Porthmadog, squatting beside the sea under a merciless downpour, looked a grey and forgettable place, full of wet pebbledash and dark stone. Despite the rain, I examined the meagre stock of local hotels with some care 1 felt entitled to a spell of comfort and luxury after my night in a cheerless Llandudno guesthouse and I chose an inn called the Royal Sportsman. My room was adequate and clean, if not exactly outstanding, and suited my purposes. I made a cup of coffee and, while the kettle boiled, changed into dry clothes, then sat on the edge of the bed with a coffee and a Rich Tea biscuit, and watched a soap opera on television called Pobol Y Cwm, which I enjoyed very much. I had no idea what was going on, of course, but I can say with some confidence that it had better acting, and certainly better production values, than any programme ever made in, say, Sweden or Norway or Australia come to that. At least the walls didn't wobble when someone shut a door. It was an odd experience watching people who existed in a recognizably British milieu they drank tea and wore Marks & Spencer's cardigans but talked in Martian. Occasionally, I was interested to note, they dropped in English words ' hi ya', 'right then', 'OK' presumably because a Welsh equivalent didn't exist, and in one memorable encounter a character said something like 'Wlch ylch aargh ybsy cwm dirty weekend, look you,' which I just loved. How sweetly endearing of the Welsh not to have their own term for an illicit bonk between Friday and Monday.
By the time I finished my coffee and returned to the streets, the rain had temporarily abated, but the streets were full of vast puddles where the drains were unable to cope with the volume of water. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you would think that if one nation ought by now to have mastered the science of drainage, Britain would be it. In any case, cars aquaplaned daringly through these temporary lakes and threw sheets of water over nearby houses and shops. Mindful of my experience with puddles in Westori, and aware that this was a place where there truly was nothing to do on a Sunday, I proceeded up the High Street in a state of some caution.
I nosed around the tourist information centre, where I picked up a leaflet that informed me that Porthmadog was built in the early nineteenth century as a port for Blaenau slate by one Alexander Maddocks and that by late in the century a thousand ships a year were entering the port to carry off 116,000 tones of Welsh stone. Today the quayside is, inevitably, a renovated zone for yuppies, with cobbles and smart flats. I had a polite look at it, then followed a back lane through a harbourside neighbourhood of small boatyards and other marine businesses, and up one side of a residential hill and down the other until I found myself in the tranquil hamlet of BorthyGest, a pretty village of brick villas on a horseshoe bay with gorgeous views across Traeth Bach to Harlech Point and Tremadoc Bay beyond. BorthyGest had an engaging oldfashioned feel about it. In the middle of the village, overlooking the bay, was a subpost office with a blue awning announcing on the dangling part 'SWEETS' and 'ICES' and near by was an establishment called the Sea View Cafe. This place might have been lifted whole from Adventures on the Island. I was charmed at once.
I followed a grassy path out above the sea towards a headland. Even under low cloud, the views across the Glaslyn estuary and Snowdon range beyond were quite majestic. The wind was gusting and down below the sea battered the rocks in an impressively tempestuous way, but the rain at least held off and the air was sweet and fresh in that way you only get when you are beside the sea. The light was failing and I was afraid of ending up joining the waves on the rocks far below, so I headed back into town. When I got there, I discovered that the few businesses that had been open were now shut. Only one small beacon of halflight loomed from the enclosing darkness. I went up to see what it was and was interested to find that it was the southern terminus and operational HQ for the famous Blaenau Ffestiniog Railway.
Interested to see the nerve centre of this organization which had caused me so much distress and discomfort earlier, I went in. Though it was well after five, the station bookshop was still open and liberally sprinkled with silent browsers, so I went in and had anose around. It was an extraordinary place, with shelf after shelf of books, all with titles like Railways of the Winion Valley and Maivddach Estuary and The Complete Encyclopaedia of Signal Boxes. There was a multivolume series of books called Trains in Trouble, each consisting of page after page of photographs of derailments, crashes and other catastrophes a sort of trainspotter's equivalent of a snuff movie, I suppose. For those seeking more animated thrills, there were scores of videos. I took down one at random, called The Hunslet and Hundreds Steam Rally 1993, which bore a bold label promising '50 Minutes of Steam Action!' Under that there was a sticker that said: 'Warning: Contains explicit footage of a Sturrock 060 Heavy Class coupling with a GWR Hopper.' Actually, I just made that last part up, but I did notice, with a kind of profound shock, that all the people around me were browsing with precisely the same sort of selfabsorbed, quiet breathing concentration that you would find in a porno shop and I suddenly wondered if there was an extra dimension to this trainspotting lark that had never occurred to me.
According to a plaque on the wall in the ticket hall, the Blaenau Ffestiniog Railway was formed in 1832 and is the oldest still running in the world. I also learned from the plaque that the railway society has 6,000 members, a figure that staggers me from every possible direction. Though the last train of the day had finished its run some time ago, there was still a man in the ticket booth, so I went over and interrogated him quietly about the lack of coordination between the train and bus services in Blaenau. I don't know why, because I was charm itself, but he got distinctly huffy, as if I were being critical of his wife, and said in a petulant tone: 'If Gwynned Transport want people to catch the midday train from Blaenau, then they should have the buses set off earlier.'
'But equally,' I persisted, 'you could have the train leave a few minutes later.'
He looked at me as if I were being outrageously presumptuous, and said: 'But why should we?'
And there, you see, you have everything that is wrong with these train enthusiast types. They are irrational, argumentative, dangerously fussy and often, as here, have an irritating little Michael Fish moustache that makes you want to stick out two forked fingers and pop them in the eyes. Moreover, thanks to my journalistic sleuthing in the bookshop, I think we can safely say that there is a prima facie case to presume that they perform unnatural acts with steam
videos. For their own good, and for the good of society, they .should be taken away and interned behind barbed wire.
I thought about making a citizen's arrest there and then ' I detain you in the name of Her Majesty the Queen for the offence of being irritatingly intractable about timetables, and also for having an annoying and inadequate little moustache' but I was feeling generous and let him go with a hard look and an implied warning that it would be a cold day in hell before I ventured anywhere near his railway again. I think he got the message.
CHAPTER TWENTYONE
IN THE MORNING, I WALKED TO PORTHMADOG STATION NOT THE Blaenau Ffestiniog let'splayattrains one, but the real British Rail one. The station was closed, but there were several people on the platform, all studiously avoiding each other's gaze and standing, I do believe, on the same spot on which they stood every morning. I am pretty certain of this because as I was standing there minding my own business, a man in a suit arrived and looked at first surprised and then cross to find me occupying what was evidently his square metre of platform. He took a position a few feet away and regarded me with an expression not a million miles from hate. How easy it is sometimes, I thought, to make enemies in Britain. All you have to do is stand in the wrong spot or turn your car round in their driveway this guy had NO TURNING written all over him or inadvertently take their seat on a train, and they will quietly hate you to the grave.