Groovy Train

I was passing through Lime Street last night, and I noticed some posters for Merseyrail's new publicity campaign.

Here's a better look at it, from the website:

It's there to suggest you use Merseyrail to go off into town and enjoy yourself, I know, but my first thought was Jesus, that looks like hell.  I don't want elaborate dance performances when I'm off into town.  I want a nice quiet time where I can perhaps chat to my friends.  I don't want a trapeze artist whacking into the back of my head.  If these are the kind of features we can expect from Merseyrail's new trains, count me out.  With the possible exception of the chandelier.

Still, it might just be that I'm a miserable old stick in the mud.  After all, I've never been on a night out so wild and crazy that I've gone home with only one shoe.  You'd have to be absolutely rat arsed to not notice that suddenly you're an inch shorter on one side.

Kudos to you, unidentified reveller.  I hope you've got all the Anadin you need this morning.

A Load of Twits

Unless you've literally just fallen out of your mother's uterus (in which case, well done for being able to read at so young an age) you'll have spotted the Tour de France went through Yorkshire over the weekend.  I'm not going to repeat the endless Yorkshire/French gags - "the winner's three old men in a tin bath" etc - not because I'm above that sort of thing, but because they've all been done.  Instead I'm going to focus on Northern Rail, whose Twitter account went le Tour crazy.  Not surprising, as the event caused huge logistical headaches: extra trains were laid on, but there were still queues snaking all over Leeds and Huddersfield stations, as well as many smaller ones that were unused to crowds.

Northern seem to have coped admirably.  Certainly their Twitter account remained buoyant, but then, they always are.  I've spoken about my love for their social media people before and the weekend's events confirmed it for me.  Plus, they ran a hashtag, #TdFselfies, which resulted in a load of staff members in yellow t-shirts doing duck face and generally looking like they were having fun.  Selfies are a bit overused now - unless they're in front of station signs, obv - but it did afford us a glimpse of people who normally remain hidden from view.

Take Northern MD, Alex Hynes, for example, who did le tour of his own around the network as they coped manfully.  I'm disappointed he's not Dutch, like his Merseyrail counterpart, but he makes up for it by seeming generally up for it:

Perhaps he's very Northern in real life.  Like an Alan Bennett character.

Also posting was this person, who I believe is the current queen of Northern Twitter, Lyndsey:

Loving that lipstick.

And then, of course, there was Tim.  I used to have to split my loyalties between Tim and Andy on the Twitter helpdesk, but then Andy left, so Tim took over my affections.

Not bad, I suppose.  I can't help but feel a little disappointed, a bit like the time I saw Paul Lewis from You and Yours on Breakfast for the first time and his face looked nothing like I'd imagined it would.  I'm not saying he's awful - far from it - but in my head he was perfect, and he turns out to be beardy.

Yes, the York railway chaplain has replaced his dog collar with a red and white spotted piece of card.  Is that allowed?  Won't God be angry?

He looks knackered there.  That's what a hard day's tweeting does for you.  It doesn't matter, I still love you Tim and your random Twitter diversions, your unfailing ability to remain chirpy even as people abuse you long distance, and your crystal blue eyes.  Maybe have a shave though.

Brave New World

Ah, the Northern Rail map.  Touch it; cherish it; worship it.  View it as a false icon.  Love it as a bride.  Just don't think it's set in stone, because, dammit, the powers that be seem intent on changing it whenever possible.

Following James Cook University Hospital's appearance in May the Department for Transport has launched a two-pronged attack on its integrity.  The first came at the end of that month, when the DfT confirmed funding for two new stations in West Yorkshire.  Kirkstall Forge and Apperley Bridge will be built in areas that are seeing significant redevelopment money.  More importantly, they'll fill in a line on the map that hasn't got any stations at the moment, as shown in this highly expensive CGI recreation commissioned EXCLUSIVELY for this blog.

Many thanks to the geniuses at Industrial Light & Magic for their work.  The cheque's on its way, fellas.

Both stations are due to open next year, with ambitious reports suggesting May while more realistic ones reckon it'll be more like the Autumn.  While I like the name Kirkstall Forge - it has a sort of Game of Thrones, Tolkeinesque vibe to it - I hope Apperley Bridge is just a temporary moniker.  There's already an Appley Bridge, on the Southport to Wigan line, plus Appleby on the Settle and Carlisle.  Far too much room for confusion, particularly as we move away from ticket offices and onto self-service via the internet and ticket machines.  

