Prince of Wales

Eight and a half years ago, I got on a train to Tonfanau.  It's a request stop so I dutifully asked the guard to stop at the station.  She corrected my pronunciation.  And thus, another anxiety was born.  

It is the height of disrespect to mispronounce a place name simply because you're a boring old Englishman who speaks only one language.  On the other hand, Wales, give us a break.  My next destination was Tal-y-cafn station, and who even knows?  I stood at the bus stop and ran pronunciations over in my head.  Tallycafn.  Tal-E-Cavn.  Tellistdatnecag.  When the bus arrived, I stood in front of the driver and strongly and confidently asked for a single to Llanrwrst.  I could get off early.

The bus clattered around the back lanes from Glan Conwy.  The quickest route is straight down the A470, but there are hamlets hidden in the hills so the bus went in search of them.  The driver was only paying half-attention the whole time.  He'd propped his phone up on the wheel and was playing a fruit machine game, idly tapping at the arm, watching the wheels spin, then tapping it again.  It added a frisson of danger to every corner, every upcoming tree, every vertiginous drop off the side of the road.  I hadn't really planned on plummeting to my death in a single decker but, hey, sometimes life throws these options at you.  I was glad to ding the bell and jump off at Tal-y-Cafn station.

The problem was that now I had a two hour wait at a lonely station.  The building on the corner, which I guessed was a pub at one point, was being redeveloped into a large grey house.  Beyond that there were a couple of houses and the River Conwy beyond. 

I looked at that old sign.  Firstly I was glad I'd not had to try and say Eglwysbach.  But secondly it made me think: if a railway company added a suffix to the station name in the old days, it was usually a much larger village that was close by.  I brought up Google Maps and discovered that, yes, Eglwysbach was up in the hills, and a relatively short walk away.  I could easily make my way up there, have a look round, then wander back down to the station before my train south arrived.  

About eight minutes later I was regretting this decision.  The roads went up, relentlessly, a steep but continual climb to get me away from the low of the river.  It made my calf muscles tense and my ankles ache.  The reward was, of course, the view, as I caught glimpses of valleys and farm houses stretching into the distance, still wet and green from the morning's rain.

I passed some abandoned farm buildings which will no doubt be turned into a holiday home any day now and then turned into the village of Eglwysbach.  Low bungalows hugged a silent main street with a plain church the only landmark.  It was peaceful, almost aggressively so, with no cars or pedestrians.  The kind of place kids are desperate to leave and pensioners are desperate to go to.  

My OS Map app had shown me that there was a footpath through the woods to take me back down towards the station, so I crossed a stream by a single slab of rock and disappeared into a woodland.  It was a carefully laid out path, with wooden bridges to take me over the meanders and plenty of space to move.  Well-trodden from dog walkers and hikers and, judging by some of the litter, Eglwysbach's more rebellious teens.

Soon I was back on the road to the station, only downwards this time, trying not to slip on the wet tarmac and being able to take in the view.  Wales is an astonishingly beautiful place.  No wonder half of England wants to buy it up for weekend cottages.

That brought me back to the station with plenty of time to spare.  I settled in on the bench and put on a podcast and let myself drift for a while until the train came.

My plan at Dolgarrog was that I would cross the Conwy via the footbridge by the station, then head south via the quiet roads on the far side of the river.  I was out of luck.  The station was swarming with Network Rail employees, all suited in bright orange and politely waiting for the train to pass so they could resume their work.  The footbridge was blocked by a nylon mesh.  It looked temporary, and if I'd hung about they'd have probably packed up and gone, but I didn't want to risk it.  Instead I walked up to the main road. 

The A470 is a busy road.  It joins the two principal routes across North and Mid Wales, the A5 and the A55, and it does so without taking you over the mountains.  It also doesn't have a footpath.

My heart pounding, I wedged myself in the hillside as much as possible.  Brambles scraped at my arm.  Stinging nettles beat at my legs.  Every now and then a truck would go by and I'd cower, dust blown in my face.  Every passing place and driveway was a blessed relief from the relentless stream of traffic.  After a while, a gravel drainage channel appeared on one side of the road, so I darted across and walked on that.  It was uncomfortable but at least the cars didn't need to avoid me.

