Feeling the Force

You'll be shocked to learn that, every now and then, I do put a bit of effort into this load of old tut.  A bit of reading up.  A smidgen of research.  Not too much - I'm essentially lazy - but for my trip on the Ravenglass & Eskdale, I went to the effort of buying Alfred Wainwright's Walks from Ratty.

(The stains weren't down to me, by the way.  That was the work of the gentleman on eBay who sold it.  I'm trying not to dwell on them.)

Alfred Wainwright was deeply in love with the Lake District, and produced a number of books detailing its geography, its history, and giving the reader routes and walks.  Each one is joyous.  He hand illustrated them himself, detailed line drawings in black ink, and they're written in his own, meticulous hand.  They're miniature works of art.  To help raise funds for the Ravenglass & Eskdale, he published this tiny booklet, with ten walks from the line.

As it turned out, most of these walks were impractical for my purposes.  They were designed for lengthy rambles, for people who didn't have to match to a railway timetable.  One walk, though, 7: Dalegarth Force, caught my attention.  It was only a couple of miles and I could use it to fill the hour and a half between trains.

I struck out from Dalegarth station, heading away from the village on roads without pavements.  A little left hand turn and the road began to gently rise, narrowing, then turning from tarmac to gravel.  A bridge over the River Esk, ropeswings rocking in the morning breeze, then more upward trekking.

I was really pushing myself.  This was a detour away from the railway line, and so it carried with it a certain amount of anxiety.  If I'd been walking in the direction of Beckfoot station, I'd have at least had the comfort of knowing my train was close.  This was a mile long detour to the south though.  I walked fast, intent on reaching the Force without getting off timetable.

A gateway took me inside the woods of Stanley Ghyll.  It's a long gulley, twisting its way down to the Esk, with ancient trees lining the cascading stream.  The waters were full with February rain, and the path was damp.

Moss clung to every surface, cool and soft.  It was as though I was entering a secret world.  Each twist of the rocky path took me a little higher.  The trees leaned in and closed off the sky.

I was excited.  The thrill of exploration, the isolation, the knowledge that I was utterly alone.  This added an undercurrent of danger when I slipped a little, and I pictured myself tumbling into the stream and drowning.  My blue-faced corpse would be found by a pair of athletic walkers later that day, wedged up against a rock in an undignified fashion.  I walked a little more carefully after that.

Now the ghyll was a proper gully.  Dark rock rose above me.  I crossed one bridge over the water, then back, the path following wherever there was a patch of flat.  Except it wasn't a path now; it was steps, big chunks of rock wedged into the earth, taking me higher.  The drop down to the water was getting more vertiginous.  I tried not to think about it.

The noise had increased, too.  As the stream became more active and violent, so its cascades echoed more, crashing off the walls of the ghyll.  I climbed a bit more and spotted, through the trees, a waterfall.  It was sort of sideways, and concealed by branches.  I felt a moment of disappointment: was that it?  Was that the "force" that Wainwright had waxed about?  I turned over the a third bridge, climbing over a warning sign halfway that the path was steep and slippery, and onto another set of steps.

The sign wasn't lying.  These were tight against the wall.  With one hand on the rock face, I guided myself up and round the corner.  Then I gasped.

Stanley Ghyll Force is sixty feet of rushing, plunging water, pouring down into a still pool.  I stood on a square of flat land and watched it, open mouthed.  Something about it all - this quiet spot, the plunge, the loneliness - grabbed hold of me.  I couldn't move.  All I could do was stare at it.  Me and the waterfall.

If I was a braver man - or at least a man who could swim - there would have been no greater pleasure to me than to leap down into that pool and dunk my head under the water.  Instead I just stood and watched.  Finally, a little alarm at the back of my head reminded me that I had a train to catch, and I turned away.

I walked back down the canyon, idly wondering what punishment would be suitable for the idiots who'd spraypainted the rocks by the waterfall.  Was castration too harsh, or too lenient?  On the way, I encountered a couple of walkers on their way up, and I wanted to stop them and tell them it was fantastic.  That would have spoiled the surprise and the delight for them though, so instead I just smiled conspiratorially.

At the foot of the hill I turned left again, arriving at Beckfoot sooner than I'd expected.  It's the first station after Dalegarth, barely a half a mile away, and I'd arrived way too soon.  I now had twenty minutes to kill, waiting for my train, twenty minutes I could have wasted staring at that waterfall.  I took a seat on the steps up to the platform and waited.

The quiet of the Lake District landscape was suddenly interrupted by a cacophony of braying voices.  Four people, two men and two women, wandered round the corner.  They were lost.  I knew this because they kept shouting "yeah, but WHERE IS IT?" at each other in thick Mancunian accents.  They were not dressed for the countryside.  None of them had coats.  The two women wore heels and had handbags wedged in the crook of their arms.

They wandered around for a bit, staring in the garden of the hotel across the way, poking their head over walls, looking at me with undisguised amusement.  Then they turned and went back the way they came, still looking for... something.  Still shouting at one another.

