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round the north we go: April 2015
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Sunday, 26 April 2015. An Englishman In New York. It's been very quiet round here this month. The first reason for this is I was ill in the first bit of April, meaning a trip to Leeds had to be abandoned. (It was actually the second time circumstances meant I couldn't visit Cross Gates, making me wonder if someone's trying to tell me something). If this sort of thing is of no interest to you, you probably should go away until about mid-May. Sorry. Monday, 6 April 2015. Why, give them a make over! First M...
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round the north we go: June 2015
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Sunday, 21 June 2015. In a normal universe, Carnforth would be just another station. It's got a junction, where the Barrow line splits off from the West Coast Main Line, but the fast trains don't stop there. It's got some Victorian buildings, but so have hundreds of other far more obscure stations. It's not in a big town. It's not interesting. Carnforth has a really major claim to fame, though. This is where they filmed 1945 weepie, Brief Encounter. I watched Brief Encounter. I had no intention of fallin...
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round the north we go: December 2014
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Wednesday, 31 December 2014. Contractually Required End Of Year Post. TOTAL NUMBER OF STATIONS ON THE 2013 NORTHERN RAIL MAP:. TOTAL NUMBER OF STATIONS ON THE 2014 NORTHERN RAIL MAP:. NUMBER OF STATIONS VISITED IN 2013:. NUMBER OF STATIONS VISITED IN 2014:. TOTAL NUMBER OF STATIONS COLLECTED:. TOTAL NUMBER OF STATIONS STILL TO COLLECT:. TOTAL PERCENTAGE OF MAP COLLECTED:. So here are some more. MOST POPULAR POST OF 2014:. Accounts of my visits to the stations, which makes me think loads of people Googled...
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round the north we go: October 2014
http://www.merseytart.com/2014_10_01_archive.html
Monday, 27 October 2014. For reasons far too dull to go into here, I found myself in Manchester with a couple of hours to kill. I decided to visit some stations, because what the hell else are you meant to do in Manchester? They haven't even opened the Airport tram line yet. I headed to Brinnington, on the edge of Stockport. It's on a line that forms part of a triangle of railways in the east of Manchester, with the Guide Bridge. Line forming the top and the Hyde section. Leaving aside the criminal spell...
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round the north we go: The Blaydon Race
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Tuesday, 4 August 2015. Let's get this out of the way: I had never heard of The Blaydon Races. Before I went to Blaydon. Never. If you said "Blaydon" to me, I thought of the safe house from The Living Daylights. And that's spelt "Blayden" anyway. After I went to Blaydon, and discovered the song was kind of a big deal on Tyneside, I searched for it on YouTube and found this, which I think is the most Geordie video in the world:. Obviously that was no help with regard to the enigma of The Blaydon Races.
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round the north we go: (I've Had) The Tyne Of My Life
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Thursday, 6 August 2015. I've Had) The Tyne Of My Life. I'd been to Newcastle before, of course. Many times. I'd even spent a few nights staying here. But I'd never ventured into the city itself. I'd always had trains to catch, or I needed sleep, or I'd gone for a pint to a bar round the corner. I'd never "done" Newcastle. It didn't help that the station was being redeveloped every time I visited, and I wanted to wait for that to be finished before I collected it. See it at its best. Friday afternoon....
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round the north we go: Down Down, Deeper and Down
http://www.merseytart.com/2013/08/down-down-deeper-and-down.html
Thursday, 8 August 2013. Down Down, Deeper and Down. I'd been looking forward to visiting Hull. That's not something you hear every day, is it? But no, I really had. I'd never been, it looked like an interesting town, and its station is called Hull Paragon, which is just ace. I found a cheap ticket - one of those ones that are restricted to a single train company on a single day at a single time and don't you think about deviating. Of intellectual pretension to the blog, I thought. This happens now and t...
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round the north we go: Geordie Score
http://www.merseytart.com/2013/05/geordie-score.html
Saturday, 25 May 2013. Everybody likes Newcastle, don't they? It's just an ingrained part of our national psyche. I bet Ant and Dec wouldn't be half as popular if they came from Plymouth. I'd never been before, but I'd long wanted to - it was far higher up my wish list than Preston or Manchester. Five weeks in a row at Sainsbury's! And partly because it was a Dunston Check In. It's a bizarrely accurate copy of the GoldenEye. I walked away, past a pub with footballs for lamps, and into a sparsely populate...
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round the north we go: July 2015
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Wednesday, 29 July 2015. The Bridge And The Ridge Near The Wressle And The Hessle. Sometimes, when I go on trips for this blog, I'm going somewhere new and exciting that I'm genuinely thrilled about. And sometimes, I'm just mopping up bits of the map I missed out on last time. Wressle was firmly in the second category. I'd planned on visiting it back in August 2013. I left the perfect English village behind and walked out into the perfect English countryside. It was a warm day, just the right side of...