I was starting to wonder how much longer I could do this.  It was three and a half miles to Llanrwst, about an hour's walk, and the stress was really getting to me.  It was horrible.

And then - salvation!  A bend in the road revealed the Maenan Abbey Hotel, but, more importantly, a bus stop.  I practically ran to it.  There wasn't a timetable that I could see but it didn't matter; there was a point where I could pause and think and decide what my options were.  I was about to pull my phone out to look for bus times when, even more wonderfully, the bus itself came round the corner.  

"Sorry I'm late, love," the bus driver smiled at me.  It was a woman this time, and her steering wheel was free of mobile gaming.  "I should've left Betwys ten minutes ago."  If she'd been on time, I'd have missed the bus altogether.  Relieved, I collapsed into a seat, and happily rode into Llanrwst.

I fell in love with Llanrwst suddenly, and deeply.  I don't think you have an option in this.  Any rational person would see its pretty Victorian streets, its scenic shops and cafes, its happy residents, and immediately think "yes.  This is the place to be."  I walked from the bus stop, through the tightly curved roads, to my hotel.  It was a stone fronted, traditional place, quite the change from my Travelodge of the night before.  Put it this way: there was a suit of armour in reception.  As I checked in, I became aware that the other residents were far better dressed than me; a wedding party, boisterous, joyous, excited.  I went up to my room and found a pair of complimentary ear plugs on the bed.  

I showered and changed so I'd look at least slightly decent then ventured out.  I had one final train to catch.  Despite having a population of barely 3000 people, Llanrwst has two railway stations.  I walked out of town towards the older of the two, North Llanrwst, following an A470 that had been tamed as it passed through, with pavements and curves.  The shops fronts were delightfully old fashioned - tiled entrances, glass curved windows.  There was a Milk Bar that practically made me clap with joy.

It's been four years since I passed that place but I sincerely hope it's still there, looking exactly the same.

For a century North Llanrwst station was simply Llanrwst.  In that arrogant Victorian railway builder's way, they'd put it out of town, and waited for the locals to simply move closer.  It never happened.  Eventually, in the Eighties, British Rail opened a new halt close to the centre of town, and the old station acquired its North prefix.  It's tucked away down a side road, surrounded by industrial works, the only bit of charm in a grimy corner.

The station retains some of its importance as it's the only passing place on the Conwy Valley line, and as such, the only station with a platform on either side of the tracks.  This is why the service is so limited; for most of its length, you can only run a single train.

Llanrwst's inherent loveliness extended right up here.  On the platform it was calm and leafy.  A plaque informed me that it had been adopted by Soroptomists International Dyffryn Conwy; a quick search reveals that they're a sort of female equivalent of the Rotarians, although with a little less nod and a wink favouritism.  It also reveals that it's actually spelt Soroptimists; I can imagine the poor lad at Arriva Trains Wales was so used to red spellcheck underlines in his documents with all those unfamiliar Welsh names he simply disregarded them all.  

The train soon arrived and took me the half a mile south to Llanrwst station proper.  As you'd expect from something built by British Rail in 1989, it was deeply perfunctory.  A single platform in a cutting, no station building.  I left it and kept my head down as I passed under the sign.  I realise this is daft but I'd decided I was going to collect this station properly the next morning, when I left town.  Doing it now would've felt like cheating.

I thought I'd find a shop to buy a sandwich, a little Co-op perhaps, but then I decided to treat myself.  There was a chippy near the main square, wafting the beautiful scent of fried food out at passers by, so I popped in and got myself a sausage and chips.  The teenage girl behind the counter bellowed my order into the back in Welsh, then carried on chatting in English to a customer, switching back and forth so easily it left me full of admiration.  I took the hot package of delicious food and headed down to the river, crossing to the far bank beneath a restaurant terrace, and I sat on a bench and tucked in.

