Moody Blues

 The guard scanned my e-ticket.  He looked at the results.  

"You've come all the way from Liverpool to go to Bromsgrove?"

"Yeah," I smiled.

"Never mind."  He walked away.

Bromsgrove started well enough.  It got a new station a few years ago and it's a whizzy, modern design, with a ticket office-slash-coffee shop, bike racks, and public toilets.  It was, however, starting to suffer from that very British disease - a lack of maintenance.  Eight years since it was unveiled to the public, and there was rust on the metal steps, and the toilets were seemingly permanently locked.  Giving a town an asset is not enough - you need to keep it up.

The design was pleasing and interesting though, particularly for a small town.  It could've been a couple of lift shafts and a ticket machine but they'd spent a few quid making it interesting.  I particularly liked the massive double arrow tower; no mistaking what this was.

I walked through what seemed like acres of car park to head into the town centre, and got a surprise as I did so.

Twenty-five minutes to get into town?  I'd looked at it on the map and it had seemed like no more than a gentle stroll.  Not centrally located, of course, but certainly not twenty-five minutes away.  I huffed in frustration and walked out of the car park, past a Co-op and a knot of small modern shops, then over a steep hump onto the main road.

By the time a heavy rain drop had fallen directly into my ear, somehow, I was in a foul mood.  I had written Bromsgrove off.  It was annoying me.  The distance to the town centre, the boring walk along a straight road, the fact that it had taken me literally hours to get here - I was furious.  I was filled with a bubbling resentment that I had come all this way and found nothing but this.

Signs kept popping up to tell me how close I was to the town centre, a countdown that barely seemed to change; I had walked what felt like miles and then a sign appeared telling me I was still twenty minutes away.  Filthy lies.  A dual carriageway appeared, and I crossed via a staggered crossing that seemed to actively hate permitting pedestrians over the road.  This was the A38, and I'd planned on walking down it to get to Droitwich Spa.

Not any more.  I'd whipped myself up into such a self-pitying fury I'd decided I was going to get out of Bromsgrove as soon as possible.  One circuit of the town centre and then I was gone.

In fairness, it was a neat little town centre.  A single pedestrianised road, nicely done up, tidy trees and relatively few empty shops.  The Works pumped bubbles into the air, making it a little festive, while a young girl was setting up a microphone and speaker for a spot of al fresco busking.  Importantly, a branch of my nemesis, the Edinburgh Wool Shop, was long closed and boarded up.  The rain had been intermittent, one of those on again off again affairs where the skies really can't get up the energy for a proper storm, so there were blue skies above.

I reached the end of the street, passing a statue devoted to AE Housman and a couple of less than charming looking pubs, then turned and went back.  It was lunchtime, and there were schoolkids spilling all over the place, some of them being so loud and noisy I genuinely wondered if they were in pain.  I passed a kebab shop with a sign in the window: Orange chips served Tuesdays and Saturdays.  I'd never heard of orange chips before, so I did a bit of googling and discovered they are a Black Country delicacy.  The orange refers to their colour, as they're cooked in a dyed batter; what it's dyed with apparently varies from shop to shop, with paprika or turmeric being the most common explanation.  This seems to be a real game changer, chip wise, if you listen to the locals, but as with many of these traditions, I can't help thinking if it was that good it'd be everywhere.  Banoffee pie was only invented in the 1970s and now it's on every menu in the land; orange chips have supposedly been around since the war and yet never spread from a very tight area of the Midlands.

I walked back the way I came. The busker was singing Michael Jackson's Earth Song, which reminded me of an ex who was absolutely obsessed with the song, and would tunelessly croon "what about sunrise? What about rain?" to himself in idle moments.  I headed down to the Waitrose at the end of the street to use their toilet, but in another move deliberately contrived by Bromsgrove to irritate me, it was out of order.  I ducked over a small stream and onto Station Street, thinking that might be a more interesting route back to the railway.  It was a narrow, curved road, threading between car showrooms and engineering works, and it became clear why the New Road was built instead to get people in and out of the centre.  

