My brother used to have a poster up, a map of the British rail network. At the age of 7 or 8, I thought the names on it - Carlisle, Doncaster, Newark - hopelessly exotic. At 18, a year out before university, trains meant freedom, visiting friends - Kathy in Lancaster, or Mark in Hull - or interviews for university. Always, on the way back to Lincoln, the Cathedral would be visible from miles away over the endless flat landscape, welcoming you back.
And in long summers, trains meant adventure - travelling around India with Justin, to Jaisalmer, Goa, Manali and a jeep to Leh, Buddhas three stories high. Or the wonderful Trans-Siberian with David F, 6 days of vodka, pine trees and snow. Or to the South of France for the longest summer of all, working on a chantier.
In "The Kingdom by the Sea" Paul Theroux navigates the coast of Britain, on foot and by train, during the Falklands war, travelling on dusty slow moving branch lines to long-forgotten outposts. He quietly records the chatter of the locals, the shared anxieties of war, the mundanities of everyday life, and the decline of once great, now faded seaside towns. It is a beautiful, slow moving book, somehow deeply sad - it always seems to be drizzling - but which I have returned to again and again over the years. I have always wanted to retrace Theroux's steps, take those obscure branch lines, if they still exist, and walk over the same headlands in the same drizzle, and now I realise I had unconsciously planned to do it when I retired.
On the train on the way to the curry last week - all ten minutes of the journey - all of this came back, how trains were somehow wonderful - not in the way that trainspotters find them wonderful - but as portals to adventure. And on the bucket list, maybe unattainable now, one of the greatest journeys of all time - across Canada to the Rockies. Maybe, maybe.