For a while I watched a fisherman in waders idly casting his line.  The sun warmed me and made me sleepy.  I'd been awake for hours, I'd walked and hiked and clambered all over the place, and now my body was enjoying the rest.  I felt the stress fall away with each warm chip.  

I walked back over the bridge to my hotel.  I thought I'd go up to my room and finish my podcast and then maybe some telly.  As I walked in though, I spotted the hotel bar was empty; presumably the wedding had its own function room.  I swerved inside and ordered a beer.  "Take a seat and I'll bring it over," the barman advised, and I stepped out onto a terrace overlooking the Conwy.  He delivered my ice cold lager and I started to wonder if I was too young to retire to Llanrwst.

Waterway

It was early, too early, and I'd slipped out of the Travelodge with my backpack of clothes and walked across a silent Llandudno to the station.  Llandudno is not an early morning town; there was no hustle of commuters or throng of coffee shops open for shift workers.  It was still sleepy.  A little like me.

I was so early, in fact, that the booking hall wasn't even open.  Luckily I'd ordered all my tickets in advance so I didn't need to buy a new one.  I entered the station via a side entrance by the car park.  

Like a lot of seaside termini, Llandudno was built for throughput.  Long platforms butt onto a wide open concourse with a recently added glass front.  Send the hordes straight through and out the other side with as little fuss as possible.  I walked down to the exposed platform and waited for my train south.  I only had one stop to travel right now.

Deganwy is the only intermediate stop on the branch from the North Wales Coast Line to Llandudno.  It felt like a town that had once tried to be seasidey too, maybe getting some of the people who couldn't afford Llandudno proper, but had since given up and become simply a quiet coastal spot.  

The station was wedged into the sea wall, overlooked by a row of shops and a car park.  I was the only person to get off here, of course, and I trudged across the tarmac.

The A546 burned alongside the railway, but I took a side path.  Jutting out into the Conwy estuary was an enclave of new, modern homes and apartment blocks, grouped around a marina.  They were, in truth, astonishingly ordinary, but their single entrance point and the yachts they surrounded gave it a low-rent glamour, like a Welsh Howard's Way.  The developers had clearly been persuaded to put in a coastal path as part of their planning permission and it was meanly provided, slicing between a high wall and the railway line and fizzing with resentment.  There was the occasional jogger, but I mostly had it to myself.

Past the apartments the view opened up and I could see across the river to Conwy castle, a fairytale construction, barely seeming real.  Above it squatted a grim looking grey cloud.  The further south I'd gone from Llandudno, the chillier it had got, as though the bad weather was waiting for me.  As I reached the head of the Conwy Tunnel it broke.  Suddenly I was pelted by heavy raindrops, the cloud seemingly dropping all its water on me at once.  I wrestled with my bag and pulled on a coat by I was already wet through.

It did mean that the excitement of crossing the Conwy Tunnel itself was slightly muted.  The A55, a motorway in all but name stretching from Chester to Holyhead, used to slow to a crawl when it hit Conwy.  The ancient town was far too historic to be bulldozed for a dual carriageway, but the only crossing point for the river was via its bridges, so they had no choice.  

Finally in 1986 construction began on two immersed tube tunnels; basically two long boxes dropped onto the river bed and then connected to the road at each end.  It was a marvellous engineering achievement and opened in 1991.  I was walking on an artificial headland constructed to form the tunnel entrances, passing over the road traffic itself, and that will always give me a little frisson of excitement.

With over two hours until my next train, and the weather doing its best to drown me before I got there, I gambled that Conwy would be a little more lively at this time of morning than Llandudno Junction and turned right onto the the causeway instead of left.  I'd not eaten yet; I'd forgone the overpriced Travelodge croissant and orange juice breakfast, and nowhere in Llandudno had been open for me.  I wanted a warming cup of tea and maybe a bacon roll.