A couple of turns and I found myself at the entrance to what looked like a park.  I considered walking in, for a variation, but there was something slightly unwelcoming about the entrance.  I checked the map and discovered that this was in fact the northern entrance to the Bromsgrove School, a large private school whose alumni include Ian Carmichael, Jimmy from Emmerdale, and the legendary Richard Wattis ("Hello, Fenella? I'm afraid I shan't be able to get back for dinner.  A sort of war's broken out.").  My hackles rose up again, angry at this bastion of privilege, and became even more pronounced as I followed the road south and realised that their campus was absolutely enormous.  As is often the case for public schools, I've found, the Wikipedia page has its own Scandals section, one part to cover a price fixing cartel, the other for a teacher who was imprisoned for having sex with the girls.  Imagine paying fifteen thousand pounds a term for your daughter to be molested.  (I'd like to point out that my ordinary, bog-standard, free to attend comprehensive school does not have a section for Scandals).

Soon I was back at the station in the middle of a sudden hailstorm - I appeared to be experiencing every kind of weather that day - and ready for a train to take me to Droitwich Spa.  I can safely say I will not be returning to Bromsgrove.

Droitwich's station wasn't as modern or clean.  It had two platforms between trees, and a small 1970s style ticket office with a sign in the window informing us it was closed for the rest of the day.  The Victorian waiting rooms had been boarded up and covered with murals to try and make them less disappointing.  There were old-fashioned signal arms at each end of the platform.

Beyond the station were a few industrial units and a takeaway with its window entirely missing: a handwritten sign on the wooden shutters advised me they were OPEN AS USUAL.  Then there was a ring road, and a Morrison's, and it seemed like the "spa" part of the name seemed a little over-promising, like when people double-barrel a child's name to make it sound classy, not realising that Monica-Jade is actually a thousand times more vulgar.

The spa part comes because salt has been extracted from here for thousands of years; indeed, the Roman name for the town was Salinae.  The water here is incredibly saline, and so an attempt was made to turn it into a spa during the Regency period.  The problem was that "taking the water", as at Leamington or Bath, was impossible because of the high salt content, so instead people were encouraged to bathe in it to cure their aches and pains.  There's still a lido in the town (although there was a period when it was closed for lack of Council funds) and they're rightly proud of their long industry.

The shopping precinct was a proper, old-fashioned precinct, with covered paths and a square with a coffee shop in the middle.  There was a queue out the door of Quality Crust as people went for a sandwich.  I took a few turns and ended up by the library, a modern hub with a backdrop of gabled buildings.  Droitwich was turning out to be a fascinating mix of old and new.

Behind a vaguely homoerotic statue devoted to saltworkers was the bulk of the Raven Hotel, a mishmash of a building with bits dating back to the 16th century.  Sadly, it was long closed, the restaurant sign collapsing, and destined to be flats someday.  Possibly.  It is of course listed, and so there are the usual delays where a developer tries to reconcile commerce and history.  For now it's dotted with CCTV signs and warnings of demolition and danger.

I ended up on Droitwich's traditional High Street, sidelined by the precinct and the ring road but now reborn as a street of independent shops and bars.  Lightbulbs had been strung across the road to give it a more festive air.  It had tattoo parlours and restaurants and a barber with a picture of Christopher Walken advising us Walkens Welcome.

I ducked down a side path to take a look at the Tower Hill Brine Pump, the last remaining one in the town, where a barred window allowed me to peek in at the machinery inside.

Droitwich Spa was, inarguably, a better place to visit than Bloody Bromsgrove, or perhaps I'd simply mellowed over the course of the afternoon.  It certainly had a better class of pub.  I picked one at random and had a pint of Kinver Light Railway Beer, purely for the name. The barman was a cheery sort, happily yammering on to his regulars, though his attempts to engage in conversation with me were met with my usual confusion.  My brain operates on a delay when it comes to unexpected chat; someone talks to me, it sits there for a while to take on board the fact that another human wants me to speak, forces me to grunt out some kind of weak acknowledgement, then takes its time coming up with a proper answer - by which time the other person has already moved on because I seem to be a monosyllabic oddball.  This is why I thank the lord for the internet, where I can type things and come off as clever and funny, rather than the tragic reality.

