Blighty 2025 - More Steam

After a fractious day driving up the M42, M6 and M5 (Toll), we checked into our apartment in Manchester, and perhaps wished we hadn't. I'll do a piece about the accommodation here later, so we'll gloss over that issue now and write about a lovely day out on the East Lancashire Steam Railway (ELR).

As a birthday treat for Charlie, his mum booked tickets for a day out on the ELR. It's based in Bury, just north of Manchester, and is accessible by Bee Network tram from the city. I looked at the feasibility of using the public transport, but with a change of tram needed, and tram line delays in the centre due to construction, we were looking at at least an hour, when a car ride was going to take twenty-five minutes. Sorry Bee Network, for four of us, the car is the winner.

I also opted to start the day from the railway's eastern terminus, Heywood, rather than Bury. Given the free and reasonably large car park, and it's relative proximity to the motorway, it seemed the better option. For once, I chose well.

The car park was not busy, nor was the platform as we waited on the train from Bury. Our plan was to board at Heywood, run the entire length of the line to Rawtenstall, then head back, but to stop in Bury for something to eat. While waiting for the train, I availed myself of the Whistlestop Cafe on the station's platform and had me a delightful bacon butty, a rare treat that was most welcome.

The train duly arrived, a line of fairly ancient Mark 1 coaches hauled by a very ancient, 130 years ancient, 0-6-0 steam locomotive formerly of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway. The sight, sound and smell of a steam loco is something special, and no more than at Heywood on this fine Saturday morning. I say fine, but it was raining just a tiny bit.

The loco was detached from one end the train, run around to the front and attached there, before hauling us off down the long hill into Bury Bolton Hill Station. Once the folks at Bury had boarded, the train set off north towards Rawtenstall, through the Irwell Valley and the bucolic northern English landscape.

The staff on the train were lovely, and made quite a fuss of Charlie. The ticket inspector let Charlie clip his own ticket, which he enjoyed immensely. Charlie also talked incessantly at a fellow traveller sat opposite, and the train's crew when they appeared, while DW and Emma enjoyed wine and crisps from the Buffet Car. I'm not sure how the others felt about Charlie's chatter, but he enjoyed it.

The run back to Bury was the same, with Charlie still holding court, but then that's what holidays are all about, isn't it?

In Bury we visited the Transport Museum across the road from the station. It's free if you have an ELR ticket, but even if we hadn't, their card reader was broken that day, so it was free for anyone. It's only small, but packed with all manner of transport goodies, including trains and buses, trucks and cranes. There was a modern, single-decker bus cab there that was for kids to get in and pretend to drive, and yes, it took a while to drag Charlie away.

We had a target eatery in Bury, but when we found it, it was rammed full and with no prospect of a free table any time soon. It was raining, so a search for another wasn't really working and we defaulted to a sit-down fish and chip place. Not the first choice for the ladies, but Charlie and I enjoyed it.

We had a bit of a wait for the train back to Heywood, the last one of the day. None of the little souvenir vendors attached to the ELR would take a bank card, and we had no cash, so few souvenirs were purchased. None at all, in fact. Bury is an interesting town, and there does seem to be a bit of pushback here against the cashless society. The station vendors didn't want cards, and neither did the chip shop, although they at least took ours rather than having us run out to get cash. Indeed, the ATMs in town were in use as we walked by, which was interesting because I haven't used one the whole time we've been here. Most places we've been have been card only, so Bury seems to be an outpost for cash.

People in Lancashire seem inordinately friendly, and will engage you in conversation at any time. The accents are brilliant, of course, but "Y'all right, love?" is a very common refrain everywhere you go. It stands in sharp contrast to the lengths people and businesses appear to want to go to protect themselves here. Perhaps the perception of problems is worse than the reality.

The run back into Salford was untroubled, and we even stopped at Birch Westbound Services on the M62 for a P&T stop, just because we could.

The morrow brings us the highlight of our Northern Tour, the trip to the Coronation Street studios down on Salford Quays. Charlie and Me won't be participating as we're going for a tram ride, thank goodness.

Blighty 2025 - Go North Young Man

Given an appointment with the set of TV's Coronation Street, we had decided to spend our last week in England in that Northern powerhouse, Manchester. Car loaded to the gunwales, we set our course for the motorway.