Which brings me neatly onto the DfT's consultation document, issued last month, on the future of the Northern and TransPennine Express franchises.  Both are up for renewal in 2016, and the Government is using the opportunity to play around with the boundaries and the conditions.  The continued electrification of lines all over the region also means that there are new route opportunities and potential new trains.

One area they're looking at in particular is redefining who serves what area.  The idea is to make TPE the North's "InterCity" service, ignoring all the boring small towns in favour of the big destinations: Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle and York - particularly the Leeds/Manchester corridor.  At present, TPE goes all over the place, as a quick glance at their map reveals.

Incidentally I hate that map.  Far too geographic, far too much empty green space at the top and crammed in station names at the bottom.  I have noticed that I've done or will do pretty much all the stations on it though, which makes me itch to do the few that aren't on the Northern map.  Somebody stop me, please.

Under the new proposals (which are still up for consultation), the TPE services to Windermere, Blackpool North and Barrow-in-Furness will all be passed over to Northern.  All three are routes with small stations, and so fit better with Northern's profile as a local community and commuter service.  Northern already serve these routes anyway.  The line from York to Scarborough will also be passed over to Northern; this is mainly because there are no plans to electrify that route, so it'll mean TPE can run entirely electric trains without having to stick some ugly diesels in there as well.  (Yes, that'll mean Liverpool will lose its seaside route.  I'd better finish off the Scarborough-Hull line before it disappears).

In exchange, Northern will hand over... one of its trains to Hull from Doncaster.  Not exactly a fair swap.

Meanwhile, my recent trip along the Barton Line might have been all for nothing.  The DfT and I both came to the same conclusion: it's an odd little island in the Northern franchise.  They've got two proposals on how to deal with it.

1. Transfer the Doncaster-Cleethorpes part of the service to Northern, so that the southern end of the line (Habrough-Cleethorpes) will only be served by one train operator;
2. Hand the Barton Line over to East Midlands Trains, who run most of the services in Lincolnshire anyway, meaning that Northern's empire ends at Scunthorpe (though there's no mention of what will happen to the Saturday only Sheffield-Cleethorpes service, which is currently Northern).

(Oh, and the Liverpool-Norwich service will be split in two at Nottingham, with TPE taking over the western part and East Midlands operating the eastern bit.  I really must ride that service before it vanishes; five and a half hours on a single train stretching from one side of the country to the other!).

I'm broadly on board with all of that.  It does make more sense for Northern to have the local services, and in my experience, few people stay right to the end of the Scarborough and Cleethorpes services.  Most of the passengers were going to/from York and Sheffield, respectively.  Changing trains is always a pain but it's less so at large, important stations.

Northern gets a bit of a hammering in the report.  It notes that customer satisfaction is lower than average, and that it takes more money in subsidies than any other franchise.  As someone who supports the government subsidising all the rail services - perhaps in the form of NATIONALISATION - I'm not bothered by the second point, but the first is worrying.  However, the consultation notes that a lot of the blame can be placed on the trains.  According to its figures, 87% of the trains are diesel, with the average age of the units being over 24 years old.  The majority of the trains are wretched, ugly, pestilent Pacers, my nemesis.  It's hard to imagine any passenger being satisfied with a journey on one of those rickety death buckets.

Point 7.7 therefore brought a tear of joy to my eye:

No more Pacers?  O frabjous day!  Callooh!  Callay!  Though I don't like the words "as an option" in there.

There's a dark side to the new trains.  I don't just mean the fact that they're unlikely to be brand new, and will probably be cast offs from somewhere else in the country.  The report says that "the more expensive the trains... the harder it will be to justify current service levels where demand is low."  In other words, those of you at country stations will be able to enjoy waving at the brand new trains as they whizz through without stopping.  If they even come your way in the first place.  Put a different way, if you've got a request stop in your village right now, don't hold your breath for a once an hour express service to the nearest city with the new franchisee.  (It does say that "We are not considering line or station closures within this review" so that's something).  