With the pint inside me - oh alright, two - I walked back to the station, taking a different route under the ring road and ending up in a no-mans-land of bare industrial spaces and spiked fences.  Droitwich Spa was a strange little town, mixing genuine heritage and beauty with some incredibly ugly work spaces.

I ate a sandwich on the platform to soak up some of the beer then got on the train to Hartlebury.  I'd miscalculated this part of the trip.  While there are two trains an hour north from Droitwich Spa through the station, only one of them actually stops; I'd not realised this until I'd checked the times in the pub, and now I realised I had a narrow window before I needed to start my way back to New Street for my pre-booked ticket.

Once again, the station and the community it served were at a distance from one another.  I didn't want to risk walking off and missing my connection back, so I took a look down the valley towards the village and then turned left.

Was my decision to stay in the vicinity of the station influenced by the fact that the building has been converted into a pub and microbrewery?  I couldn't possibly comment.

The Tap House was an oddity of a pub.  A name like that makes you think it'd be hipster aligned, serving craft beers only, while its position in the countryside and its attached restaurant made you think it was more of a country eatery.  In fact it was both these things, and also neither.  As the afternoon wore on, it began to fill with workmen.  This was a proper boozer, a place for locals to come and unwind after the day, and it was charming.  It wasn't perfect - the reading rack offered up Caravan and Motor Home, Commercial Motors and the Daily Mail - but it was near as dammit.  A real community drinking spot.  The railwayana was a cherry on top.

I walked back to the platform, jollier than before, another three stations off the list.  The afternoon had actually ended up being relatively pleasant.  Probably because I was no longer in Bromsgrove.

The Morning Shift

Motorway service stations are rarely a high point of anyone's journey.  They sit close to the carriageway, sometimes spread over the traffic, a halt for a pee and a sandwich and then out again.  Any romance of the open road has long gone.  Their facilities are frequently old and overcrowded.  Their forecourts are expansive and badly laid out.  

At five in the morning, you can, if you squint, get a bit of glamour out of them.  I walked out of the Tamworth M42 Travelodge and there was a silence ahead of me.  The only lights were an orange glow from the KFC.  There were no people.  Cars were stilled.

I turned away from the parking area, towards a hump of grass with a couple of picnic tables optimistically strewn across it.  I'd stayed overnight, walking out here from Wilnecote, having a Burger King in my room with a bottle of Coke before getting an early start.

This overnight was, at heart, the reason for my three day trip to Leicester.  I could've got the other stations any time.  Polesworth, however, could only be collected at one particular point.

Polesworth railway station was never that popular.  Its position on the West Coast Main Line meant it was in the way.  Fast trains needed to get by; they didn't need to be held up by a stopping service.  It got fewer and fewer trains over the years until it closed temporarily during the modernisation of the railway in the early 21st Century.  

You can't simply close a railway station forever; it requires an Act of Parliament.  However, during the modernisation works, the footbridge to the southbound platform was taken away... and never replaced.  The number of trains able to serve the station halved immediately; there was no way on or off one of the platforms.  As a consequence, a not very popular station became largely useless, and the timetable was altered to reflect this.  You can't close a railway station, but you can run the bare minimum service to it as a token effort.

One train, at 06:48 on weekday mornings, to Crewe.  That's it.  That's the only service Polesworth gets any more.  

Getting there from the Tamworth services meant turning away from the motorway - obviously, I wasn't about to walk down the hard shoulder - and disappearing onto a long closed back road.  Lots of service stations have these secret exits, put in place for emergency access, but frequently closed in recent years as locals became wise to them and started using them as unofficial junctions.  This one was a dark tunnel of trees at the back of a warehouse.

