Introduction
Part of me feels that it is terribly queer to write about a trip so long ago, but it isn’t: as fallible as my memory usually is, I remember these days as if they were yesterday. Indeed, I took no notes during the trip so will be relying entirely upon my own recollections (apologies for any inaccuracies).
It was the summer holidays following what had been the strangest academic year of my life, but I am not here to write about COVID-19. What is pertinent to this trip is that we remained a nation that was living in fear- as much as the government was trying to get the economy going through schemes eat-out-to-help-out, those measures were largely ineffective. No-one was travelling, so the hotel prices were low and the rails were fairly empty, making a trip like this possible. While it may seem unbelievable now, the average hotel price on this trip was just £50 per night, despite us staying in Premier Inns wherever we went for simplicity.
Day 1
Hertfordshire -> London -> Penzance -> Cambourne
It was a beautiful summer day as we began our journey from the platform of our local station (how all good trips begin in my humble opinion), hopping on a Class 700 for the half hour jaunt into the capital. They get far too much hate really, as much as the seats look like ironing boards the slight lack of comfort is infinitely better than the grubby fabrics of the Class 319s that they replaced. As a side note, I saw someone shaving their beard aboard one of the 319s on the Abbey Line around the same time, a revolting site on a dull trip that will (hopefully understandably) not see its own trip report.
As was always the case when using 7-Day Rail Rovers, we did not put our tickets through the barriers at St Pancras, instead showing them to the people at the gates. I would later learn that they would not have worked, but my father did not tell me at the time, a fact I am infinitely grateful for as it likely saved me from a great deal of anxiety. At the time I was probably at my most socially awkward, a combination of acne and isolation as a result of the pandemic leaving me far more nervous at the little things in life than the big ones. However, I’ll save the details for a later post (please DM me if you’d be up for reading that). We hopped on the tube to Paddington (the Hammersmith and City line I believe) and arrived at Paddington around 25 minutes early.
Our main destination for the day would the furthest station along the line, the closest to Land’s End and the historic terminus of the Great Western Railway: Penzance, Cornwall. No less importantly, our transport for the 5 hour journey would be a Hitachi Class 802 IET (Intercity Express Train), then no more than 4 years old. They had attracted heavy criticism from train enthusiasts and commuters alike for their lack of comfort, although I must say that I have never found all that much wrong with them.
We took our seats as the platform was called and settled in for the journey at a bay of 4, my father and I facing two empty seats, although they wouldn’t stay empty for long as my father (in what I believe to be a genuine coincidence but could easily be seen as contrived by sceptical eyes) encountered not 1 but 2 distant friends on our mid-morning departure to Cornwall. The details of their conversations elude me, although I recall that one was travelling towards Torquay to purchase a boat of some kind. Nonetheless, the scenery was beautiful beyond Reading, the rolling hills of the British countryside met by ragged, orange cliffs and narrow beaches as we progressed further and further from the capital.
Arriving in Penzance at Lunchtime, we wandered along the seafront to a wonderful seafood restaurant where I had what remain the nicest Mussels of my life, a special that had been freshly caught that morning. I’ve always wanted to have a go on a fishing vessel myself, but that experience continues to elude me. We saw fairly little of Penzance but I got the impression that it was a pleasant, if perhaps impoverished, seaside town with unreasonably good connections to the outside world and fewer tourists than such a place needs to thrive.
While Penzance was pleasant, the accommodation options had been unsuitable so we’d be staying in Cambourne, perhaps a dozen miles up the line. A GWR HST provided passage for this leg, freshly refurbished but likely corroding beneath the forest green carpets. Displaced from their supremacy on the mainline out of the capital, by 2021 the GWR HSTs only operated these local services as ‘Castle Sets’ of 4 coaches sandwiched between 2 power cars, counterbalancing their abysmal acceleration.