The rain battered me across the headland.  It blurred my glasses so much I took them off; it's easier to squint through storms than to have your vision completely impaired.  I dodged the roadworks that were making the Conwy Bridge distinctly utilitarian looking and plunged into Conwy town through the gate in the town walls.  Sadly, it looked like Conwy was as quiet at that time in the morning as Llandudno, but luckily the Costa had just opened.  The barista was unloading boxes of coffee and syrup and looked bemused at my dripping wet hair and coat, but I still managed to get a large tea and a sausage bap and I sat near a radiator and dried.  

Filled with pork and PG Tips I retraced my steps back over the bridge.  I'd walked this way before, in 2011 when I did the North Wales line, and little had changed in the intervening years.  Perhaps Llandudno Junction was a little shabbier, or perhaps I'd walked a different way.  I'd ducked down below the main road and walked silent side streets with boarded up buildings.  

Yes, it was still raining, though it had slowed to a trickle, a relentless wash of water speckling your face and body.   I ducked across the car park to reach Llandudno Junction station and went inside.

Llandudno Junction is not a destination.  It's a crossover point.  It's designed to be experienced at platform level only, as a place for people to change trains.  Even then it falls down.  It's a cold, bare station.  The wind whistles into its open spaces and the rain comes at you from all angles - sometimes through the roof itself.  It wasn't a place to spend any time.  

Unfortunately, I had ages to wait until my train south.  Instead, I leapt on the train north to Llandudno, the train that would actually turn into the one I wanted, simply so I could have a bit of warmth and a comfortable seat.  Across the aisle from me a man in shorts, fresh from the gym, was eating a tin of tuna with a fork.  When he'd finished protein loading, he reached into his bag and pulled out another tin and started on that.  In the meantime, the rest of us got to enjoy the distinct scent of fish wafting down the carriage.

At Llandudno I walked out of the station with everyone else, because I didn't want the train people to see that I was loitering.  This is absolutely what happens; station staff love to stare at middle-aged men and judge them on their travelling choices.  Instead I walked round the block then back in the station in time to board the same train I'd just come in on and head to Glan Conwy.

No, I'm not going to make a cheap glans joke.  

Now I felt like I was in proper Wales.  Above the A55 it can be a bit like England with an accent.  Now it seemed like I had slipped into the proper, rural Wales that you imagine.

Admittedly, Glan Conwy wasn't the most charming place on earth.  It was a little bit grim and utilitarian, wedged against the wide river.  Homes cascaded down the hillside.  The pub was in the process of being redeveloped into homes.  There was a tiny village shop, and a playground, and that was about it.  I'd seen pretty much all of its charms in five minutes.

Which was handy, because I soon had to be out of there.  I had a bus to catch.

  

Top To Bottom

Back in July 2016 I worked my way down the Conwy Valley Line, from Llandudno Junction to Blaenau Ffestiniog and then on to Porthmadog.  This journey was for a book which, sadly, I never actually wrote.  However, I did make copious notes and took dozens of photos, and since it's 2020 and the idea of travelling anywhere at all is a pipe dream, I've decided to write it up at last.  Remember that this is all taking place four years ago, so things might be different now - there's a new rail operating company for starters - and also I'm dredging my memory so there may be some errors.  Be kind.  It's the first lot of content on here in months.

I thought I'd have a cup of tea at the top of the Great Orme.  That's what you do, isn't it?  You go to the top of the local landmark, you have a cup of tea, then you go back down again.  I'd ridden the clanking, wheezing, grinding tramway right up the side of the limestone mountain and now I had time to kill until I went back down again.  

I headed for the cafe at the top. a squat white building decorated with mobile phone masts.  The smell of chip fat hit me long before I got there.  Not the good kind, the inviting, tantalising scent that wafts from a chippy on a Friday night, but the dark scent, tinged with burning, so greasy you can almost taste it on the air.  It's the smell of oil that lingers in the furniture of the cafe and you wipe off the plastic menus.  It was off-putting, but not as off-putting as the prices, chalked up outside.  You go to the top of the local landmark, you have a cup of tea, and you get thoroughly gouged.  I flounced away, walking back down to the visitor's centre attached to the tram stop.  