I suppose I could have helped.  Offered to check my OS Map for them.  Asked them where they were going.  But I didn't because, quite frankly, this is an overpopulated little planet, and letting those four idiots wander across a Fell and die of exposure would have been a service for all of humanity.

The steam train whistled as it rounded the corner.  I'd got a diesel up to the top, but I was going to be steaming back down again.  I asked the guard to stop at The Green.  "For the pub?" he said.  "That's the only reason people get off at The Green.  For the pub."

I didn't actually know there was a pub at The Green.  But now that I had the idea in my head...

(I've Had) The Tyne Of My Life

I'd been to Newcastle before, of course.  Many times.  I'd even spent a few nights staying here.  But I'd never ventured into the city itself.  I'd always had trains to catch, or I needed sleep, or I'd gone for a pint to a bar round the corner.  I'd never "done" Newcastle.  It didn't help that the station was being redeveloped every time I visited, and I wanted to wait for that to be finished before I collected it.  See it at its best.

I am furious with myself for this.  Because it turns out Newcastle is bloody fantastic.  Just wonderful.  I wandered around the city with a dizzy, ecstatic smile on my face.  Everything about it was perfection.

Dramatic sandstone buildings curving along ancient streets.  Impressive vistas along busy roads.  Tiny moments of staggering beauty.

In Liverpool, the river brushes right up against the buildings.  The Tyne is far more dramatic, sitting in a gorge that puts the city high above the river.  It's crisscrossed with half a dozen bridges, each as interesting as the one before, each one different.

I went down to the dockside, where the Tyne Bridge soars over the streets like an ironwork Godzilla.  I could have stood there all day and just marveled at it.

I found the Bigg Market, notorious as a centre for depravity and wantonness, and found a reasonable little square with a few drunks.  Not the sodom I'd expected.  Of course, it was Friday afternoon.  Probably around 1 AM it would have been different - the posters for Cocktail Buckets: £5 didn't point to refined entertainment.  (No, that's not a bucket filled with bottles.  It's a bucket filled with booze).

Sadly, the Rupali, legendary home of the late Lord of Harpole Abdul Latif and made famous in Viz, has closed, so I couldn't experience the "Curry Hell".  Instead I found an ancient church and a plaque commemorating the first place The Blaydon Races was performed (that song again!).

And the people!  Obviously the Geordie accent is the sexiest one in the country: that is a stone cold fact and I will not be persuaded otherwise.  But they're also gorgeous.  My eyes regularly alighted upon yet another male model with cheekbones you could slice ham on, or a girl poured into a tight dress with more curves than a mountain road.  They were happy and sexy and laughing and I wanted to do rude things to all of them.  They were also kind; at one point I was so busy being gobsmacked at the city that I tripped over the kerb and went sprawling.  A young woman ahead of me turned round, stopped her conversation on her mobile, and checked that I was ok.  In most other cities she'd have kicked me while I lay on the floor.  She certainly wouldn't have stopped talking.

In amongst all this finery, there's the railway station of course.  It's huge, but not as busy as it used to be - local services were pretty much all redirected onto the Metro (the Metro!  Oh, I love the Metro!  There will be a whole separate post gushing about the Metro).  But it's still Newcastle, and it's still wonderful.

The redevelopment - which still isn't quite finished - filled in the porte cochere to create more space for coffee shops and ticket machines.  It's been done well, in glass and copper, and allows you to appreciate the station more.

Rather than biding a while at Caffe Nero I went through the huge entrance doors into the station itself.

Long curved glass reaches over shiny-floored platforms.  The whirl of trains passing through, always progressing, to London and Scotland and all points in between.

The twists in the roof make it feel like the building itself is moving, helped by the open ends.  There's a thrilling feeling of excitement.  Trains can't linger long because there's always another one behind waiting for its space.

I love it.  I love everything about it.  I needed to recover, and I staggered into the Centurion Bar.  Not just a bar though; the former first class lounge, now open even to plebs like me.

Astonishingly intricate brown tiling above soft seating.  Heavy marble fireplaces under huge elegant mirrors.  Artwork that you'd expect to find in a museum.

I sat down with a Newky Brown - even the city's drinks are superlative - and tried to take it all in.

I'm sorry Newcastle.  I wish I'd visited you sooner, I wish I'd visited you longer, I wish I'd known just how bloody fantastic you are.  But rest assured: I'll be back.

Cool

On a hot day in June, there aren't many places you can escape the sun in London.  Air conditioning still hasn't really caught on in this country.  The parks are packed.  The Tube is a stuffy nightmare.  I had to go somewhere.  I escaped underground.

Crossrail finally completed its tunnel works, and to celebrate, they invited locals in to have a look round.  They also mentioned it on their Twitter feed, and as usual, the free tickets were gone in seconds.  But I was very, very lucky.  I happened to be on Twitter right at that moment, and I managed to claim one ticket.  One hastily booked train journey - and one lunch at the Barbican with Ian - later, I was walking through a metal detector to get into what will one day be Woolwich Crossrail station.

