Fit For Royalty

I remember the day well. Sitting on the train, next to the window, clutching my bucket and spade, with the harsh material of the seats prickling the backs of my legs. All went well as we sped along towards the seaside. Then, as we pulled out of Kings Lynn station, disaster struck - the train stated going backwards! Tears were averted as Mum explained that this always happened and we were definitely not heading for home.

A little further along we were told to look out for the Queen's station where the Royal Train stopped when she travelled up to Sandringham. I remember a smartly painted station with lots of flowers on the platform. 

The section of line from Kings Lynn to Hunstanton closed down long ago and the station's now a private house. But the public are still able to visit and wander the length of the platform, seeing everything much as it was in its royal heyday. There's no admission charge but there's a jar for donations to charity.

In 1862 the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VII, purchased the Sandringham estate, just 2¼ miles from the projected station at Wolferton. The following year the "wedding special" train for the marriage of the Prince to Alexandra of Denmark used the station. In the following years hundreds of royal trains served the frequent shooting parties and social events hosted by the Prince.

By 1898 it was decided that the little rural station needed to be rebuilt and the Tudor-style buildings we see today were constructed. The royal family continued to use the station till the line was closed in the 1960s.

The station was then sold to Eric Walker, who opened the royal waiting room as a museum to display his collection of royal railway memorabilia. On his death in 1985 it passed to his son who tried to sell the station. Most of the contents were sold off and the buildings were eventually sold to Richard Brown in 2001.

Since then he has carried out extensive renovation and the station now looks as good as ever. So if you're ever speeding along the A149 road, look out for the signs to Wolferton and make the one mile diversion along a narrow road back into history.

Take care.

Awaiting A Connection

(or how to pass the time on an English railway station)

Take care.

The Crossing House At Shepreth

When I was little I sometimes was taken to see my Nan in London. We went on the train which greatly added to the excitement for a small boy. Now, (before one of my witty readership asks if it was on a steam train) it was on a steam train. As we chugged through the green countryside I always looked out for the Flowers Beside The Tracks. 

This was a stretch of line which had been planted up with garden flowers alongside railway - it seemed to go on forever. It was the work, I was told, of the level-crossing keeper, who was employed to open and close the gates where the road crossed the rails. When not performing this arduous task he tended his plants. And when he ran out of space in his garden he spread his activities along the line.

It seemed an idyllic existence but one which was doomed; automatic gates were soon to replace the crossing-keeper.

It became clear that I would have to seek alternative employment. I could draw neatly and had a head full of useless facts so, a few years later, they sent me up to university to study geography. That meant travelling up to London by train again.

Although the crossing-keeper had been made redundant I was pleased to see that his flowers lived on, seeding themselves by the trackside.

Twenty-one years ago I moved to the village of Meldreth, just a mile or two from the flowery level-crossing of yesteryear. There was the house, right beside the railway, with a little sign on the gate which read "Plant-lovers are welcome to wander around this garden".

The house and garden had been sold but the garden was still being cared for and added to.
Well, it was only a matter of time before I had to go and investigate. So today, twenty-one years after moving so close to it, I passed through the little garden gate for the first time!

Although the site can't be much more than a quarter of an acre in size it's crammed full of plants, both traditional and the more unusual. What's more it's only a five minute stroll from Docwra's Manor gardens which are open regularly throughout the summer, so ideal to visit on the same day. 

Amazingly, in this day and age, there's no charge for entry - not even a box for donations as far as I could see - and it's open from dawn till dusk every day of the year! They obviously just like to share their garden with the world.

Oh, and those self-seeding plants are still surviving by the tracks. 

                                                                                                                  Take care.

The Fens From A Moving Train

The train journey north from Cambridge to King's Lynn would not score highly on scenery for most people, especially on a grey morning. But I find the flatness and endlessness of the landscape to be oddly compulsive viewing. And there's plenty to think about....

Before it was drained for agricultural land it was an eerie marshland known only to a few hardy souls who made a living from it, wildfowling and fishing for eels. Dark, swarthy, suspicious men who knew every inch of the treacherous waterways. Every so often they would emerge from the misty swamps to sell their catch in Ely market. Then they would drink, sing, whore and fight till they slipped away unseen before daylight. Some called them web-feet, some call them yellow-bellies but those who admired their hardy self-reliant lifestyle called them The Fen Tigers.

With the Winter Olympics at an end, let us remember Turkey Smart.

William "Turkey" Smart was born in the fenland village of Welney in 1830 and for many years was the best speed-skater in England and quite possibly the world. He got his nickname from his low, crouching style with his arms flapping like wings behind his back - in other words he pioneered the style which all speed skaters employ to this day. If you think he had an odd name then you should be informed that he gained his reputation by defeating someone called Larman Register and his chief rival throughout his career was one Gutta Percha See! 

Turkey continued skating into his sixties by which time a whole dynasty of Smarts and Sees dominated skating in the Fens and Turkey's nephew James Smart became world champion.

Recently I mentioned the riots which took place in Ely and Littleport in 1816 as a result of the poverty suffered by agricultural workers. However new ideas were being voiced in wider society, in particular Robert Owen's vision of a socialist Utopia. 

