the city, into the leafy countryside, the concrete overpass of the M56 acting as a border crossing.  I got off at Ashley, the next station, with one other person.  He jumped into a waiting car and left me alone on the platform.

Now that I was out of Transport for Greater Manchester's sphere of influence, the level of facilities dropped precipitously.  No ticket office or machines here, just a little shelter to hide you from the rain.  The station building had been turned into a home, as a sign reminded you.

That sign seemed a bit rude to me - a bit exasperated.  If you've bought a station building, one that literally sits on the platform, you have to put up with people thinking you're still railway property.  Sticking up a sign won't change that.

I headed up to the bridge, past the warning triangle telling me to say NO to strangers; the local kids had scratched out the eyes of the supposedly friendly dog on the picture and tippexed drool from his mouth, turning him into Cujo.

I left Ashley past a charmingly tiny village store - barely more than a front parlour converted into a shop - and onto the main road.  There was a tempting looking pub, but I manfully ignored it, crossing the forecourt of an abandoned car showroom to get to the footpath.  Across the way, the Save Tatton Action Group (STAG) had hung a banner on the fence: Save Tatton - Say No To Theme Park!!!

"A theme park?" I thought, confused that the home of the Royal Horticultural Society's annual flower show would be turning itself into Chessington World of Adventures.  A bit of digging reveals that the planning application is actually for a "treetop village" aimed at "3-11 year olds", which isn't exactly the Nemesis at Alton Towers.  Maybe I'm naive, but I doubt that a few treehouses, a "story telling area" and a "park train" will cause Knutsford to be turned into a car park, as STAG seem to think.

Also, STAG spell "tenacity" as "tanasity" on their website, and I can't support such a flagrant disregard for the English language.

The footpath quickly ran out.  This makes me nervous at the best of times but here, in footballer country, it was even worse.  Every other car was a Porsche; there was a stream of 4x4s and Lexuses (Lexi?).  Most were being driven with a disregard for speed limits, the Highway Code and general human decency.  I remembered the recent story about a footballer allegedly hitting a cyclist and then telling him "good luck finding me on foreign plates"; out here in the perfect home for Liverpool and Manchester's millionaire mansions I didn't want to end up buried under Colleen Rooney's Audi.

Instead I criss-crossed the road, walking on the verge wherever possible, pressing myself into the hedge when another BMW came roaring round the corner.  It became tiring very quickly.  Above my head, aeroplanes roared - Manchester Airport's twin runways were pointing straight at me, disgorging Boeings and Airbuses at regular intervals.  It made STAG's claims that the screams of excitable children would ruin this rural idyll seem even more hysterical; as well all know, a four year old hyper on E-numbers is far noisier than a fucking jet airliner.

I had a bit of trouble finding Mobberley station.  I could find the railway line, no problem, but all the roads seemed to go away from it, and I couldn't reconcile the street layout with my Ordnance Survey map.  Finally I picked a road at random and walked down it, and almost immediately saw a sign for the station.

A round of applause, incidentally, for Waugh Brow Farm Shop and its collection of fibreglass livestock.  I particularly like the slightly indignant looking sheep.  I should also award bonus points for the farmhouse next door, which not only looked exactly like a farmhouse should look - ridiculously inviting - but also had its front door open with a sheepdog sat on the threshold.  I was severely tempted to go in and ask for a glass of milk, fresh from the udder.

I crossed a narrow bridge over a stream; someone had laid a single apple, a blackberry and a raspberry on the parapet, like a still life.  I couldn't quite work out why.  I passed another pub without going in - I should get some kind of award - and reached some pretty railway cottages by the level crossing.

I can't take Mobberley seriously.  I know it's a highly desirable village - it's where Dolly from dinnerladies wanted to retire to, until she finds out it's the centre of a huge rubber and bondage scene - but it's just a ridiculous name.  It sounds like the kind of noises you make when the dentist has anaesthetised your gums and you're trying to tell him where you're going on holiday.

The station was a let down too.  Though there was a pretty signal cabin, the station facing parts of the main building had been artlessly bricked up.  The new owners had basically turned their back on the whole reason for their home existing in the first place.

I took a seat and finished off my water.  Mobberley was a landmark of sorts: it meant that I had completed the Mid-Cheshire Line.  I'd actually started this line back in 2011, and it represented my first tentative step into Northern Rail territory.  Up until then I'd been pretty much restricted to the stations on the Merseyrail map, but the station name Lostock Graham had been too much for me to resist. 

There was Stockport, I suppose, and bizarrely I still haven't collected Manchester Piccadilly; I'm not sure why, because I'm there all the time, but now I'm starting to take a perverse pleasure in not collecting it.  They didn't count as Mid-Cheshire stations, anyway; until the Metrolink came along the trains didn't even go via Stockport.

The thought of finishing off the line - of closing down a section of the Northern Rail map - made a warm feeling wash over me.  A strange type of happiness.  I reached for a word to describe it.  Ah yes.  Content.