I'd planned ahead and bought a small pocket torch from Asda.  Without it, I'd have been in absolute darkness.  I felt the prickle of anxiety as I walked, not knowing what was ahead for me, mixed with a thrill of being alone.  I love it when I feel outside of the world.  It may have been a tarmacked back route now mainly used by dog walkers, but at that early hour, it was my empire.

Too soon I reached the barrier closing off the road to traffic and I was on the pavement in the hamlet of Birchmoor.  I lowered the beam of the torch, in case I accidentally swung it into a bedroom window and scared some poor old dear into thinking the aliens were landing.  The houses were quiet.  I crossed over the motorway and got a giddy glimpse at the traffic below.

If you're one of those people who comes to this blog for the photography; firstly, who hurt you?  And secondly, I'll have to apologise.  At that time in the morning, in that level of darkness, my poor camera was useless.  With a flash, without a flash, all it produced were blurry disappointments.  I had to fall back on my iPhone which, presumably, has a whole series of microprocessors working away to try and make sense of what you're pointing at.  It means that some of these pictures have a romantic wash to them that is nothing to do with the reality of the scene and is instead Tim Cook making every photo Insta-ready.

As I turned onto the main road, all the street lamps came on, instantly, at once.  I felt that little frisson of excitement, the idea that I might be magic and that I'd turned on the lights with some hitherto undiscovered superpower, a notion I get every time this happens.  I checked the time: exactly five thirty.  I turned right at a pub which I absolutely must inform you is called The Game Cock Inn - sounds like a wonderful way to pass an afternoon - and on to the outskirts of Polesworth.  A single car passed me, the first one I'd seen since the motorway, and I saw the driver give me a questioning look as he went by.

The stilled village swam up around me.  The road descended slowly down a hill.  Some of the houses were starting to show life now; bedroom and bathroom windows illuminated, the residents not yet managing to make it downstairs.  A man appeared with an enthusiastic dog - the first time I shared a path with a human all morning - and he nodded a hello before disappearing down a side road with the deeply unattractive name of The Gullet.  

A humpback bridge took me over the Coventry Canal, nothing more than a black streak at this time of day.  I'd reached the centre of the village now, with a fire station and a cross roads, sprawling wide over.  I crossed leisurely, wondering how busy it got in the day, then took the bridge over the River Anker.  I could hear it, rather than see it, the thrash of water in amongst the dark of the flood plains.  

This seemed to be the traditional heart of the village, with half-timbered buildings and historic pubs.  The Red Lion featured a slightly camp sign, with an image that looked less like a proud lion and more like a poodle begging for a bit of your tea.  There were signs for the chippy, and a police station converted into a home, the blue lamp still outside; is that allowed?  Isn't that like impersonating a police officer, but with your house?

Commuters were starting their Fridays, driving through the village a little too fast, taking advantage of the empty road.  The gap between cars got shorter and shorter.  Now there were lights on downstairs in the houses on the road, with the occasional resident visible in the front room, shuffling about in a dressing gown.  Enormous flat screen televisions flickered on walls as breakfast television caught you up with whatever atrocities had occurred while you slept.

The road rose again, another gentle hill, and then I turned off into a network of slight cul-de-sacs and semis.  There was, to my surprise, a sign pointing to the station; I'd have thought they'd have taken that down to avoid disappointing weary travellers.

The tracks became visible as I walked and then, finally, I was at Polesworth station.  It was tucked away at the end of Orchard Close, with a turning circle in front.

I walked up to the gate and pushed.  It didn't move.  My heart sank.  I'd been scared of this.  Polesworth might theoretically get a service, but that didn't mean London Northwestern had to look after it.  I pictured them locking and unlocking the gate either side of the scheduled service, one man hovering for ten minutes with a key to let any potential passengers in or out.  Or maybe they didn't do that?  Maybe they left it locked up.  The odds on anyone using the station were so slim - why not gamble?