There's also a lot of talk about ticketing.  It notes that people travelling without tickets is a rampant problem on the Northern network.  All those unmanned stations, or routes that are so busy the conductor can't make a pass of the train to sell them.  There's also a general lack of barriers for those without tickets, and no Penalty Fare Areas.  The DfT has a few suggestions.  A move to "driver only operation" on the trains, meaning that the guard serves no purpose other than selling tickets and fining those without.  More ticket machines and "better use of technology".

Without any contradiction, the document then suggests "reviewing ticket office hours" and "redeploying staff" - which might mean extending the hours you can buy a ticket but come on: when has that ever happened?  Personally I'm totally on board with the Penalty Fare idea - if you can be fined for not having a ticket on Merseyrail, why not between Huyton and St Helens? - and I'm particularly excited by the DfT's enthusiasm for smart ticketing.  Mind you, they've been enthusiastic about it for years and we're still waving little bits of orange card around.

Finally, the consultation mentions a few brand new services.  Two of them I knew about - trains using the Todmorden curve to get from Manchester to Blackburn, and a better service from Bolton to Blackburn.  The third was a surprise to me - "the re-instatement of train services between Newcastle and Ashington."  There used to be a passenger route between the two towns until the mid-Sixties, but freight trains have continued to use it.  The decline of the collieries means that there's capacity for passenger services to be reintroduced, with four stations on the route being reopened.

In short, come 2016, the Northern Rail map could look radically different, with new stations and new routes.  I'd best get a move on and finish collecting it, or it'll be a neverending quest.

You can make your own comments on the consultation here.

State of Flux

For reasons far too dull to go into here, I found myself in Manchester with a couple of hours to kill.  I didn't fancy a jaunt out into the suburbs so I decided to hunt out one of the city's dead stations.

I say Manchester's lost station; technically speaking it was across the River Irwell, in Salford.  Exchange station was built by the London & North West Railway in 1884.  For many years they'd shared services with the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway at the nearby Victoria station, but as the lines became more congested, the L&YR (who owned Victoria) gave its own services priority.  It meant that the L&NWR ended up scouting around for a new site.  Their solution was to build a new station further down the line - about fifty metres further down the line, in fact.

Exchange had five platforms, a long front and a bridge over the Irwell that delivered you right in front of Manchester Cathedral.  After the two railway companies merged to form the LMS in the 1920s, platform 3 at Exchange and platform 11 were extended until they formed one long platform, long enough to accommodate 3 trains at once and allow people to walk from one station to the other without leaving the building.  It was the longest platform in Europe.

Two things did for Exchange.  The first was the Germans, who obliterated the station in 1940 and left just a few platforms with no building to speak of.  The second was rationalisation of the railways in the Sixties, where British Rail concluded that only one station was needed in that part of Manchester and diverted all the services into Victoria.  In May 1969 Exchange closed and for more than forty years it sat vacant, with the old station space used as a car park and the platforms and footbridges allowed to rot.

I'd long meant to have a look at this relic of Manchester's transport history.  Obviously, when I finally decided to go and have a poke around, it was too late.

Forty odd years there had been a blot on the Manchester/Salford border - a space of empty undeveloped land.  Forty odd years.  And by the time I decide to go, they've fenced it off to form a new office development.

The Greengate Embankment development will see a series of incredibly dull office buildings plonked on top of the railway arches.  Look how boring that is - the CGI view is from more or less the same perspective as my shot, and I'm not sure which is the more tedious picture.

It meant I couldn't wander around looking at the remnants of the station building, so I plunged into the surrounding streets to find any relics I could.

Huge arches carry the busy lines over the roads and into Victoria.  Their sheer size is almost romantic; you're dropped into an oppressive darkness here, within spitting distance of Selfridges and Harvey Nicks.  It's as though a cape has been swept across your field of vision.

It also underlines how fragile the "Northern Renaissance" is.  Manchester's the poster boy for post-industrial recovery, but there were still patches of bare ground, empty units, individual developments yet to be knitted into the fabric of the city.  The fact that the Exchange site could stand empty for so long tells you a lot.

I walked around in a circle, increasingly frustrated at how temptingly close I was to having a poke around without actually managing it, until I was back outside the Cathedral again.  I then had a lucky break.  Off in the distance, over the railway tracks, I could see a bridge that I'd assumed was part of Victoria station.  However, there were a couple of rail enthusiasts on it, having a conversation with huge cameras in tow.