The hotel room in Cambourne was modern and pleasant, although the location of the hotel left a little to be desired, around a mile from the town centre. It was there that we grabbed dinner at the local Indian restaurant: the lack of diversity should have been the first red flag. I ordered a Butter Chicken and ate very little of it due to the questionable taste, but in all fairness I was still quite full from Lunch. I also visited Aldi for the 2nd time in my life that evening, a completely unrelated and useless fact.
Day 2
Cambourne -> Exeter -> Bristol -> Cardiff <-> Rhymney
As is a necessary evil whenever visiting Devon and Cornwall, whether by rail or otherwise, our departure from the West Country was largely akin to our journey in, with us taking an IET as far as Exeter. It was a greyer morning, with the remnants of the previous evening’s rain still clearing the sky as we trundled along the mainline, stopping in the various backwaters that we had whizzed past the previous day. Irrespective of their irrelevance, many of these places looked rather inviting and I hope to visit Cornwall and Devon again someday, as I have only even somewhat explored Looe, St Ives, Lands End, Dartmouth and Torquay, an eclectic yet certainly incomplete selection of what the region has to offer.
Our change in Exeter brought us onto a Voyager (a first for me at the time), which was surprisingly not all that busy, although the general design of the units makes any journey on them feel claustrophobic at times. The day grew drizzlier as we diverted through Weston-Super-Mare, perhaps an apt change for somewhere I have heard so little good about. We arrived in Bristol for lunch, having a tasty meal outside a cafe near Temple Meads. What exactly that meal was I’m not sure, but I believe rye bread and avocado both featured. From Bristol we had to get a replacement bus to Bristol Parkway, before we caught a crowded IET to Cardiff.
We checked in and our bags at the Cardiff Bay Premier Inn (a truly impressive hotel where we had an enormous room) and went for a little trip up to Rhymney along one of the ‘Valley Lines.’ A Sprinter provided transport, with us using both 150s and 153s during our time in the region. It was a quiet journey, marked more than anything by the depressing poverty of the region. I’m sure that there has been some regeneration, but only so much money can help an area that is simply row after row of terraces, scarred by the savagery of Thatcher and passed over by the Winds of Change.
After I rode on a carnival ride of some ilk near the hotel, we went to what I believe was a Snowdome to eat, having Pizza and I believe Bruschetta. As expected for that chain, I remember it being lacking in seasoning but generally very tasty. The trip as a whole gave me a newfound appreciation for our food options in this nation, with affordable eats available for those who search for them up and down the country, including all sorts of different cuisines.
Day 3
Cardiff -> Crewe -> Liverpool -> The Wirral
If one were to separate the days of this trip into ‘feature days’ and ‘connection days’, this would certainly be a connecting day. Our main goal for this day was to reach the Wirral to visit my grandparents for an afternoon, a goal that we thankfully accomplished. However, the journey left quite a bit to be desired in all honesty.
When you are travelling North from Cardiff along the marches, nowadays you roll a three-sided die: Either a Super Sprinter (pleasant), a modern Civity (even more pleasant) or a Mark 4 set behind a Class 67 (perhaps the pick of the bunch). This was not the case back in 2021: it was either a 67 or a Class 150 2-Car DMU. Unfortunately for us, the 150 would be the pick of the day and, unsurprisingly as a rural commuter unit covering more than 100 miles with minimal capacity, it would be rammed for our whole journey up to Crewe. I remember that day being a tad drizzly to begin with, certainly not helping the generally sodden atmosphere of that bit of the country.
It is truly an interesting place the Marches- torn between two rival cultures, it has inherited bits of both. It has both that strange charm of rural wales, a sort of twisted interpretation of the peak district, combined with the general mediocrity of the towns you went through: most were perfectly pleasant, but their abysmal tourism numbers reflect their lack of activities. As a side note, Ludlow is on my list for next year, it intrigues me somehow.
After a 3 hour journey and a delay of around half an hour (it seemed a lot back then but this was long before my days of Deutsche Bahn and Globtour), we changed at Crewe to a London Northwestern Class 350. These have always been quite comfortable trains, providing a far more suitable service for the quick hop up to Liverpool.
