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THE CUMBRIAN COAST LINE IN BULLET POINTS
Number of stations visited: 34
Distance travelled by rail: 489 miles
Distance travelled by bus: 24 miles
Distance walked: 21 miles
Distance driven by a press-ganged boyfriend: 8 miles
Best station (architecturally): Grange-over-Sands
Best station (facilities): Millom
Best station (location): Nethertown
Worst station (architecturally): Nethertown
Worst station (facilities): Roose
Worst station (location): Dalston
Places I'd visit again tomorrow: Ulverston, Barrow-in-Furness, Whitehaven
Places I'd go back to if I had nothing better to do: Ravenglass, Millom, Wigton
Places it would require an Act of Parliament to get me to revisit: Parton, Seascale, Parton again
Best cup of tea: The Trackside Tea Rooms, Millom
Most overpriced cup of tea: At Home Cafe & Bistro, Grange-over-Sands
Best member of staff: the lady behind the counter in Humble Pie in Askam
Worst member of staff: the employees of Barrow Travelodge
Best place for hearing old ladies bitch about That Jennifer: Annabell's Tea Room & Cakes, Maryport
Best place for a pint: The Engine Inn, Cark
Worst place for a pint: The pub in Barrow-in-Furness that had a drunken man slumped in the doorway smoking a fag and spitting on the floor at 3 o'clock on a Sunday
Facts learned during this trip:
- there really are hosts of golden daffodils all over Cumbria; no wonder Wordsworth kept banging on about them
- Northern Rail train crews are much nicer than Arriva Trains Wales ones
- Tesco really couldn't give a fuck about what their stores look like
- if you have an award-winning miniature railway next door, you can charge ridiculous prices for poor food and people will pay it
- schoolkids are really annoying and should be herded into a pen and left there until they're 18
- Ulverston has an annual breastfeeding festival
- St George's Day is a really big deal up there
- station tearooms are a precious resource in short supply, and should be cherished
- if you pee outdoors in a rainstorm you will spend the rest of the day wondering if that's rainwater or urine all over your leg
- the Liverpool Echo should have more front page stories like WIDOWER: WIND TURBINE WILL DESTROY ME
- not everywhere in Britain has embraced a 24 hour booze culture; in fact, in some places you'll be lucky to get a half a shandy before eight o'clock
- sometimes trousers can turn evil and try to attack you
- hand pumped level crossing gates are a real thing
- Lego Lady can be a right uppity bitch sometimes
- don't put children's artwork on a station platform if you don't want people to take the piss
- if you want to keep something secret from the rest of England, stick in in Cumbria. No-one will ever know.
The journey in full:
3 comments:
Northern Rail really need to sort that appalling map out. "We don't run it so we will ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist" (referring to the WCML, Windermere branch etc) is childish, unhelpful and the sort of thing I thought the privatised railway had grown out of.
By the way, what did you do ticket wise, is there a Rover?
Neil
It was a four in eight Freedom of the North West Rover, plus a single from Liverpool to Barrow on the Sunday. Well worth the money!
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