Inside it was dry, a respite from the fine rain that had whipped across the summit and sprayed my glasses, but the exhibits were very much aimed at the younger generation.  Lots of bilingual signs with colourful fonts and buttons to push and knobs to pull.  I was at least thirty years too old for it, and besides, there was a man in there with body odour so strong it left me light headed, so I walked back to the tramway and headed down again.

The Great Orme Tramway has clanged its way from Llandudno to the peak for over a century.  I managed to get a seat, a hard wooden slat that I felt all the way down, and the rest of the carriage filled up with a gang of boy scouts.  They wore their scarves over their regular clothes and an anxious looking leaded counted and recounted their heads to make sure one hadn't been left behind.  The cable-operated tramcar slid down the peak, creaking, groaning, jerking around, until it reached the half-way station and we all got out and trooped over the rubber floor to a second tram to take us down into the town.

The last few hundred yards of the tramway are through the streets of Llandudno itself, weaving down the centre of streets that look far too small to cope with traffic and pedestrians and then a tourist tram as well.  People waved as we passed until we finally settled in at the terminus and I could stiffly get out and walk down into the town itself.

The plan was to travel from top to bottom, right across North Wales to the middle, taking in all the stations from Llandudno to Blaenau Ffestiniog and then a trip on the preserved railway down to Porthmadog.  I thought it only right to start the trip on the Great Orme tramway - go as far as I could on the iron road then change to a more modern railway.  Ride the helter skelter right from the very top.  That was for tomorrow, though; today I was wandering round the resort.

Cards on the table: I love Llandudno.  It's the grandest and best preserved of all the North Wales resorts.  Rhyl has a certain vulgar charm, and Bangor is certainly beautiful, but Llandudno still feels like a special place.  It sits on its own headland, shielded by the Great Orme to one side and the Little Orme to the other, with the grand sweep of the bay connecting the two.  The front is lined with tall white-painted guest houses and hotels and there's a pier and a promenade to be proud of.  

I walked on the red tarmac front among the holidaymakers and pensioners.  There was a loud group of American teenagers, wearing baseball caps and matching sweatshirts with their school's name on them, bellowing at one another.  A combination of natural teenage ebullience and innate American excess meant you could probably hear their conversations in Anglesey.  I wondered what had brought them thousands of miles across the Atlantic to a Victorian coastal resort; perhaps they were on a visit from Liverpool or Manchester, following the traditional path of Northern day trippers along the coast.  

Behind the front, you hit more standard shopping streets, laid out in a slightly curved grid with grand avenues striding down the centre.  There are cafes and bars and restaurants mixed in with the shops, a little faded, but still charming, then on the furthest stretch you hit the Venue Cymru, the town's theatre-cum-conference centre.  There were posts along the front plugging the entertainments - The Rocky Horror Show with Rhydian, The Three Degrees (without Sheila Ferguson), Tommy Steele in The Glenn Miller Story.  Also scattered around the town were Alice in Wonderland-themed statues.

The link between Alice in Wonderland and Llandudno is... tenuous.  The Liddells - the real life Alice's family - had a summerhouse, and it's theorised that Lewis Carroll may, possibly, have visited them there.  The town also claims that Through the Looking-Glass was inspired by them, because it's based around a chessboard and Llandudno's grid plan looks like a chessboard, sort of, if you go up to the top of the Great Orme and squint.  It's all a bit shameless but they've taken this limited claim to fame and run with it and so they've scattered Alice statues round town for you to find and collect.  

They are at least beautifully made statues.  I wandered back through town, pausing in a pub for a plate of pie and chips and a pint.  I had got a room in the Travelodge.  I know technically I should've gone for the boarding house experience for a proper Llandudno experience, a building on a side road with a fearsome landlady and a curfew and a TV lounge, but I couldn't bring myself to try it.  At least with a Travelodge you know what you're getting and it'll be clean and reasonable.  I went back to the hotel to rest for the night.  I had an early train in the morning, and a lot of walking after that.  The Conwy Valley line was ready to be collected.

Done.

It's over two months since I last went out on the trains.  I'm pretty sure this is the longest I've gone without being on a train since I was about 16. 