I knew for a fact that Victoria has ticket inspectors barring your way on the concourse, so unless these gentlemen had bought a platform ticket, that meant there must be a way to the bridge that didn't involve passing through the main station.  A bit of poking around and I found the entrance to the bridge behind an office block.  (So there you go: if you get into Victoria without a ticket you can sneak out the other end of the platform without being checked.  Sort this out, Northern).

By the time I'd got up on top the men had disappeared; I'm choosing to believe that this is because they'd photographed all they needed to, and not because they'd seen me coming.  From the stairwell I was able to get a great view over the whole Exchange site.

You can see the through lines to the right, and the older, unused space where the lines were on the left, now crawling with orange clad men.  The footbridge is original to the station as well.  Until the 1980s, the roof of Exchange still spanned the tracks, until someone realised that having an unmaintained structure over a busy transport corridor might not be a great idea and the whole thing was demolished.

With my circumlocution of a dead station sadly thwarted, I headed to a semi-live one.  Victoria's currently in the process of being torn apart and rebuilt as part of the Northern Hub programme.  The idea is that Victoria will become Manchester's east-west station, while Piccadilly will be there for north-south services, and the Metrolink will carry you between the two.  Problem is, for many years, Victoria was a dump.  The MEN Arena (now the - sigh - Phones4U Arena) was built over the top of the tracks, making it dark and miserable, while the open side was allowed to quietly degenerate.

Now a whole new roof is being installed.  Vast white metal ribs are being erected over the concourse, and a clear PTFE roof will be installed between them to allow light to flood the space.  Meanwhile, the Metrolink platforms are being reconstructed, partly to accommodate the Second City Crossing (which will, incidentally, see Exchange reappear on the city's public transport maps with an Exchange Square tram stop).

It's all very exciting, but right now, right here on the ground, it just looks a mess.  There are temporary signs and diversions and boards all over the place.  It was a bit disappointing, so I repaired to one place that has definitely improved from the redevelopment: the bar.

The heritage elements of Victoria have been restored, meaning that the refreshment rooms have been made over into something resembling their original state.  Obviously it's not perfect.  21st century retail demands corporate branding; so half the area is devoted the bright orange of Pumpkin, along with its balsa wood chairs and its tacky magazine racks.

The bar side is altogether more successful.  It's a shame that station pubs have descended into this halfway house of "somewhere to kill time"; they used to be destinations.  They used to be stylish.  Now the Metro Bar was occupied by people having a Coke, without ice, because "the machine isn't working."  It's lucky it has that amazing dome in the roof to overawe you.

It was a frustrating afternoon, all told.  I didn't get enough history and I didn't get enough future.  It was like being in a really bad episode of Doctor Who; possibly one with Bonnie Langford.  In a year's time I'd see a whole new world but for now, it was just a whole load of maybes.

Day Three: Bridge Over Troubled Waters

Before I go off on an Epic Journey With Little Purpose, I do a lot of planning.  In some ways that's half the fun.  Cross checking timetables, tracing Ordnance Survey maps, drawing up spreadsheets.  It saves a lot of faffing about, and it gives me the reassurance my OCD crazed mind needs.

The last day of my Grimsby trip looked like this:

A nice busy day that would see me polish off the Barton Line and collect a few other stations in the Humberside area.  It'd also include walking across the Humber Bridge, which had been an ambition of mine ever since I first saw it.

My brain had other ideas.  Remember how, as a side job, I'm also a manic depressive?  I woke up that Saturday morning with a heart of deep dark coal.  I didn't want to get out of bed, never mind romp around the north east.  I'm not sure why - perhaps the exertions of the previous day had tired me so much I couldn't put up the resistance any more.  Perhaps my brain is just a bit of a bastard.  I would have been quite happy to wrap myself in the hotel duvet and spend the day watching repeats of Birds of a Feather on Drama.  Yes, things were that bad.

The only thing that stopped me from wallowing was the knowledge that if I didn't get out there and do it now, I'd have to do it some other time.  I'd just be delaying it.  I decided to revise the timetable somewhat.