Perhaps there was a keypad, or a "press here to contact us" button?  Nothing.  I paced back and forth, panicking.  My main worry had been that the train wouldn't stop at all; now I was worried I'd watch it stop from the other side of the fence.  Time ticked away.  Five minutes.  Ten.  No sign of anyone to unlock it.

And then I thought... it is locked, right?

I walked back and pushed.  It resisted - but there was no padlock.  I reached through and grabbed the bolt.  It slid aside easily and allowed me access.  

For a moment I stood on the platform, calling myself all sorts of names.  I'd nearly lost Polesworth entirely thanks to my own stupidity.  But now I was here, waiting for a train I really hoped would stop.

As the dawn crept over me, I wandered up and down the platform (there were no benches).  I was surprised that the station was in such good nick, to be honest.  The lights were LED; they were painted in the green corporate colours of London Northwestern.  The noticeboards were filled with up to date notices.  It felt like it was being taken care of, far more than some stations I've been to with much better services.

It was so nicely maintained, in fact, that I wondered why they'd not bothered restoring the station to a fit state.  Polesworth village has a population of about 10,000 people, a fair few of whom I'll bet would appreciate a service to Stafford and Northampton.  The local council has vaguely suggested a new station with a car park so that people can commute - the M42 passes close by, after all - but other than making it an aspiration the plan hasn't got any further.  

Then, something unexpected happened: more potential passengers arrived.  Two men walked onto the platform and stopped in shock to see me waiting there.  They stared for a moment, then started to pace up and down the platform, chatting away, and not paying me any mind.

I realised, from the brief snatches of conversation I heard as they passed, that these were also Men Who Liked Trains.  There were a total of 188 people using Polesworth in 2022/23, giving it a certain frisson of notoriety as one of the least used stations in Britain, and as such it attracts a disproportionate amount of interest.  I was a little disappointed, as I'd hoped that there would be one person using Polesworth as an actual regular station for their commute.  I felt a bit bad for ruining the men's exciting visit.  They were going to be Kings of Polesworth and they weren't even the first people on the platform.  I wondered if they'd also stayed at the Travelodge, and had been half an hour behind me the whole time.  Imagine going all that way just to visit a railway station; what a pair of nerds.

At exactly 06:48 the train slid into the platform and stopped.  I didn't have to signal for it or anything; the driver did his duty correctly.  I boarded, delighted, and joined a lot of half-asleep people on their way to Crewe.  Nobody checked my ticket, which was disappointing.  I wanted to produce my single from Polesworth.

Although I should register my complaint that there's no totem sign outside.  I had to settle for a platform sign to prove I'd been here.  Ignore my downcast face: I was absolutely thrilled inside.

With that station collected, the only real block to me finishing off the map was gone.  Polesworth was a station that involved a certain amount of hassle - overnight stay, early morning walk, limited service.  Now I've got it, the rest should be easy.

Thank you to everyone who has contributed to my Ko-fi.  It really helped pay for this little trip.  If you feel like donating, you can find the link here.  Don't worry if you don't. 

A Tale Of Two Cities (Actually Small Towns)

Harry Beck was, obviously, a genius, and the way he redesigned the London Underground map to be diagrammatic rather than geographic was game changing.  Having said that, it also lead to a lot of absolutely filthy lies being inflicted upon the public.  I had two more stations to visit, in Hinckley and Atherstone, and they looked reasonably close on the West Midlands Railway map.  About the same as South Wigston and Narborough, only across rather than along.  

The reality is the two stations are at least eight miles apart, nudging ten depending on your route, and the path is mostly along the straight as a die Roman Road slash dual carriageway.  It is, in short, not worth doing.  I'll happily walk for three hours at a time if it's interesting or scenic or historic.  Lolloping along Watling Street for an afternoon with nothing to look at except the backs of Romanian delivery trucks?  No thank you.

I decided it would be easier to treat both towns as one offs, getting a look at their high streets then returning to the station for the next train out.  Hinckley was first.

