Welcome to Joanne’s Journal from Grasmere in the heart of the English Lake District
Recently, in quieter moments - and particularly since my children left home - I have begun to look back on my life and think wistfully about youthful adventures, past times and friends and family no longer here. In suspecting that ‘intimations of mortality’ are increasingly heightening my awareness about the ticking of my personal clock, watching a TV documentary on the Flying Scotsman triggered an early childhood memory riding the wonderful 7-mile narrow gauge ‘La’al Ratty’ miniature steam railway between Ravenglass (the only coastal village in our beautiful national park) and Dalegarth.
One of the narrow-gauge engines at La’al Ratty
Of course, I was far too young to know that William Wordsworth once railed against (ho ho) the construction of the full-scale Kendal and Windermere railway in the mid 19th century. Or, that in bringing wealthy Victorian passengers to the Lake District to see the grave of poet William Wordsworth in St Oswald’s Church, Grasmere, it would transform the fortunes of Grasmere Gingerbread® inventor Sarah Nelson. As her simple Church Cottage home adjoined the churchyard, devotees of Wordsworth and his soaring Romantic poetry passing by also fell in love with her spicy-sweet culinary sensation which she sold from a tree stump outside her front door.
Sarah was well know for chatting to her customers at the gate of Church Cottage
I suspect that even if I had had read Wordsworth’s poem ‘On the projected Kendal and Windermere Railway’ decrying the project’s ‘rash assault’ and ‘blight’ on ‘English ground secure’, I would still have elbowed past my siblings to get on board the La’al Ratty - currently celebrating its 150th anniversary. If I close my eyes, I can still hear the hooting and hissing of the engine as it pulled away from the terminus and all the children cheered.
My son Eamont enjoying his trip on La’al Ratty
As I wasn’t allowed to touch any of the trains on my brother’s Hornby train track in the attic, riding the ‘La’al Ratty’ was a fantastic consolation prize.
When it comes to this form of transport - now celebrating its own 200th anniversary - I also remember our first big family holiday to St Ives in Cornwall where the train journey took an epic 12 hours. We sat in one of those old-fashioned compartments for six people - the sort you see on Harry Potter’s Hogwarts’s Express - and I felt cocooned from the world. To this day I am captivated by steam trains and old black and white films featuring six-person compartment carriages and I cannot watch The Railway Children without a lump in my throat. A few years ago, I took my grown-up children to see a ‘live’ performance of Edith Nesbit’s fabulous story at King’s Cross Theatre which featured an actual steam train on real steel tracks.
Credit: James Petts, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
However, there was nothing romantic about the modern diesel train that took me from a bleak, vandalised and pigeon-infested Windermere Station to Lancaster & Morecambe College to study tourism and travel at the age of 16. Every Monday morning - as I lived in Morecambe during the week - I stood on that cold station platform and shuddered. Perhaps this experience is why, despite my love of steam trains, I never got into trainspotting (neither the film nor the obsession with writing down train numbers) but I do enjoy the YouTube videos by train fanatic Francis Bourgeois.
The original Windermere Railway Station, the terminal building in the background is now Booth’s supermarket
Credit: Walter Dendy, deceased, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
The other great train experience in Cumbria - and one which I undertake with a vacuum flask and picnic at least once a year just for fun - is riding the Carlisle to Settle line. Once threatened with closure, it is one of the most scenic train journeys in the country and the restored Ribblehead Viaduct is a marvel of Victorian engineering.
The impressive Ribblehead Viaduct
Credit: Graham Arrowsmith from Pixabay
Ah, nostalgia….
Until next time
Joanne
