[Audiobook]
Final Destination, Riding Britain’s Trains to the End of the Line, by Nige Tassell
This book follows a tour, north to south, of the railway lines of Britain, taking the train to the end of sixteen train lines and exploring what he finds at each.
In each case he describes the journey, the train and some of the characters he encounters on it, the scenery through which it travels and sometimes some of the history that made the line what it is today.
Once he arrives, he explores the place he alights in, often a forgotten town of some kind, somewhere that doesn’t seem like a destination. There are a number of liminal places, where land meets sea, tracks cannot continue.
Each of the lines he rides has its own character, not only from the landscape through which it travels, but from the people it carries, staff and passengers. He records some of the overheard conversations, little peeks into the lives of strangers.
There are a number of highlights, he joins a trainful of goths heading across the moors to the Whitby festival and a townful of vikings. His description of his traversal of the desert of Dungeness almost, but not quite, captures a dismal post nuclear wasteland, spoiled only by timing his narrow gauge visit in the height of summer, when there were plenty of day visitors. Memories of family visits to Camber Sands from my own childhood abound.
This is the kind of book I could have/should have written, riding to the ends of the rails myself many times, just to see what was there, although most of my adventures were on city subway systems. Tokyo provided abundant opportunities for this kind of exploration, and, if you are feeling particularly enthusiastic, you can find my livejournal entries imported into the early days of this blog – let me know if you find a good entry, I didn’t find anything particularly relevant in my cursory search.
Of course I didn’t write these adventures up very well at the time and there is now no way to reconstitute them from their hazy memories. Next time I impulsively move to another country I’ll do a better job.
A book for those who want to explore the rail network without the hassle of tickets and timetables, or actually going anywhere.