In the Fens, where problems arising from exploitation had so recently been seen, there was a ready audience for these ideals. A farmer and Methodist minister, William Hodson, donated the land to be the basis of a communally-run farm. Hodson had the formula worked out in great detail; the community produced its own newspaper, 'The Working Bee', and even did away with money for a while. However the social experiment failed after a couple of years and all that remains today is a place called 'Colony Farm'.

Holme Fen, at 9ft below sea level the lowest point in England, was the most difficult part of the Fens to drain. There were no proper roads and it was easier to travel on water. The vicar of Holme came up with a novel solution to the problem and had a boat built to serve as a floating church to reach all his parishioners. It had a harmonium which doubled as pulpit and lectern and the "church" could accommodate up to 50 people. Between 1897 and 1904 some seventy-four baptisms took place in The Fenland Ark. The village sign at Holme shows this unlikely craft being towed by a horse.

Even after much of the Fen was drained it continued to be frequently flooded into the 1900's. With it's regular mists and fogs it was generally regarded as an unhealthy place to live. Doctors did not serve much of the area so the Fenmen self-diagnosed and self-medicated against the ague and rheumatism ('ague' may or may not have been malaria as proper diagnosis was so infrequent). And the drug of choice was opium which was consumed in large quantities, many folk adding it to their beer as a matter of course. It could be obtained in any chemist in any of the small towns.

The results of this state of affairs ranged from the comic - men found sleeping in the fields, leaning on their hoes - to the tragic - high rates of infant mortality as babies, being looked after by their siblings while both parents worked, were often given opium to stop them crying. 

All this dead-flat land might appeal to the Flat Earth Society, you'd think - and indeed it did! Even after the earth was proved to be spherical there were still those who thought it was flat. Before the remarkable pictures sent back from space there was little direct proof, other than the way that ships seem to sink below the horizon. 

Now it just so happens that when the fens were being drained an absolutely straight river was dug to carry the water more quickly to the sea; you can walk alongside it - the straightest, flattest and most soul-destroying walk in the entire country. One Samuel Birley Rowbotham, a convinced flat-eath believer, conducted a series of experiments on this river where he claimed he could, with the aid of a telescope, see boats some six miles distant. You shouldn't be able to see more than three miles so either Rowbotham's experimental technique was flawed or his observations were the result of the refraction of light over a warm surface. (Or the earth is in fact flat!).

No one took much notice of Rowbotham till John Hampden made a wager that the next experiment would prove once and for all that the world was flat. Enter Alfred Russell Wallace to investigate the matter further. He devised a more complex version of the earlier experiment. He not only showed that the earth was a sphere but that it had a diameter of 7,920 miles, which we now know was just 6 miles out!

But the matter did not end there and dragged on for many years with court cases for libel and each group convinced of the validity of their own experiments!

We'll soon be in King's Lynn but there's just one more improbable-but-true tale to relate. The dead straight riverbank also appealed to the would-be developers of a hovertrain which would run on a monorail and they were granted permission to build a 20 mile stretch of experimental track along the course of the river. I well remember the fuss on local TV news at the time. But then I heard no more as plans were shelved after a only a short stretch of track had been built. The prototype train, RTV31, is now at Railworld, Peterborough, and can be clearly seen from the mainline train as you head south from Peterborough station.

Some of the stories above are gone into in more detail on the excellent
website http://www.ousewashes.info/index.htm  to which I am indebted.


Take care.

Breakfast With Celia

Time to baffle Meldreth's station master, David, again this morning by buying a ticket for another destination that he doesn't get asked for every day; Wymondham this time. Though as David probably knows there's much to see in that little Norfolk town.

The train departs Wymondham station

  
Now the first thing to get straight is that it's not pronounced Why-mund-ham at all but Wind 'em, with "wind" as in the blowy stuff and " 'em" as "them" is rendered in some parts. So it's "Wind'em", got it? 

A neat little station - with a faulty clock!

Many of Britain's rural stations are falling into disrepair as they become un-manned stations where you buy your ticket from a machine. Then the buildings become disused and boarded up. It's a great shame because many are of some architectural merit. But Wymonham station has fared rather better than some and often wins awards for the best-kept small station. It has also been used in the TV comedy "Dad's Army" as Walmington-On-Sea station.

Buckets of flowers

The main station buildings are now in use as the "Station Bistro" and I could do with a cup of tea after my journey so...

G E R - Great Eastern Railway

L N E R - London and North Eastern Railway

Inside it's like stepping back into the 1940s, the walls covered with old photos and the seats are all from old railway coaches. A nice open fire too, very cosy.

Railway seats - and even a luggage rack up above

The Bistro takes as its theme the 1945 film Brief Encounter and one of the stars, Celia Johnson, looks down on you while you wait for the waitress to take your order.

The lady and the train

Everyone else in the establishment seemed to be eating breakfast....

Breakfast for two

Although I have no intention to turn "By Stargoose And Hanglands" into a restaurant guide the smell of freshly cooked bacon was too much to resist, especially as the pot of tea came free with the meal. I'd walk it off, I told myself.

Breakfast for one

Now we really must be off to see what Wymondham has to offer. There's a bit of a clue on the door on the way out.

First Class!

Take care.

Footbridge

(just some shots of the rather bland footbridge which

crosses the railway in Meldreth,

jazzed up a little with some technical trickery)

Take care

(when crossing the footbridge)