Cut out all that nonsense with Goole; it was a lot of effort to collect just two stations, and they were stations I could collect any time.  Loads of trains go through Goole.  Instead I'd go out to Barrow Haven, do my bit of walking across the bridge, collect the stations on the other side, then return for Barton-on-Humber.

My platform at Grimsby Town was packed, though not for my train.  They were Saturday shoppers waiting for the TransPennine Express service to Sheffield.  Only one person boarded the Barton train with me, an old man who was known to the guard.  They chatted together merrily all the way to Stallingborough.  We picked up a few more passengers en route, most of whom then got off at Habrough to catch that same Sheffield train, and by the time we reached Barrow Haven it was near empty.

I climbed off the train and let it disappear into the distance.  As the name implies Barrow Haven is a tiny halt beside a small harbour.  It's surrounded by grass and trees and once the train had gone, it fell silent.

It's so quiet that the level crossing goes unguarded.  A man wandered through with a little terrier, barely pausing at the tracks, knowing full well the train had been and gone.

I'd not been sure how I was going to cross the river.  The maps I'd consulted had been distinctly cagey on the matter; there was a railway bridge, but I wasn't sure if there was a footpath.  I actually discovered a very sensible solution; when the line had been reduced from double to single tracks, the space left was barriered off and made into a footpath across the water.  I can only hope that this kind of intelligent thinking spreads to other parts of the UK - railway bridges with no footpath are a bit of a bugbear of mine.

I was joining the brilliantly named Nev Cole Way, a long distance path through North Lincolnshire that followed the Humber estuary.  Soon I was on a low cliff above an expanse of sea grasses, with Hull just about visible in the distance.  Blue dragonflies flitted around my feet.

To my left were a series of square lakes, old chalk pits that had been filled in and now formed a nature reserve.  There were boats on them already.  Interspersed with them caravans had been set up; one man took advantage of the warm morning to hose down his mobile home.

Up ahead of me, the Humber Bridge laced across the estuary.  It's astonishingly graceful, considering its size and construction material.  Concrete has been shaped into the simplest of forms that arc over the wide expanse of water.  The lack of competition around it means it's hard to conceive its scale.  Look at, say, the Brooklyn Bridge and you can compare its size to the buildings behind it.  The Humber Bridge is the only tall object for miles and as such it's hard to take it board.  This was the largest bridge on Earth for nearly twenty years.

It should have lifted me, but I was still stuck in that funk.  I couldn't get up the enthusiasm for anything.  I began to revise my schedule even further in my head.  If I crossed over the bridge to Hessle, it would mean a lot of waiting around, and then I'd have to come back again, violating my "don't go back the way you came" rule.  The new look plan therefore became:

I'll admit it; that's not exactly a grand climax to the Barton Line.  Sorry about that.  But if I'm in that kind of low, it's probably not a great idea for me to stand in the middle of a very high bridge with a very long drop, if you know what I mean.

As I approached the footings of the bridge a weird green spacecraft appeared to my left.  Looking like a circular packing crate, it was ugly and sort of pretty.  It turned its back on the river, but wide windows peered out of its face.

From the other side it made more sense; with its exposed front it reminded me of a beetle - hard on top, but then a fleshy exposed underneath.

This was the Water's Edge vistor's centre, a place to pause and reflect on the country park around you.  Interpretive boards explained about how the estuary was formed, and its important ecosystem.  Cameras allowed you to spy, Big Brother style, on the local wildlife.  It constantly boasted about the buildings environmental credentials - rainwater flushing the toilets and shutters controlling the heat and all that sort of thing.  Personally I saw it mainly as a place to use the loo and have a sandwich.  I mean, it was all nice enough, but I was furious that it didn't once mention the bridge that loomed over us so I boycotted its bird pictures on principle.  (I later found out that there's an actual Humber Bridge Information Centre on the north bank, so they probably didn't want to duplicate what was already there.  Sorry).

The cafe was a little overpriced, but popular.  A stream of pensioners on a day out and families taking advantage of the indoor playground appeared as I sat down.  My quiet cup of tea was suddenly surrounded by noise.  I wanted to go home.

