Eventually a twocarriage Sprinter train came in and we all shuffled aboard. They really are the most comfortless, utilitarian, deeply unlovely trains, with their hardedged seats, their mystifyingly simultaneous hot and cold draughts, their harsh lighting and, above all, their noxious colour scheme with all those orange stripes and hopelessly jaunty chevrons. Why would anyone think that train passengers would like to be surrounded by a lot of orange, particularly first thing in the morning? I longed for one of those oldstyle trains that you found when I first came to Britain, the ones that had no corridors but consisted of just a series of selfcontained compartments, each a little world unto itself. There was always a frisson of excitement as you opened the carriage door because you never knew what you would find on the other side. There was something pleasingly intimate and random about sitting in such close proximity with total strangers. I remember once I was on one of these trains when one of the other passengers, a shylooking young man in a trench coat, was abruptly and lavishly sick on the floor it was during a flu epidemic and then had the gall to stumble from the train at the next station, leaving three of us to ride on into the evening in silence, with pinched faces and tuckedin toes and behaving, in that most extraordinary British way, as if nothing had happened. On second thoughts perhaps it is just as well that we don't have those trains any more. But I'm still not happy with the orange chevrons.
We followed a coastal route past broad estuaries and craggy hills beside the grey, flat expanse of Cardigan Bay. The towns along the way all had names that sounded like a cat bringing up a hairbalclass="underline" Llywyngwril, Morfa Mawddach, Llandecwyn, Dyffryn Ardudwy. At Penrhyndeudraeth the train filled with children of all ages, all in school uniforms. I expected shouting and smoking and things to be flying about, but they were impeccably behaved, every last one of them. They all departed at Harlech and the interior suddenly felt empty and quiet quiet enough that I could hear the couple behind me conversing in Welsh, which pleased me. At Barmouth we crossed another broad estuary, on a ricketylooking wooden causeway. I had read somewhere that this causeway had been closed for some years and that Barmouth had until recently been the end of the line. It seemed a kind of miracle that BR had invested the money to repair the causeway and keep the line open, but I bet that if I were to come back in ten years, this trundling, halfforgotten line to Porthmadog will be in the hands of enthusiasts like those of the Blaenau Ffestiniog Railway and that some twit with a fussy little moustache will be telling me that I can't make a connection at Shrewsbury because it doesn't suit the society's timetable.
So I was pleased, three hours and 105 miles after setting off, to make a connection at Shrewsbury while the chance was still there. My intention was to turn north and resume my stately progress towards John O'Groats, but as I was making my way through the station, I heard a platform announcement for a train to Ludlow, and impulsively I boarded it. For years I had heard that Ludlow was a delightful spot, and it suddenly occurred to me that this might be my last chance to see it. Thus it was that I found myself, some twenty minutes later, alighting on to a lonely platform at Ludlow and making my way up a long hill into the town.
Ludlow was indeed a charming and agreeable place on a hilltop high above the River Teme. It appeared to have everything you could want in a community bookshops, a cinema, some appealinglooking tearooms and bakeries, a couple of 'family butchers' (I always want to go in and say, 'How much to do mine?'), an oldfashioned Woolworth's and the usual assortment of chemists, pubs, haberdashers and the like, all neatly arrayed and respectful of their surroundings. The Ludlow Civic Society had thoughtfully put plaques up on many of the buildings announcing who had once lived there. One such hung on the wall of the Angel, an old coaching inn on Broad Street now sadly and I hoped only temporarily boarded up. According to the plaque, the famous Aurora coach once covered the hundred or so miles to London in just over twentyseven hours, which just shows you how much we've progressed. Now British Rail could probably do it in half the time.
Near by I chanced upon the headquarters of an organization called the Ludlow and District Cats Protection League, which intrigued me. Whatever, I wondered, did the people of Ludlow do to their cats that required the setting up of a special protective agency? Perhaps I'm coming at this from the wrong angle, but short of setting cats alight and actually throwing them at me, I can't think of what you would have to do to drive me to set up a charity to defend their interests. There is almost nothing, apart perhaps from a touching faith in the reliability of weather forecasts and the universal fondness for jokes involving the word 'bottom', that makes me feel more like an outsider in Britain than the nation's attitude to animals. Did you know that the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was formed sixty years after the founding of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and as an offshoot of it? Did you know that in 1994 Britain voted for a European Union directive requiring statutory rest periods for transported animals, but against statutory rest periods for factory workers?
But even against this curious background, it seemed extraordinary to me that there could be a whole, clearly wellfunded office dedicated just to the safety and wellbeing of Ludlow and District cats. I was no less intrigued by the curiously specific limits of the society's selfimposed remit the idea that they were interested only in the safety and wellbeing of Ludlow and District cats.
What would happen, I wondered, if the members of the league found you teasing a cat just outside the district boundaries? Would they shrug resignedly and say, 'Out of our jurisdiction'? Who can say? Certainly not I, because when I approached the office with a view to making enquiries, I found that it was shut, its members evidently and I wish you to read nothing into this out to lunch.
Which is where I decided to be. I went across the road to a pleasant little salad bar restaurant called the Olive Branch, where I quickly made myself into a pariah by taking a table for four. The place was practically empty when I arrived and as I was struggling with a rucksack and a tippy tray, I took the first empty table. But immediately I sat down people poured in from all quarters and for the rest of my brief lunch period I could feel eyes burrowing into me from people who turned from the till to find me occupying a space obviously not designed for a solitary diner and that they would have to take their trays to the unpopular More Seating Upstairs section, evidently a disagreeable option. As I sat there, trying to eat quickly and be obscure, a man from two tables away came and asked me in a pointed tone if I was using one of the chairs, and took it without awaiting my reply. I finished my food and slunk from the place in shame.
I returned to the station and bought a ticket for the next train to Shrewsbury and Manchester Piccadilly. Because of a points failure somewhere along the line, the train was forty minutes late arriving. It was packed and the passengers were testy. I found a seat by disturbing a tableful of people who gave up their space grudgingly and glared at me with disdain more enemies! What a day I was having! and sat crammed into a tiny space in my overcoat in an overheated carriage with my rucksack on my lap. I had vague hopes of getting to Blackpool, but I couldn't move a muscle and couldn't get at my rail timetable to see where I needed to change trains, so I just sat and trusted that I could catch an onward train at Manchester.