Of course, this is the tiniest of problems in the universe.  I am healthy (apart from being overweight and a manic depressive, but, you know, everything's relative).  I have a nice home.  I'm financially comfortable.  People are dying out there, people are in pain, people are suffering and being left behind.  People are losing jobs and livelihoods.  There are more important things than me and a map.

But still.  It's something to sit here, right now, and realise I'll probably never finish visiting all of Birmingham's stations.  That the project is, effectively, dead.  How can I go out on a transport network that's for essential journeys only?  How can I take up a seat on a carriage that's at 30% capacity because of social distancing?  How can I walk from town to town, sweating, breathing, smearing germs and viruses across the country?

Covid-19 is changing everything about the world.  This is going to be a very weird decade compared with our comfortable, soft-hands existences until this point.  Sitting here, I can only see things getting worse for a very long time, and that's really quite upsetting.

Again, I absolutely understand that you, reading this, have probably got things a lot worse.  That you're sitting there thinking "Jesus Christ, you're whining because you don't get to go to Solihull, get over yourself."  Totally correct.  Indulge me for a moment though.  I am having a small moment of sadness and regret.  Let me quietly mourn something I started with a lot of hope, all those years ago.

Maybe things will change someday.  Maybe I'll be gurning under the sign for Kenilworth at some point, an enormous grin clearly visible out the sides of my face mask.  Maybe things will get better.

Until then, this is the end.  Here's as far as I got.  Fingers crossed one day I'll cross some more of these places off the map.

The Beeching Reversal

It's time to talk about Beeching again.  Trigger warning for those of you of a sensitive disposition. 

For over a hundred years, passengers rode the rails on the line between Coventry and Nuneaton.  There were half a dozen stations en route, serving towns and villages.  There was a halt specifically for the workers at the Daimler factory.  There were freight loops and colliery branches.  It was, in short, a regular, normal rural railway line.

Then along came that damn Doctor Beeching.  He wiped away all the passenger services on the line.  On the 18th January 1965, all the stations along the line were closed forever.  Suburban services to Foleshill and Chilvers Cotton were gone; the village of Hawkesbury lost its trains forever; the town of Bedworth was taken off the map.  It remained as a freight line, but for two decades, that was it.

In the mid-1980s, British Rail approached the government with a suggestion.  Since there was this railway line running between two large towns, how about restoring the railway route, and maybe putting another halt in the middle at poor neglected Bedworth?  It would just be a trial, and if it didn't work out, they could withdraw the trains completely and turn it back over to freight.

Thirty-two years later Bedworth station is still there.  Its platforms were busy when I visited, even though it was a Tuesday lunchtime, and it seemed incredible that anyone could have decided a station here was a bad idea.  In fact, it was such a good idea that a mere twenty-eight years later, two more stations were opened on the line - the previously mentioned Bermuda Park, and my final station of the day, Coventry Arena.  Why, with development levels like that, it could be at capacity somewhere around 2288!

The new Bedworth station was built on the site of the old one, though without any ticket office or facilities, and is a two minute walk from the town centre - handily underlining what a stupid decision it was to close it in the first place.  I took a stroll into the pedestrianised precinct, following a woman who'd just waved off her friend on the platform and who kept looking over her shoulder at me as though suspecting I was stalking her.

Bedworth was not a rich town, nor was it a pretty town, but I liked that.  It probably says a lot about me that I was far more keen on Bedworth simply making do with what it had than Nuneaton's aspirational tendencies.  Settle for what you have, rather than try hard and fail, is basically my mantra.  There was a gloriously ugly tower block for the County Council, and a lot of mid-century brick precincts. 

I ignored the tempting smell of a burger van in the main square, wafting grease and gristle into the air and making my stomach rumble, and instead headed out to the south, past a delightful Civic Hall.  Firstly, it had a gold postbox outside.  I love finding a gold postbox.  I try not to deliberately hunt them out so it comes as a nice surprise.  This one commemorated show jumper Nick Skelton's 2012 gold.