I strolled into town past a long inlet.  On one side there were old brick terraces; on the other side a vast new Tesco.  The Sloop Inn promised fine meals and drinks; down a side road, I spotted the flyover that took you up and over the bridge.  It must have been odd for Barton to suddenly acquire this huge new neighbour; to suddenly have a whole new world opened up to them via a five minute drive.  Although from what I understand there's not been much of a movement between the two sides since the bridge was built.  Hundreds of years of tradition haven't been overturned, and the south bank still looks south while the north bank looks north.

I wished they'd been able to join up the railway lines while they were at it.  String a second deck underneath the road so that trains could go from Grimsby to Hull.  That would have properly connected the two halves.

Instead, the Barton Line finishes up on the fringe of Barton-on-Humber town centre.  A generous bus exchange has been built alongside, so that people can connect to the Hull buses, but the station itself is a disappointing strip.  A single platform and a buffer stop and a bench.

The warm morning had brought out the buckets and spades for the train to Cleethorpes.  The platform was filled with excitable children and less excitable parents in sleeveless tops.  A lot of them were sucking on e-cigarettes; it's not fair, I know, but the image of Jabba the Hutt and his hookah came unbidden to mind.

The train was late, but when it finally came, I clambered aboard behind a man with SAFC tattooed on the back of his neck and found a seat to hide in.  I scrunched up and wished for the train to go faster so I could sleep the afternoon away.

P.S.  Hey, Barton-on-Humber: how about cleaning your sign sometime?  Love Scott x

Day Two: That's Why The Gentleman Is A Tramp

I was worried that I'd be underdressed for Thornton Abbey.  Would I be met off the train by a bewhiskered butler?  Would I be expected to dine with the Lord of the Manor?  

Obviously not.  I was the only person to get off the train and I found the most decrepit station so far.

At some point, Northern had installed the Harrington Humps and then thought "meh. That'll do."  The  platforms were broken up, the concrete rough and patchy.  It was like a dirt road rather than a modern railway station in the UK.  I crunched over the gravel to get the station sign; even that's a bit rubbish.

Thornton Abbey gets its name from the monastery that once stood nearby.  It was destroyed in the Reformation, and the houses that replaced it didn't last long either.  All that remains is the ostentatious gatehouse, which admittedly looked impressive in the distance, but which I couldn't quite drag up the enthusiasm to go and poke round.

And speaking of a lack of enthusiasm... I had another walk along a rail side path to keep me entertained.  The OS map did at least show a few contours on this route and, sure enough, there was occasionally the odd rise to keep me on my toes.  In the rest of the country they'd be a speed bump, but I welcomed the variations as a break.  

I'd put Madonna's last album, MDNA, on my iPod in a hope that it would get my blood flowing again.  The beer and the sun were making me lazy.  It saddens me to report that MDNA still isn't a great Madonna album; there are some great parts ("Masterpiece") but there are also some truly appalling tracks that leave you baffled.  Here are some things I hope she doesn't put on her next album:

1)  Rapping

2)  Rapping about her life ("Gotta call the babysitter...I could take a helicopter")

3)  Collaborations with of the moment artists that date horribly (i.e. LMFAO)

4)  Swearing (remember when she would "teach you how to - mmmmm" in "Justify My Love"?  MDNA features a song called "I Fucked Up".  Classy, Madonna.  Do you kiss your kids with that mouth?)

5)  Did I mention the rapping?

It was at least keeping me awake.  Madonna is never dull, even when she's wrong.

The footpath turned into a road; I walked along the centre of it, not expecting any traffic.  I soon regretted this when a cyclist appeared out of nowhere and burned past me.  If it had been a cartoon my cap would have spun round and round on my head.  There were occasional farms, including one called "Hillcrest", which amused me because I hadn't even realised I was on a hill.  It really is VERY flat.

Soon the tendrils of Ulceby village began to reach out.  A pavement appeared, then a couple of parked cars, then some houses.  A UPS delivery van passed with a load of Amazon packages.  Neat hedges lined the driveways of tiny cottages.  Children had chalked on the pavement; I don't want to go casting aspersions about the intelligence of the locals, but, well:

Ulceby station lies between two junctions.  Below it is a triangular junction that connects the Barton Line to the rest of England's railways; trains can travel from the north or south on to Barnetby and Scunthorpe.  Above the station, a branch veers off to Immingham docks and the power station at Killinghome.  It's a point where freight and passenger services intersect, and there was a spotter there with a high powered camera ready to snap a passing train.