I'm always pleased to visit a station and find it's still got all the trappings of a proper halt; the building, the awning, the footbridge.  Hinckley's footbridge doubles as a right of way across the railway and I crossed the tracks opposite a lot of people with shopping bags heading home after a visit to the town centre.

From the station it was a steep walk up a hill to the town itself, past residential streets and a couple of pubs.  Hinckley's newest shopping centre, The Crescent, loomed over the road.  I'm not sure why councils are still permitting this sort of development.  For one thing, it was an incredibly ugly block, as the five screen cinema meant there was a requirement for large black boxes and it didn't matter what it looked like on the outside.

Then, of course, you've got the fact that this is a brand new shopping development that isn't alongside all the other ones.  It's a draw away from the traditional retail heart and it's unfortunate.  This is a leisure based development (plus a Sainsbury's) but it's a separation; you have a Prezzo there, not with all the traditional stores.  Perhaps I'm being unfair - the road to the station in a town is rarely the top priority, and I'm sure it's nicer from the other side.

Besides, Hinckley didn't seem to be doing too badly.  I continued along streets that seemed to be filled with businesses, then past a primary school with a playground of excitable kids.  It was World Book Day and the mix of outfits was a joy.  I'd have been a lot stricter about the criteria for dress up if I was a teacher, though.  There were a few too many Marvel superheroes for my liking, which, ok, you could say are in books, but I don't think that's quite in the spirit of the day.  I pictured some poor girl dressed as Amy March leaning against the wall because her bustle and corset meant she couldn't sit down while fourteen Spider-Men made pew pew noises as they shot their webs at one another.  Amy will be the winner in the long run, of course, because she has an enquiring mind that appreciates great literature, but there and then in that playground she'd have felt a right loser.

There's something a bit odd about that sign celebrating "Entrepreneurial Hinckley" with a top hat on it.  It's probably meant to make you think of thrusting imagination, like that Stephen bloke on Dragon's Den who won't invest in anything unless they mention TikTok and use pointless buzzwords, but it actually comes off as more Alf Roberts.  Rotund shopkeepers stood in back rooms with glasses of sherry chatting about potholes.  

Hinckley's long, straight main street was remarkably well stocked, and even on a weekday afternoon there were plenty of shoppers.  There were the usual names but also local businesses with their own USPs.  I was particularly taken with a dessert shop offering 12% off collection and dine in.  That 12% fascinated me.  I'd love to see the accounting that lead to that particular number.

Hinckley reminded me of Wigan.  No, wait; hear me out.  There was something about its long pedestrianised street on a steep hill that made me think of Greater Manchester.  While Wigan has pies, however, Hinckley has stockings and socks, having been a centre of the hosiery trade for centuries.  I love finding out a town has a proud past as purveyors of an incredibly niche item, which probably comes from having a home town that was once famous for making hats.  I sadly couldn't find a specialist store where I could purchase some Hinckley Socks, but that's probably for the best as I have a sock drawer that is already begging to be edited.

The pedestrian zone ended but the shops continued, though they became a little more specialist.  A European food store had a graphic in the window informing me that French Hot Dogs Are Available Here!  I'd never heard of a French Hot Dog, and having discovered what they are, it's very fortunate that the doctor told me about my high cholesterol before this trip, otherwise I'd be suffering a coronary right now after consuming fourteen of them in a row.  I turned off into a side road, past a shop that sold dance wear and a vinyl shop called Nervous Records, and began the descent back down the hill.

This is in no way a slur on the people of Hinckley who are, I'm sure, a fine and proud community of home owners.  But as I walked past their houses I noticed there was a certain tendency to flamboyance in their exterior decoration.  It was as though the town's residents had a competition among themselves to make their houses as individual as possible.  Artex.  Coloured paint.  Mock-Tudor beam work.  Shutters.  Up and under garages with fake hinges at the side to try and make a slab of steel look like a wooden gate.

Every other home seemed to have a twist on it.  It certainly gave me something to spot as I walked parallel to the railway line.  A long row of homes had been squeezed in here, but they looked like good, decent houses, even if their view was a train line on one side and factories on the other.  