Secondly, the line-up at the Civic Hall was quite gloriously terrible.  Before you criticise me for being a metropolitan snob, sniggering at the threadbare provincial cultural offerings, I should tell you that one of the posters in the window was for Jim Davidson.  Elsewhere, there were posters for a multitude of tribute acts - Patsy Cline, Kenny and Dolly, "The Upbeat Beatles", and one headlined simply LIONEL which I assume was a fake Lionel Richie but I hope was actually Blair - and something called Menopause the Musical 2: Cruising through Menopause.  This starred Heather from EastEnders and - per the poster - "Nicki French (Eurovision)" and was sponsored by mypelvichealth.co.uk, which specialises in solutions to impotence, vaginal dryness and incontinence.  I hope it's not too amusing, because those poor usherettes will be mopping up the aisles all night.

I left Bedworth's town centre and crossed its ring road - of course it has a ring road, this is the Midlands - and passed the Miners Welfare Park (please note that missing apostrophe is nothing to do with me).

The gates had been redecorated in a massive commemoration of the fallen.  Now I'll preface this with saying that commemoration of the sacrifices made for our freedom is not a bad thing in itself, and remembering means there's less chance of repeating the errors that lead to wars in the first place.  At the same time, the excessiveness of the tribute made me uncomfortable.  It wasn't respectful or dignified but instead smacked of a kind of one-upmanship.  It was the war memorial equivalent of those people who wear really massive poppies in mid-September so you know they really CARE, and you're somehow being an absolute monster because your coat doesn't look like a Flanders meadow.  It's fetishising the act of remembrance rather than actually remembering.

Also I don't know about you but this sounds like a threat to me.

I walked past the Conservative Club, which was advertising its acts in the window - sadly I'd missed Suzzi (yes, two Zs) and Marie Kelly's performance on the 28th will have been lost to quarantine - and I headed out of town along the Coventry Road.  At first it was much like any other town - plain old semis, some terraced houses, a Sainsbury's Local and an industrial estate.  Then, as the houses got bigger, I noticed that they were transforming, and this was becoming one of the tackiest roads I have ever walked down.

Not all the houses were bad, of course.  But some kind of mad building frenzy seemed to have enveloped the residents, a kind of competitive Keeping Up With The Joneses, and it had ended in mutually assured destruction.  Every other house had an out of proportion extension, a double garage bigger than the house itself, a porch that could've accommodated a donkey derby.  One house was in the process of adding a two-storey porte-cochère onto the front of a very ordinary bay fronted semi.  Gardens were covered by acres of paving, and front walls were instead replaced by columns and period-inappropriate coaching lamps.  By the time I got to the house with the name of the owners actually picked out in black brick in the front wall, I had no more gasps left into me.  Well done, Coventry Road; your style is unique and distinctive, and I am very glad I don't live there.

Coventry Road finally took me under the M6, because no matter where you are in the Midlands you are never more than half-an-hour's walk from a motorway.  The flyover here was well crafted though, with giant concrete Vs as support that formed a dense lattice pattern as I approached.  So much more interesting to look at.

I always find passing under a motorway a little bit exciting.  The sheer breathlessness of the engineering that went into it, these mighty stretches of concrete and steel.  The noise of the traffic overhead.  And the void spaces under it, the lengths of bare land under the flyovers, appeal to that part of me that likes the places between - the alleyways, the garages, the railway arches.  Bits of our world that exist but are overlooked.

The motorway also marked the end of Warwickshire and the start of the West Midlands, as I entered the city of Coventry at its northern limits.  I passed under the railway line, the same railway I'd be taking later on, and entered what a sign informed was "Longford Village".  Judging by the design of it, this should've been a pretty canalside enclave.

The reality was a little more grim.  Industrial units and fenced-off compounds lined the road, occasionally interrupted by homes that looked under siege from the relentless traffic.  One truck was parked across the pavement; its owner dashed out of the chippy, his fish supper in his arms, then cursed as he tried to get the battered door open with only one hand.  After a few bashes and thumps he climbed inside and the engine revved, belching black smoke across me as it mounted the canal bridge.  There was a pub here, the Longford Engine, which had received a makeover and optimistically advertised its "canalside terrace".  Technically it was true that the pub backed onto the towpath but I couldn't see many people going for a drive here to enjoy the views.