Woolwich was scrubbed off the list of new stations at the "value for money" stage.  However, Berkeley Homes intervened.  They'd won the right to redevelop the Royal Arsenal, a huge stretch of former Ministry of Defence land between the town centre and the river.  Right now, it takes about 20 minutes to get to Canary Wharf from Woolwich, changing from the DLR to the Jubilee Line at Canning Town.  Crossrail will transform that into a single train journey taking just 8 minutes.  That sort of transport gain was worth Berkeley paying to build the station box out of their own pocket.

It'll turn what is, at present, a slightly soulless, slightly desolate collection of flats into a hub.  And since Woolwich town centre is just over the road, the money will hopefully spread further into the town.

I stood over looking the hole in the ground and waited for the rest of my tour party to come through security.  There were twenty of us, a pleasingly random collection of Londoners.  They were a microcosm of the insane variety of people the city is home to.  Two aging hippies with long grey hair.  A neat middle-class woman in a leather jacket.  An enthusiastic Scot and her Chinese boyfriend, accompanied by their tall English friend.  A Sikh couple.  Two teenagers with neon coloured hair and tattoos.  And my favourite type of Londoner, Hot Jewish Guy With A Bubble Butt And A T-Shirt You Could See His Nipples Through.

Plus, of course, me: the fat railway nerd.

There was a brief talk about the engineering achievement from Mick, the project leader.  He proudly told us that the handover date for installing the railway had been set at June 10th, 2015, in their original tender documents, and that date would be met.  Then we descended into the station down a flight of metal steps, accompanied by our guides, Patrick and Thibault (see?  Diversity).

We were now in the station box, stood close to the island platform.  The metal posts hanging from the ceiling are for the platform edge doors.  Unlike on the Jubilee Line, the whole rail area will be screened off from the passenger part, creating sealed areas.  I peeked into the distance but I could only just see the distant end of the colossal station.

A few more steps and we were at track level for the walking part of our tour.  We were going to actually walk from one side of the Thames to the other through the Crossrail tunnel.

The air was cool, and it got cooler as we entered the tunnel mouth.  We fell almost reverentially silent.

It's hard to describe the excitement I was feeling as I advanced down the tunnel.  It was the thrill of being underground, then, under the water.  

There was the thrill of knowing that hardly anyone had made this trip before, or ever would again.  There was the thrill of Crossrail actually being a real thing that has happened and been built, after so many years of false starts and broken promises.

The tunnel was made by huge boring machines, and the concrete segments were then laid into the wall behind it.  They are locked together; each one was pushed in place, and a keystone holds them tight.  There's no need for any further reinforcement, except for round the cross passages, where steel beams are needed to hold them together as the hole in the wall breaks the tessellation.

The cross passages are there for evacuation of the trains in an emergency.  When the tunnel is fitted out, there will be a walkway at the level of the bottomof the cross passage, to enable you to get out of the trains and walk to safety.  It was strange to stand on the floor of the tunnel and be looking up to the floor height of the train; it's easy to forget just how huge they'll be.

The deepest point of the tunnel is, weirdly, not the halfway point; that was a few metres further down.  I'm sure there's a perfectly logical engineering reason for this.

Apologies for the crappiness of some of these pictures by the way.  We were told that bags would not be allowed in the tunnel, so I couldn't bring my camera, and had to use my phone to take all the shots.  However, some of the women had handbags and bum bags, and they were let in, not that I'm bitter and annoyed or anything.

After what seemed like only a few moments, we were passing a sign saying End of the Thames.  Without any other reference points, it was impossible to gauge how far we'd walked, or how fast.  It was a long, undulating curve of grey concrete.  I placed my hand on one of the tunnel segments and was shocked at how cold it was; it almost felt damp.

Then the literal light at the end of the tunnel.  It was astonishingly bright, and impossible for us to see beyond.  It was a bit like coming out of the womb.  The curved walls gave way to a larger chamber, built for emergency access and ventilation.  

All that was left was the last few metres walk out of the tunnel and into the sunshine.  But why tell you about it, when I can actually show you what it was like through the medium of poorly shot iPhone video?

Why yes, I am available to film all your important life events.  E-mail me for prices.

In the bare sunlight, the bases of emergency stairs took on a surreal, almost artistic quality.

Another building company will be in soon to finish what has been started but until then, they were a Rachel Whiteread installation.

Slowly the floor rose to take us up to ground level.  On the north bank of the river, Crossrail has taken over the old North London Line.  That was cut back to Stratford in 2006; the section from there to Canning Town became the DLR, and now Crossrail is using its route to get to Custom House.

Suddenly there was noise again, and buses, and the huge hulks of sugar refineries looming over our heads.  London was reasserting itself.

A tiny stand had been set up, and two friendly volunteers handed out leaflets about the tunnel and Crossrail, and we all got a badge.  I don't know where I'd ever wear the badge, but I'll add it to my Station Master and I Get Around By Merseyrail Underground ones.  I left the railway behind, heading up to London City Airport DLR station with a big stupid grin on my face.  It was a wonderful hour of fun, and something I will remember for a long time.  I can't wait for Crossrail to open in 2018, just so I can take a train through here and tell the person sitting next to me, "I walked through this tunnel once, you know."

Then that person will change seats.