East Anglia Coast & The Broads: March 2002

My first serious bashing trip of any note, where the object was purely to cross off lines. Unusually for my trips, I'd already seen most of these lines from other occasions - trip to the Norfolk Broads, holidays, and the like. But now I would actually be seeing them from the train. I was looking forward to a trip to the slightly mysterious Norfolk. The day began with the class 73/mk3 train to Norwich. I'd just got a job at the Hackney Citizens Advice Bureau, and as I was starting in two weeks, I scanned the rooftops as we passed through the area. Not encouraging, but that became another story!

At Norwich I boarded a two coach Sprinter - just about the first time I'd been on a train that short(!) and we headed off to the east and Great Yarmouth. Soon we began to pass through the flat marshy land that characterises the county of Norfolk. There are two routes to Great Yarmouth, one directly eastwards and the second that starts by heading south east towards Lowestoft. It then spurs off this line at Brundall and heads north east to Berney Arms station before joining up with the first line again. We don't stop at Berney Arms sadly. This is named after a nearby pub that is only reachable by foot, train - or boat! It is possibly the most remote station in the UK, and only a few trains stop there. One day I will return to visit this inviting sounding pub. How the line survives is a mystery to me. There is only that one stop and it is hardly served. It doesn't give rise to any extra connections or new journeys. Possibly it is purely because there is no other land route to that most distant of pubs. Finally we arrive at last remaining station in Yarmouth, there being three until the 1970s. This one was called Vauxhall I believe and served a nearby holiday camp. Now it seems to serve an Asda, though its long platforms hint at a more glorious past.

To get into the town you cross a giant arched girder bridge over the Yare estuary that looks as if it should be carrying a railway. I have a wander round the docks and a ruin of some description before finding the shops and getting some lunch. This is a grim town, though it was a booming resort once. I think it still sees a lot of holidaymakers though of course many of them head to warmer climes these days. Back on another Sprinter and off we go back to Norwich.

This time we take the direct route. However I now need to do the Lowestoft branch so I get off at Brundall where the junction is. This is a charming little station. It has two platforms to allow trains to pass, and each is either side of a level crossing. The crossing is still hand-operated by the signalman. Just a couple of hours from London but it feels like a few decades. I have a wander round and actually find that the village has another station - Brundall Gardens. The boatyard tells me that there is wealth here, so that explains how they've held on to both! Yet another Sprinter arrives and conveys me to Lowestoft.

The only point of note in the desolate wastes of the Fens is Reedham. There is a grand girder bridge crossing the river here. At the age of eleven, I spent a week on a school trip to the Broads, in a boat moored under this bridge. I would hear the trains rumbling across it and run up to have a longing look. Now I'm looking back at me looking back at me. The trains from that time have gone but the view is much as I remember it. Though what I didn't notice was the bleakness of the area. It seemed so lively when we were there, and yet I see nothing but marshy flats as we come off the bridge and continue south eastwards. I feel curiously melancholic about this new image of a place once known. How time plays tricks.

The next two legs pass through different ends of the same town - Oulton Broad. We stop at the North station, before a short distance to Lowestoft itself. The weather has been quite pleasant today, but by Lowestoft it has started to change for the worse. It's rather grey and cold by now. This suits the tone of this port town only too well. I make my way past takeaways and convenience shops, through vaguely interesting narrow streets, all rather run down, before arriving at the coast. There a millennium project set into the ground informs me that I am at the UK's most Easterly point and gives distances to London, New York etc. I did know this but had forgotten it in the mists of time. I have just enough money for a cup of tea at the most easterly cafe in the UK before heading back to the station.

By now the weather is really rough. As I walk through the docks the wind is howling and the boats moored there are heaving up and down, the water whipped up by the ferocious gale. It's quite alarming. Suddenly I see a huge old style BR sign on the side of a building. It's in the dark blue of the post-nationalisation Eastern Region. Knowing that there were two lines to the town until 1970, a second line running from Great Yarmouth along the coast, I assumed that I'd come across a relic of the other station. In fact, it was the existing station that I'd approached from a different direction. Now I gather another greedy developer wants to redevelop the area, cut the railway back and rebuild the station further away. Doubtless more car parking is part of the scheme. Why is it that even though it's cars that have helped to ruin town centres, development accommodates them while tolerating the relocation of stations that force rail travellers to walk further? Let's stick the cars out of town and bus THEM in.

I board a single coach Sprinter for Ipswich. We head through Oulton Broad South, where cruisers are bobbing around like fish in a waterfall. We plough through remote countryside as dusk falls, halting at a level crossing for some time and an unspecified reason. There is hardly anything out here until we reach the edge of Ipswich, and I really appreciate how urbanised my life is. And here my memory fails me. So many times have I travelled down this line back to Liverpool Street, that absolutely nothing sticks in my mind from it! On reflection, this could be considered the first of my wider ranging line bashing trips, the ones before this having been based pretty much exclusively in London and the South East.

Itinerary
London Liverpool Street-Norwich
Norwich-Berney Arms-Great Yarmouth
Great Yarmouth-Brundall
Brundall-Lowestoft
Lowestoft-Ipswich
Ipswich-London Liverpool Street

Me and trains - the purpose of the blog

I've always liked travelling on trains. I wouldn't describe myself as a train spotter (indeed I believe the quest I'm engaged in is called "line bashing"). I'm sort of interested in the different types of trains you see travelling around, in as much as one is interested in seeing anything that's different from the everyday, but ultimately it's the journey for me. As a child I loved standing on the local station, watching the lines curving away into the distance, thinking of all the places that they could take me to. Even now when doing my tedious commute to work I'm aware that the bit of track I'm on is joined to every other bit of track on the mainland (and I guess the Continent too now!) and it's a curiously liberating feeling. I know that roads take you away as well, but it's just not the same. Railways snake along in cuttings and tunnels, rush unseen through remote parts of the countryside, then burst into another place entirely, a world away from the one you left behind. Also the notion of experiencing the rows of figures in a timetable transforming into a real journey gives me a bizarre sense of satisfaction that I can't really explain!

This blog is my record of a "pointless quest" that I have been engaged in for some years. That is, to travel on every current passenger rail route in the United Kingdom by the time that I hit 40. The rules that I am following are not necessarily consistent. Broadly speaking I have to travel every bit of railway line that has a passenger service, even if it is just one a week. However I am ignoring the loops that join two lines to allow a couple of through trains a day (the single train from Birmingham New Street to Stratford or the Brighouse to Mirfield train that avoids Huddersfield) - though if I can do them, I will. The general rule of thumb is that if there are actual stations on a little-used route I will cover it (eg Pontefract to Goole).

I'm not sure when the quest developed. I started to make an effort to see some of the UK (by train!) in about 1998, and usually tried to use different routes there and back. Gradually the lines on the map began to "fill in" and I thought it might be fun to fill the lot in, and see a lot of nice places at the same time. Then eventually I decided to finish the quest and fill the lines in, then see the places later on. And now that I'm nearly there, I've decided a bit belatedly to start documenting my travels, just for my own memories.