Notes from a train journey: Euston-Piccadilly

Friday, 21 December 2007

North · Circular · Road - I know this place but not from this angle! The train crosses high up above the "new" road bit which was massively rebuilt maybe 10 or 15 years ago. That's just by where the canal also crosses. The very large dip was famously flooded, to greater than car-depth, some years back when a water main burst. (Oops, checked the 1999 news story - it was up to 25ft [7.6m] deep in places!)

Tilting spectacularly through Berkhamsted. You don't all that often notice the tilt very much but when you have a good reference close by, it's quite something. View of the castle - looks great. Must visit one day. At Berkhamsted I always think of my Jordanian friend Munir and his English Family Christmas there.

Big flock of swans in field near river. Really big.

Just N of Macclesfield - a nice-looking place with car park, wooded hill - maybe a site of a fort, castle etc? Or maybe just an interesting hill. Right by the line. Findable? Looks nice for a walk. Or orienteering.

Macclesfield makes me think of David, and his friend Stephen Robertson who moved there from Guisborough. David went to visit him there once and from his travellers' tales it became for me the most exotic and desirable place on Earth.

If I had the GPS I could mark where interesting places are then look them up. (Quite nerdy.)

I could also plan the Near-Shugborough Viewing for maximum efficiency. (Quite nerdy.)

Backward progress on the train's LED information display - it claims that we're going to Euston. I do hope not.

Quite suddenly, frosty fields, beautiful sun, winter scene. Wow, stunning. Looks like a calendar page or OS wallpaper.

Where is Stockport's soul? I don't mean this horribly. Travelling through it by train I get no sense of anything other than the station and a sort of hinterland of big out-of-town type shops. When I used to ride through on the bike it was just an interruption on the A6. Where can you stand and say, ah yes, I am here, look, there's the Town Hall, parish church, cinema, bookshop? ... I assume that it is there, but I have not seen it.

B of the Bang - Manchester - distant view but impressed that I can see it at all. It's huge!! I've still got Thomas's book on Norman castles - I wonder if he wants it back?

And here we are.

(On way back - leaving Manchester - fireworks; very pretty.

Home soon.)