Leeds. York, Northallerton, Thirsk....

[cosmolinguist]

I'm on a train to Middlesbrough. I'm getting off in Huddersfield. I think it's been a while since I have been on a train going so much further than I am going on it.

This used to happen a lot when I was coming back from band practice; I'd get a train from the airport to Piccadilly, but the train would keep telling me it was for Barrow-in-Furness. I was always enthralled by this and a strange compulsion to stay on, travel through the night to the wilds of the real north of England; get there at two in the morning or something with nothing to do but look at the stars. All the names along the way sounded so tantalizing too.

Anyone who knows anything about Barrow-in-Furness or Middlesbrough is bound to laugh at this, but it's not about the destinations so much as the distance. There feels like some kind of gravitational pull, or something like a rubber band stretched tight that wants nothing more than to snap back to its faraway origin, when I'm on a train like this.

Comments

[sfred]

I used to get that when I was commuting from Sheffield to Leeds - and was tempted to go instead to Edinburgh or Penzance.

[cosmolinguist]

Ooh, yes, those seem particularly tempting places to me too :)

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

I definitely recognise that feeling about wanting to stay on the train. It would make a good scene in a novel - a moment of epiphany for a character, representing their sudden spontaneous decision to break out of the narrow confines of their ordinary life and allow the momentum of the journey to carry them forward into a whole different world.

[cosmolinguist]

Exactly! Yes. Train travel is so evocative.

Probably doesn't hurt that I always used to imagine my life as a novel (always the first bit of the novel, establishing the heroine's quotidian life just before it gets good).

[diffrentcolours]

...and then they end up in Barrow-in-Furness ;)

I do get tempted to jump on the cargo trains that go through my local station at times, because they don't stop at passenger stations at all and could go to some really interesting places...

[cosmolinguist]

Oh yes, the freight trains make me happy. Not least because my parents are close to train tracks (well, much further, but still you can hear them at night). Though where they live is no doubt even less interesting than Barrow-in-Furness.