I'd reached the centre of Longford village, a strip of takeaways and hairdressers and dubious businesses (I'll just say "specialists in indoor growing equipment" and leave it at that) and I decided to break away from the main road.  My Ordnance Survey app had shown some pathways behind a set of cul-de-sacs to the west, so I headed into The Croft.  At a final turn, between two houses, a small path descended into a patch of green.

Alright, green was overstating it.  It was actually a series of waterlogged fields, grass and mud and bare trees around the brown River Sowe.  On a nice day, in summer, this would be a pleasant stroll away from the city.  In early March, after weeks of rain, it was a brown mess.

I picked my way through the puddles, clambering into the long grass when the route ahead became too deep with mud to pass through comfortably, occasionally having to jump them.  At one particular point I had to divert into the copse, cracking branches as I pushed through the trees, to get round a point where the path was simply a pond.

Why are you doing this? I asked myself.  Why are you making a mess of your boots and jeans just because it looked a bit more interesting on the map?  And I realised that was question asked and answered.  It was because it was more interesting.  It was far more interesting to duck down a back road, take a short-cut, follow a line on a map, than simply go from A to B.  Part of the reason for this blog is exploration, to see places I wouldn't normally see.  Sometimes it's a beautiful waterfall in the Lake District, sometimes it's a bit of scrubland on the edge of Coventry.  But it's always different and new.

I crossed the Coventry Canal by a series of flats that felt a separate universe from grimy Longford and followed a path round the back of a gas terminal.  I got my first glimpse of the Ricoh Arena, the biggest landmark round here and the reason my next station existed.

The stadium opened in 2005 as the new home of Coventry City - a team whose fortunes had declined between commissioning and completion.  When they'd started work on the arena, Coventry had been in the Premiership, but by the time it opened they were in the league below.  They stayed there for almost a decade, weathering administration, while the stadium was used for Olympic football in 2012.  The story got a lot more complicated then, as the rugby team Wasps purchased the stadium as their new home ground; there were a lot of shenanigans, which I have to be honest I couldn't quite follow, but the upshot is that the stadium built specifically for Coventry City to play at now hosts no football at all.  It's a rugby arena, and Coventry are forced to groundshare with Birmingham City.  I'm sure there are many nuances I'm missing, but it seems like a colossal mess to me.  And I instinctively dislike any team that ups sticks from its traditional home to move to the provinces - yes, I do mean you, MK Dons.

I'd thought I'd be in time for the train, but as I rounded the corner I saw it take off without me.  There was meant to be a half hourly service on this line by now, and even electrification, but as always the money had run out and it never happened.  That was nothing compared with the stupidity of the station itself.  Coventry Arena was alongside its namesake with crowd control facilities - except the station doesn't have a good enough service to support stadium traffic, and would become dangerously overcrowded on match days.  As a result it closes before and after any events, entirely negating its reason for existing.  Well done everyone.

Adjacent to the Arena is a shopping centre, your standard out of town development with acres of parking and a Tesco so large it has its own weather system.  There was a Marks & Spencer so I went and had a drink in the cafe, lowering the tone with my muddy jeans and getting odd looks from the pensioners inside.  I wiped away the sweat and allowed myself to relax before returning to the station.

It's not a bad little station, two platforms and a ticket machine.  And it's definitely better than what was there before i.e. nothing.  It's a great two fingers to Beeching if nothing else.  It's just a bit depressing that it's not running to its full potential.  The other side of the Arena was an expanse of grey tarmac for cars.  They should be entirely unnecessary.

I took a seat on the platform, across from a memorial wall to "Sky Blue Legends"; apparently Coventry City was still here in spirit.  I'd enjoyed my little jaunt out.  I was getting a taste for travelling round the country again.  I looked forward to my next trip out, and I was determined to make it soon.  The only thing that could stop me now was some sort of national emergency trapping me in my home for weeks. 

Bugger.