Liverpool Lime Street is one of those stations that really ought to be nice: a historic frontage, traditional trainshed, great service frequency and lots of variety. Despite all of this, I felt (in what may seem like a very Gen Z twist to any older readers) an indescribable dark aura from the place. It just feels dodgy somehow, in a way that I’ve only otherwise felt in Brasov, Bucharest and Birmingham (the three Bs of misery).
From Lime Street we took Merseyrail, on one of the old 508s which have since been phased out, as far as New Brighton before using a Taxi for the final stretch to the grandparents.
Day 4
The Wirral -> Liverpool -> London -> Oakham -> Peterborough -> York
Day 4 was almost certainly the day that underwent the largest amount of change during the planning process: originally a fairly straightforward hop from Liverpool to York, the slovenliness of the connections between the two cities encouraged us to think outside of the box a little: with an overall journey time barely exceeding that of the direct route, we could execute an ambitious route via London, travelling along the 3 major North/South mainlines at speed, a first for me at the time. So that is exactly what we did.
Dawn came with the Wirral’s textbook pale morning light, a soft blanket that softens the area’s largely decrepit post-industrial environs, husks of forgotten industry in the vast, lifeless expanses of abandoned port-land. We cross the Mersey from Hamilton Square, arriving in plenty of time for our 7:47am Pendolino to Euston. Lime Street was calm so early in the morning and we grabbed a quick breakfast in a coffee shop before waiting on the platform for the doors to be unlocked.
I don’t know what it is, but there is something deeply alluring about a Class 390 Pendolino. They are truly beautiful machines, very well maintained despite being almost a quarter of a century old. Now all between 9-11 coaches long, they are usually refreshingly quiet and comfortable. As is often the case for the West Coast Mainline, the journey built like a song, the slow progression through the Edge Hill tunnel gradually replaced by a 125mph blast along the Trent Valley, gracefully tilting into the twists and turns of the mainline. As announced by the driver on the intercom, this was the final journey of a 40+ year career on the line, a fact that I suspect encouraged him to take some liberties with the speed limit: I recorded 128mph at its peak, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we exceeded 130mph on the run, arriving into Euston nearly 10 minutes early.
The sheer speed of this run exemplifies one of the many reasons why HS2 is so useless compared to Northern Powerhouse Rail or a proper integration of HS1 into the existing network- 2 hours from Liverpool (similar times can be achieved from Manchester and Sheffield) to London is already incredibly impressive. Additional capacity could instead be achieved by further widening the Chiltern Mainline to 4 tracks and reopening the Northampton <-> Melton Mowbray line for freight, but I digress.
From Euston we walked to St Pancras, a surprisingly shady walk north of the Euston road past what I’ve later learned to be an explicit book shop, a fact which tracks with the general vibes of the area. St Pancras was its usual beautiful self, cementing its place as solidly my favourite station in the UK, with the East Midlands Railway queuing experience to travel north typically frustrating but not nearly as bad as the equivalents in Euston and Kings Cross due to the smaller footprint. It was a 5-car Class 222 that brought us north, showing its age with constant rattles and squeaks but generally on time. Our route to Oakham was an infrequent one, using lesser-used route north of Corby to link up to the East-West route to Peterborough.
Oakham seemed like a perfectly pleasant place but there wasn’t all that much to comment on really, as is quite frankly typical for most places in that general area of the UK. An overcrowded Cross-Country Turbostar brought us to Peterborough, before a similarly overcrowded LNER Azuma brought us north to York. York remains one of my favourite cities in the UK, but this would be a much shorter visit with us only visiting the National Railway Museum, a great place to visit for all ages albeit lacking in detail in most places- It is the sort of museum that would benefit greatly from more information boards and more public-facing volunteers to bring the stories of the locomotives to life, but Railway Museums as a whole are probably a topic for another day.