It was a bit of a surprise to find myself back at the station; I'd not really taken in that I'd done a complete loop.  I took it as a sign that I should go to the next town and, after a change in Nuneaton, I was alighting at Atherstone.  I was pleased to have reached here via London North Western; after a few Cross Country's it was good to return to the actual purpose of this blog.

Across, on the opposite platform, was another fine railway building, with a little more pomp than the one at Hinckley.  I was on the Trent Valley Line now, the section of the West Coast Main Line that avoids Birmingham, so it was unsurprising to me that it had a little more zhush than its predecessor.  The boarded up windows were a disappointment, mind.

I left the platform and ducked under one of the lowest railway bridges I've ever walked under; the clearance was 6' 3" according to the warning notice, but even I, at a lowly 5' 9", felt like the top of my head was grazing the ironwork.

I emerged on the other side, mad keen to take a look at the station itself, but was disappointed.  It turned out the building was no longer used for railway purposes and was instead a vet's surgery.  The access to the platform was via a narrow alleyway at the side rather than through the far grander building.  What a let down.

On the plus side, the station is a lot closer to the town than Hinckley, and soon I'd reached the appropriately named Long Street.  Atherstone was a convenient spot to stop on Watling Street, the route from London to Wales, given that it's virtually at the centre of the country, and the sheer number of pubs along Long Street would attest to this.  The sad thing - particularly for an old alcoholic like me - was that none of them looked very welcoming.  One in particular had a tranche of old men sat in the window giving the kind of looks to passers by that could technically count as a hate crime.  There was also a pub called The Clock, which was all well and good, except the clock was showing the wrong time; I cannot support such behaviour, even if I was gagging for a pint at that point.

Beyond that were plenty of other shopping options, though Atherstone didn't have the breadth of Hinckley.  The constant traffic down the centre of the street detracted from the atmosphere too - I dread to think what it would've been like if they hadn't built a bypass - but I still found myself charmed.  It was another busy, thriving little community, and I felt as though people would enjoy living here.

The market square, with the church at one end and a tavern on the corner, was a classic of its type.  The scrawled chalk paintings by the local kids on the flagstones added to its appeal.  I went back down Market Street ("formerly Butchers Row") and tried to ignore the strong smell of fish and chips wafting over me.  High cholesterol, remember.  

I walked as far as the Conservative Club (or the "Connie Club" as it called itself on a chalkboard, giving it a chumminess that no doubt dissipated the second you saw a framed portrait of Margaret Thatcher) then turned and walked back.  On one corner, there was a sudden scream from a woman with two friends; she dropped her shopping bags and began thrashing at her head in a panic.  "It went in me bag!"

Her two pals watched with a mix of amusement and mild horror.  Clearly something had fallen on her and then plummeted into the carrier.  They backed away from it, then slowly approached, before gingerly feeling around for whatever terrifying wildlife had launched itself at her.  The first woman burst out laughing.  "It were a bit of grass, you twat!"

I veered off the main drag for a little wander, spotting the constituency office for the local Tory MP (there was a To Let sign on it, but that seemed to be for the shop underneath; give it time).  The bus exchange sat opposite some more modern flats, and there was a 1970s bulk of red brick council offices.

Once again, I had the feeling that the town was "done".  It was pleasing, inoffensive, probably lovely to live in, but I couldn't see myself rushing back.  I wandered back towards the station, annoyed that I'd not been more inspired, annoyed that I'd not found a decent pub.  Then I noticed an A-board by the entrance to the station: The King's Head - A Warm Welcome To Customers Old And New.  It turned out Atherstone did have a decent pub; it just wasn't with all the others, but instead sat by a canal with a pleasing outdoor terrace and a nicely refurbished interior.

Let's not dwell on the fact that there were only two people in there, and one of them was me, shall we?

I had my pint - then another one, to be sure - then rolled back for my train.  That was the last station of the day, but there was one more to visit on this trip.  It would just be a bit more difficult to collect.