I retreated, in case he thought I was some kind of railway expert, and found solace in the nearby Yarborough Arms.  It was deserted when I went in, but I could hear voices in the back, so I waited at the bar.  Soon enough a woman appeared, poured me my pint of lager with a smile, and took my money.  I turned to find a seat.  It had been laid out as a gastropub, with lots of small tables; the first one I went to had a "reserved" notice on it, so I backed away, and looked for another.

"They're all reserved," the barmaid said over my shoulder.  "But there's plenty of room in the lounge."

There was plenty of room in the lounge, of course; there was plenty of room everywhere because I was the only customer, and it stayed that way during my entire visit.  I don't know who'd reserved the entire dining room - a coach party visiting the Abbey?  The Band of the Grenadier Guards?  Her Majesty the Queen and her security detail? - but they didn't show up.

I was three quarters of my way through the pint when the barmaid's head appeared round the corner.  "Did you want anything else?  Before I close up, I mean?"

It was three o'clock in the afternoon.  Lincolnshire.

I took the hint and, after a quick pee, I left the pub and went to the station.  The trainspotter had gone, and more fool him, because right then a really exciting train went through.

Drax!  As in Hugo Drax, the villain in Moonraker!  Yes, I'm fully aware that there is a power station of the same name, and this was carrying nothing more sinister than coal.  I'm personally clinging to the idea that it's part of the shadowy Drax Corporation and is filled with a cargo of shuttle parts and/or glamorous space vixens.

The train sadly didn't reappear with the tedious inevitability of an unloved season so I got on a regular Northern train and went to Goxhill.  It was a popular destination; I disembarked with a couple of tired looking pensioners and some excitable teens.  I guessed that they were on their GCSE study leave and had put it to good use with a day at the seaside.  They rolled onto the platform, clambering over one another, giggling and laughing.

The station building still stands proudly in the sunshine, though it's not in railway use any more.  The current owners have kept it in good condition, right down to preserving the hatch into the ticket office in one wall.  Meanwhile, another signal box stands guard over the level crossing.

In my head is an extremely effective, top drawer compass.  Combined with an Ordnance Survey map I become a one man SatNav.  I know where I'm going, where to turn, everything.  

I can only conclude that Goxhill is built on a massive magnet, because somewhere along the line, I made a wrong turn.  Instead of ending up on a busy, direct road to New Holland, I found myself on a long suburban avenue.  For a long time, I didn't realise I was on the wrong route.  I was too busy admiring the neat houses, the lawns mowed into stripes, the daisies peppering the grass verges.  The houses all had names; one was called "Dunvegan", which made me think the owners were probably cannibals.  

It finally dawned on me that something wasn't right, so I turned to the flickering 3G signal and started up Google Maps.  It confirmed that I was on the wrong road, and that I'd basically walked in a giant arc around the village.  With a sigh, I took the first left hand turn I saw, in the hope that it would take me across the fields to the correct route.  Who knew - maybe I'd cut a corner here or there.

I followed one finger post after another, left, right, north, west.  Sometimes I was alongside fields of waving crops, sometimes it was muddy tracks.  At one point I passed a paddock with a lazy looking pony.  I realised, with mounting fear, that I really didn't know where I was.  I knew where I wanted to go - over there - but the paths I followed didn't seem to relate to my OS map.  I couldn't get my bearings.  The 3G signal had gone completely now.

At a fork in the road, the little friendly yellow arrow failed to show up to indicate the way.  I took a punt, and found myself trekking down the side of a field, not entirely sure if I was on a right of way.

I know what you're thinking; why didn't I just turn back?  I'd invested too much time in walking so far; if I turned back, I'd be back to square one.  And I hate turning back.  It's an admission of failure.

So I pushed on.  I leapt over a ditch, impressing myself with my own spriteliness.  A distant, intermittent boom sounded across the fields; a tiny part of me worried if it was a farmer with a shotgun out murdering trespassers.  It turned out to be a sonic cannon, powered off a car battery as a twenty-first century bird scarer.  Far less intimidating.  I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the railway embankment up ahead; at least I'd been heading in the right direction all this time.  All I had to do was get to the other side of it.  I could see that there was a small crossing further up the track, so I walked along a little further, only to encounter another ditch in my way.