Day 5
York -> Leeds -> Skipton -> Carlisle -> Motherwell -> Larkhall -> Glasgow
Day 5 was probably my favourite day of the trip overall, with lots of variety and fantastic scenery as we wove our way north through the nation’s scenic heart. It was a somewhat anonymous start to the morning, with a characterless but suitable Class 802 taking us to Leeds and a Class 331 chaperoning us through the rolling hills of the Dales to Skipton.
Skipton was one of those places that really stuck out to me, in sitting in that fairly rare cross-section for the UK of having both old-time charm and clear signs of prosperity. All the houses that lined the streets, both new and old build, were built using traditional techniques and local stone, the roads were wide, the grass-banks and parks were lush and the whole place seemed really pleasant in general. Despite its small size, there was what I believe was a Tesco (may have been a Morrisons but it was one of the two) and a few eateries in the centre of the village, with us grabbing a quick breakfast in a local coffee shop. It marks the start of most services along the Settle to Carlisle line, often named the most scenic railway line in the UK. I’d say that the Kyle and West Highland lines, as seen in Day 6 of this trip, are slightly more scenic but it certainly deserves pride of place as far as lines in England go.
The Settle to Carlisle line has a storied past for what is now such a popular line, rumoured to see more than a million passengers every year. Once a key route for London St Pancras to Glasgow Central expresses, it fell into disuse under British Rail and was threatened with closure, before being revived by a community group that continues to maintain many of the intermediate stations to this day. It now sees a fairly regular bi-hourly service using Class 158 Sprinters, frequently rammed during the high season and deserted through the winter. It was with one of these trains that we traversed the line, taking almost 3 hours to reach Carlisle with the frequent stops and 60mph speed limit that applies to the whole route. As I’ve already stated, it is truly beautiful and well worth a ride for the uninitiated.
Carlisle is similar to Skipton in having an old-town feel, but is comparatively lacking in prosperity. Perhaps most interestingly the scene of nationalised pubs for almost 50 years, its character is now akin to somewhere like Luton, downtrodden by the winds of change drawing people and work away from it. Poverty seems rife, with the busiest place in the city appearing to be the job centre. Despite this, all the people seemed lovely and it would serve as a good base for exploring the region, one of the last genuine ‘hidden’ gems of the UK as so much of the country buckles under the weight of over-tourism during the summer. We grabbed bacon rolls at some sort of bakery and moved on. A Class 397 saw us to Motherwell, before we grabbed a Class 320 to Larkhall.
We were in Larkhall for one reason only which was the go-karting, a worthwhile diversion given the sheer quality of the track. It reminded me of a blend of Spa, the Nurburgring and Lake Maggiore from Gran Turismo, a fantastic mix that gave it wonderful camber through many of the corners, elevated by a great fleet of really quick four-strokes, probably 390cc. I think I did well against my Dad, but I don’t believe there was all that much competition otherwise.
From Larkhall we ventured into the centre of Glasgow, a highly underrated city that is beautiful in places and enjoyably rugged, doing a loop around the metro before visiting Yo! Sushi for tea, a somewhat inauthentic but reliable if overpriced eatery that seems to have struggled as of late.
Day 6
Glasgow -> Mallaig -> Skye -> Kyle of Lochalsh -> Inverness
Day 6 was the most ambitious part of the trip, a loop through the desolate highlands, crossing over to Skye and relying on a taxi to bridge the missing link between Mallaig and Kyle of Lochalsh. We departed from Glasgow Queen Street bound for Mallaig, a more than 120 mile journey along mainly single track line that threads its way through the highlands. Unsurprisingly for a line called the West Highland Line, it largely shadows the West Highland Way, a hiking trip which I have attempted but failed to complete. However, that’s a tale for another day.
