All Aboard the Flying Scotsman

  

It was a long journey to the Bluebell Railway at Sheffield Park in Sussex. It started well over a year ago, but the celebrity visiting engine we'd booked to see, at the request of Son the Elder, developed a fault and the 'experience' was put off for twelve months. 

And then Son the Younger, belatedly reading his messages, said actually he'd have wanted to join us if he'd realised the rest of the family was going, and so I banished to the back of my mind the not inconsiderable amount I'd already paid, bought him a ticket, upgraded the four existing footplate viewing tickets, and reckoned my father would be really pleased we all had tickets to ride on the Flying Scotsman.

Getting my lot together is like herding proverbial cats at the best of times. Throw Covid into the mix and it's like herding wildcats with rabies, but my daughter tested negative three days beforehand and her partner, who'd had to go to hospital for a scan and a lumbar puncture, having suffered a thunderclap headache - virus-related, as it turned out - finally tested negative on the morning in question, so we were set to go.

To board the train, we had to cross to the other platform and show the really rather inauthentic email that constituted our tickets ...

... and we were off! 

Our journey lasted an hour and three-quarters, from Sheffield Park station to East Grinstead and back. It's a rural route, but many of the fields, and all the stations en route, were lined with people waving, many with unfeasibly large-lensed cameras set up on tripods. I think it was the first time in my life that I hadn't been the wistful onlooker, but part of the gilded company on the inside.  

The excitement got a bit too much for my companions. 

Back at Sheffield Park we watched some shunting ... 

... and stuck around for a bit to get a good look at the Flying Scotsman, because of course you don't actually see it/her/him while you're in a carriage being pulled by it, you just get looked at. Next time when I'm on the outside, I'll remember it's the onlookers that get the best view. 

Return to Dawlish - The horror! The horror!

Until 2015 I must have visited Dawlish several times a year from the early 1960s onwards. Shops came and went, the one-way system up Brunswick Place and down The Strand was introduced, and Gay's Creamery doubled in size, but other than that, nothing changed much. 

Then we lost our biscuit tin by the sea and visits became rarer, the most recent being pre-Covid in May 2019. The sea wall between Dawlish and Dawlish Warren that was breached by a particularly ferocious winter storm in February 2014 had been fully repaired and a new upper section meant you could now walk all the way to the Warren at high tide.

And yes, given climate change, and since re-routing the railway track inland between Exeter and Newton Abbot was apparently a non-starter, something extra was going to have to be done to protect the line - and houses close to it - from the sea. I just wasn't prepared for the brutalist disaster that are the town's brand new flood defences.  

The shell-shocks started as soon as we parked the car at the top of the hill and walked into the shady little park on top of the cliffs called Lea Mount to find many of its trees gone. 

At first I thought there must have been a major landslip, but then I realised I'd have read about it. A bit of googling revealed that they'd been felled - the first of many railway-related alterations that were about to challenge my sensibilities.

The view along the coast towards Teignmouth also revealed construction work at the northern end of Parson's tunnel, with heavy plant in the field alongside the coast path, which was one of Son the Elder and my favourite's during our evening walks.

left-hand photo taken in May 2019; right-hand photo August 2023

We then looked towards Dawlish. Even from on top of the cliffs we could see the old stone wall, with its familiar steps had gone, although the scale of the new walls wasn't yet clear. 

upper photo taken in May 2019; lower photo August 2023

This was what greeted us on - can we call it a promenade? You can walk along it, but if you decide to sit down on one of the benches, you can't see the sea. 

The local stone walls are gone; the sheltered section with its wrought iron pillars is gone; the old coastguard's boathouse is gone. With the exception of a carved stone panel depicting this last lost treasure, there's no attempt to give this feat of civil engineering any humanity at all. It makes the Berlin Wall look homely.

In fact, even the flyover in my home town has metal reliefs of aeroplane engines - because that's what we make there - to enliven and yes, relieve the monotony of concrete, and it always cheers me when I'm reminded that someone somewhere bothered to commission some art for it. 

I'm not an engineer or a climatologist, and I can't afford to travel by train, so I can only comment from an aesthetic standpoint, but I think this wall is disastrous for the town, its people and its tourist trade. It's as if the planners and Network Rail only took account of the need to keep the trains running, at all costs. As a result, to this outsider the whole scheme feels like a declaration of war on nature and the local population, and if I was visiting Dawlish for the first time, I wouldn't come back.

But of course, it wasn't our first visit and we had Important And Timeless Things to Do, like have an ice cream at Gay's Creamery and spot the black swans. 

The rest of our walk along the sea wall to Dawlish Warren was also unchanged. 

Because they are still relatively young, my sons climbed Langstone Rock and explored the cave, and because I'm not, I sat on the beach for a bit.

Back at Dawlish, I was still trying to take photos of scenes that hadn't changed beyond all recognition. If Son the Elder wasn't so keen on the place, I think I'd sooner just walk how I remember it in my head from now on. 

a samphire cushion on a stone bench

CLOCKWISE:  sheep's-bit scabious; Michaelmas daisies; Jersey Tiger moth; yellow toadflax; hornet mimic hoverfly

Treasury

Revisiting Twmbarlwm

 Liz - my friend of 57 years standing -  knows Wales better than I do, which isn't surprising, given her father was from Pontypool and her mother's from Ebbw Vale, and trips back home were frequent. She hadn't climbed Twmbarlwm, though, so for once that made me the expert and therefore in charge of getting us there.   

We met up at Magor services, the plan being to leave her car there and continue in mine, in case Cwtch took it upon herself to do more rolling in cow pats, but there was a strict two-hour parking limit in operation, so we decided she'd follow me to our in-the-middle-of-nowhere destination, the car park round the back of the hill, not too far from the summit. Which was fine until the sat nav advised leaving the M4 a junction earlier than I'd anticipated, and then taking us all the way to Cwmbran before dumping us nowhere near the car park, it having no name or address, just a postcode.

We conferred and repaired to Risca Leisure Centre which was one of the waymarks on the route I'd prepared the night before, in consultation with said sat nav, and eventually we got to where we needed to be, but there's only one thing I hate more than the sat nav reneging on our agreed journey and it's when I don't have the nerve to override it. 

And then, when we got to the hill fort at the top, instead of this ... 

... we saw this.

I was a bit disappointed, as I was sure on a clear day we could have seen Liz's house across the Severn from up there, or at least Portishead, where she lives, and also the field where Cwtch, the Northerner and I walk most days ... I'd wanted to watch myself watching Twmbarlwm on the skyline.

Liz and I have climbed a few hills together in our time - Sugar Loaf in Bannau Brycheiniog and the nameless hill near Capel-y-Ffin in the Black Mountains as young children, and the occasional Dartmoor tor years later with our own kids. I remember Liz's mother showing me bilberries at Capel-y-Ffin, and explaining that in South Wales they call them whinberries. I thought she'd said 'windberries', which I really liked the idea of, and was disappointed to be corrected.

Twmbarlwm has a place not just in Welsh folklore, but also Liz's family mythology, as she recalled her father talking about climbing it as a lad with his cousin, Ken - 'more like a brother, really' - and everyone saying 'Oh, Twmbarlwm'. And as names go, it has so much resonance, why wouldn't you want to say it, and keep saying it ... Twmbarlwm, Twmbarlwm, TwmBARlwm.

When it was time to leave, I brooked no nonsense from the sat nav and headed resolutely in the direction of Risca and we were back home on our side of the Severn in three-quarters of an hour. I hope Liz will go back on a day when the views can be seen. I hope I'll be back as well before too long.