Which was a good idea except that we were stuck behind someone in a little Ford KA car, driving at between 35 and 40 miles per hour, nearly all the way to Warwick. It didn't really matter in that we had plenty of time, but it goes to show that people who don't appreciate that they're not the only ones on the road can be a real pain. Driving like that promotes frustration in others and then they start to do risky things, which is never good. Sure, drive within your own capabilities, but when you have twenty cars backed up behind you, pull off the darned road into one of the many lay byes, at least occasionally. A good read of the Highway Code would help.

The M42 northbound was at a crawl thanks to construction work, but we branched off onto the M6 Toll Road, a congestion free piece of pleasure that skirts northern Birmingham and avoids the M5/M6 Intersection at Walsall. It's congestion free because it costs car drivers a little over £10 to traverse it's length, and lorry drivers considerably more. As an irregular user of that road, I was happy to part with the cash, although if you need to drive it regularly, at your own expense, then I guess it's not so wonderful.

We stopped at the only service centre along the Toll Road, at Norton Canes. I wondered how the owners of such a place would manage with the reduced number of road users, but I found the answer to that question as we left the motorway and discovered that the centre served both north and southbound traffic. It was packed out, too, at noon on a Friday. Tsk. These service centres are not great, although the chance to get out and stretch our legs, and perform other natural tasks, is always welcome. I do struggle with the 30p a litre surcharge on the petrol at these places, though, and wonder who is mug enough to pay it. I bought petrol in Lechlade at £1.29 a litre, at Norton Canes services it was £1.59. That's more than gouging, that's robbery.

Paying the toll on the M6 Toll Road was easy, and something Doug Ford could look at for his highway robbery scheme, the 407 Toll in Ontario. On the M6 Toll, your licence plate is read by a camera as you enter, and again when you leave. The computer does a real-time calculation and presents you with a bill at the Toll Gate, which you can settle immediately with a contactless bank card or phone app. No paper bills, no video fee and no transponders like the 407. Regular users can open a Breeze account and pay online, and at a slight discount, too; again, no paper. Dougie, this is what you need to do.

Back into the real world, and a toll-free motorway, I noted that the M6 has lost its hard shoulder and has four lanes for driving traffic as opposed to three and the shoulder. Refuges are provided every mile or so of course, should you break down. That ought have eased the flow, but instead of three lanes of crawling traffic, it's now four lanes of crawling traffic, thus proving the point that no matter how big you build a road, the traffic will always expand to fill it. Taxes on petrol don't deter people, either, so maybe more roads should charge in order to reduce congestion? A simple but sadly impractical solution, because all the folks avoiding the tolls would just gum up all the free "A" roads. 

Coming into Manchester, the series of urban motorways in the area brought us almost to the door of our accommodation in Salford, although not before having to turn right across what was a seemingly endless stream of cars on a three lanes carriageway. Our apartment has, er, issues, but I'll deal with those in a separate post. Suffice it to say here that the Burger King we snacked at had only kiosk ordering, card payments, and screens like a bank on the counter. Nice.

Once settled into our home for the next couple of days, we searched out a vegan restaurant in Central Manchester, got back in the car and braved the tortuous roads and traffic of this great city. I don't think I appreciated just how central this place was, but it was a chore driving in the narrow streets, and we only really stumbled upon the multi-story car park of Manchester's fabled Arndale Centre by accident. The Arndale is giant shopping mall, but not an out-of-town one, this one is squarely down town, which I guess keeps the core vibrant. The car park was hideous, as they nearly all are here. Seriously low-ceilinged, dark, and with tiny spaces. There was a man from the car wash area relieving himself against a wall, which pretty much sums up the ambience of the place, and it was nearly £10 to park for a few hours. These are the things I do not like about England.

The restaurant was good, though, and the guy serving had time for a chat. He was local and said that he liked Manchester over London because although crazy, it was a level of crazy he could cope with, which was a trenchant observation. We sat and watched the Friday night revellers appear in the streets, young women wearing outfits that covered only the essentials, and men being loud, presumably to impress the scantily clad young women. Don't get me wrong, I'm not being censorious, I'm happy that the young folk feel free to express themselves, but goodness I wouldn't want to be young again these days.

Manchester is a vibrant and burgeoning city, without doubt. It's on the up. But away from the centre, places look battle-scarred and there is a perception that the place is under siege, at least if you look at the graffiti, the urban razor wire and the phalanx of security guards in Tesco. I hope, I really do hope, that the perception is worse that the reality.

Saturday is to be given over to a trip to the East Lancashire Railway, a heritage steam railway based in Bury, just a few miles north of Salford. I'm looking forward to that after the mean streets of Manchester.