What people who haven’t been to Scotland miss is that as much as the railway line is absolutely excellent, it does unavoidably create a degree of separation that prevents the truest experience: it should really be your own two feet trekking through the wilderness. Nevertheless, the journey is stunning, skirting along the edges of valleys using the partly Victorian tracks of the Caledonian Railway. In stark contrast to the abomination that is HS2 in many places, this complements the landscape in its majesty rather than detracts from it, with the Glenfinnan Viaduct used by the line’s extension portion seeing more tourists that watch trains pass along it than actually use the viaduct itself.
Unsurprisingly, our Class 156 was busy despite running in a 6-car formation towards the start of the trip, with 2 of the 6 peeling off to head towards Oban. Without having to lift a foot, you see the greatness of Loch Lomond, Ben Lomond, later on passing the base of Ben Nevis and even catching a glimpse of the Outer Hebrides on the descent into Mallaig.
Mallaig is a fairly small settlement, mainly serving as a port town for access to the Isle of Skye and the easy way to the most remote pub in the UK. We caught a ferry to Armadale on Skye, which was calm on this occasion but can occasionally enjoy RAF flypasts, as we witnessed on our visit to the region a couple of years later. We didn’t see the very best of Skye on this trip, grabbing a taxi that took us directly to the Kyle of Lochalsh, with the south of the island still very pretty but paling in comparison to the North and East. We enjoyed a simple lunch of seafood in Kyle of Lochalsh before boarding a mid-afternoon train towards Inverness.
While far less known than the West Highland Line, the Kyle Line is no less pretty and evokes far stronger emotions, desolate in a special kind of way. For 90 miles, you pass virtually zero significant settlements, the only sign of civilisation visible in the dramatic landscape being the A-road that shadows the line. Like many similar valleys in the area, this would once have been home to multiple larger villages belonging to local Clansmen, but it was decimated during the Highland Clearances and has never truly recovered. If you are unfamiliar with the Highland Clearances, I implore you to research them- the fact that they aren’t covered in most schools baffles me.
Inverness is unusual in its comparative mediocrity, the scenery fairly middling for being this far north. More than anything, it is useful for travellers and locals alike, providing a bastion of typical civilisation in an otherwise criminally underpopulated region. We went to a Pizza Express for dinner, where I had a Diavola pizza which was criminally hot but otherwise fairly tasty. It had been a long but very enjoyable day that made a profound impression on me.
Day 7 & Conclusion
Inverness -> Edinburgh and Beyond
Unsurprisingly, the morning of Day 7 that saw us travel south to meet the rest of the family in Edinburgh brought feelings of lethargy and tiredness above all else. Our whirlwind tour had been incredibly enjoyable but very fast paced and my body was nearing its breaking point given the velocity of the travel. I have no idea how my father, who was in charge of actually executing the plan which I had largely made, was able to maintain a level head without being obviously worn but I hugely respect him for it. Tiredness during travel deserves an article of its own, but to offer my brief thoughts on it I believe that stopping outright is rarely the solution. To stop is to lose adrenaline and lose passion, making it tough to get going again afterwards. Despite this, some level of moderation is required to let people passively recharge their batteries.
The weather was poor for our journey south, as it would be for almost all of our subsequent stay in Edinburgh, but we had been lucky so far and a bit of bad weather is one of the realities of travelling that isn’t talked about nearly enough. I’ve seen someone say recently that for every three great trips there is usually one which is slightly underwhelming, and while I disagree with the frequency of bad trips (I’d argue its far lower unless you are an ill-tempered traveller, something which usually arises from burnout), our adventures in Edinburgh were a little underwhelming. The weather was poor, the place was packed and much of what we did failed to impress, exacerbated by the main route up Arthur’s Seat being closed at the time.
Despite the middling nature of Edinburgh (which I still rank as a C tier city- sue me A in the unlikely event that you are reading this), the trip as a whole was absolutely excellent. Many thanks to my dear father for facilitating it and it was thoroughly worthwhile, fermenting a passion for travel that continues to drive me forward. That is that for now!
Best Wishes,
Reuben Goodchild
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