"No problem," I thought, limbering up for another Greg Rutherford-esque hurdle.  And then the ground gave way underneath me.

It turned out I hadn't been stood on solid earth, but I was instead putting all my weight on a matted mass of grass at the edge of the ditch.  It sent me toppling forward; my left foot went out to steady me, and went straight into the thick black water.  Still unstable, my brain sent the right one in as well, and I found myself up to my knees in filth.

I paused and let the air slide out of me.  Bugger.  I could already feel that my boots were now just two goldfish bowls of liquid at the bottom of my legs; my socks had turned to soggy dishrags.  In for a penny, I thought.  No point in trying to jump now; I may as well just walk across.  I pulled one boot out of the thick mud, and it belched out a noxious ball of composty smells.  I lurched to the other side of the ditch, and let out a huge, enormous, really quite obscene swear word.

In close up, the far bank of the ditch revealed that it wasn't grass and maybe a few flowers as I'd thought.  It was thick, sharp brambles, intertwined with stinging nettles.  It wasn't going to be easy getting out.

Reader, I tried.  I tried to move the thorns out of the way enough to facilitate my passage.  I tried to get enough of a hand hold to pull myself up out of the water.  I reached deep into the nettles, my arm screaming in pain, trying to find a blessed gap.  I felt the blood trickle down my arm as sharp points clawed at my flesh.  But finally I gave up.

I lurched back, the ditchwater farting out more smells as I did so, my boots becoming even more sodden, the bottom of my shorts becoming stained, and dragged myself out the way I came.  For a moment I sat on the soil, feeling defeated.  I couldn't see a way to get over the line now.  I'd have to go back to that fork, way back when, leap over that ditch again, take the other path and hope it was right.  Unless...

Let me clarify; I do not condone trespass in any way shape or form.  Especially not trespassing on railway tracks.  But right there and then, in pain, limping, my shoes squelching with each step, I didn't care.  I clambered up the embankment and dashed the few hundred metres to the pedestrian crossing and civilisation.  It was absolutely the wrong thing to do, but it got me closer to salvation.

For once, I wasn't in search of a pub.  I just wanted a shop.  A little Co-op or a Londis where I could buy a bottle of water for my parched throat and a tube of Germoline for my cuts and grazes.  Both arms were now singing to me, but from different hymn sheets; the left was numb from all the stinging nettles (it remained that way until next morning) while the right was a series of sharp, serrated gashes that mixed delightfully with my sweaty body to produce a constant underscore of discomfort and pain.  

Thirty five years ago I might have been in luck.  That was when New Holland was home to the Hull ferry, the only way to cross the River Humber between here and Goole.  There might have been a petrol station or a small shop or a cafe. 

The opening of the Humber Bridge turned New Holland into a backwater literally overnight.  There was no reason to come this way at all any more.  I wondered what this little village must have been like when there were queues of trucks waiting for their turn to cross.  The residents must have prayed for it to go away, until it actually did, and they realised that they were suddenly in the middle of nowhere.

I didn't find my little shop.  I did find Cooks restaurant, which advertised itself as being in "the Old Co-Op", a particularly cruel way of taunting me I thought.  I passed some pleasing alms houses, and a small factory where all the bosses were leaving one after the other, a little chain of BMWs, and then I saw the sign for New Holland station.

I sat on the bench and tipped the water out of one boot, then the other.  I peeled the socks off my feet and laid them on the seat to try and dry them in the late afternoon sun.  I felt like a tramp airing his underwear out in the middle of an Arndale Centre; I was waiting for a security guard to move me on.

Slowly I started to return to normal.  I was able to wipe away the worst of the blood with my handkerchief, leaving crisscross slashes on my arm like I was self-harming again.  My feet warmed and dried, though my socks and boots never really felt the benefit, and they both stank of rancid water.  I pitied anyone who sat near to me on the train home.  There was, thankfully, a 3G signal, so I went online and ordered a pizza for collection from Grimsby; a small treat to cheer myself up when I got back.  By the time the train arrived I was pretty much human again.

After a train journey that felt only slightly shorter than the Trans-Siberian Express, I was able to pick up my pizza and get back to my tiny little hotel room.  I then had a very long, very thorough, very well-deserved bath.