Wednesday 7 August 2013

York to Knaresborough: Marketing A Branch Line

With renewed interest in revitalising the services on the Knaresborough to York railway line in North Yorkshire currently in the air, I present the following ruminations on how the service might be promoted...

‘Ouse-Nidd Express’
I don’t think so.  The name will not catch on…
But ‘market’ it, let people know!
“It’s central Yorkshire’s way to go”!

“Trans-Vale Executive - every day
with Business Class from Stray to Stray’!

‘Ouse-Nidd’?  ‘Nidd-Ouse’?
(The men peruse…)
It’s got to have a ‘hook’,
A selling aspect, profile plus,
It’s there if we just look.

Okay, airlines might not lose out
And freight, that’s not its line
But competition must be more
Than just ‘A59’.

Well, other aspects - something else?
Vacation angle, p’raps…
And heritage means revenue -
West Highland, Settle - Carlisle too;
Just look at tourist maps.

“Gothic splendour to the East -
A verdant gorge for eyes to feast
On to the West, then Yorkshire Dales
Rising up…”

Beyond these rails…

Because this is here.  They're miles away

Far beyond the green and grey
Of fields.  That’s all.  Of pigs and cows
Who hear the train, look up and browse,
Like central Ireland, a Polish spring.
It’s the grass round here that’s interesting.

So.
‘Knaresborough - York’:
What can it mean?
What lurks unheard of in between?
Awesome vistas? Mountain ranges?
Orange-groved old-English granges?

None of this.  No ‘selling’ factors.
Pig Sheds.
Silos.
Broken tractors.

No litany of exotic venues, this
No over-familiar names.
But quirky charm you cannot miss
A place of farms, not fame.

No.

It doesn’t even go from A to B but rather K to Y
In ‘ordinary’ railway style.
Lacklustre.  Plain.  Awry.
Does it encapsulate a time
When society really cared?
Or is it just a weary branch line that stayed because it’s there?


No portentous statement of an era
Bringing far-off places nearer
Just stations from which you… start.

Where semaphore and crossing gate
Bear testament to endless wait
For 150s that squeak and grate.

Which way does it come? Will it be late?
An emptiness that makes you dizzy.
Can this line be ever busy?

Yet, once aboard, in cosy heat
On blue veloured and comfy seat -
Was that a bridge?
I mustn’t blink -
That might have been some points I think.

And fishplates clack on single track
Where rusty ballast brown and old
Spills down the bank to rabbit holes
Punctuating telegraph poles…

But level, flat?
I’ll grant you that.

Tedious - but it has connections.
‘Glamour’s just a change away’.

People forget that railways are
A means to reach an end.
So forget ‘romantic’, forget the twee;
It’s a railway line for you and me
To travel when we want to be
Elsewhere.  At ease.  Without a care.

A simple route.  To take us there.

The country should be criss-crossed
With routes as plain as this.
And if we had them, then we’d use them
And we’d give the car a miss.
Different people every journey.
An opportunity to learn,
You do the crossword, read a book,
Give the River Nidd a look.
The sights to see, the smells, the sound -
Become aware of the world around.


Therefore this rural ramble becomes a journey of the mind.
‘Enlightenment’
‘Discovery’
That is what you’ll find.

So there.

Now recount on what we’ve said:
The way our verbal journey lead
Subjectively from A to Z,
And how many things we’ve found to talk
About the Knaresborough line to York

Which, as a line, it works just fine
Connecting Y to K.
A simple link,
Offering time to think.

I hope it stays that way.

Tuesday 6 August 2013

Llívia - Border Incidents at a Spanish Exclave

With a border dispute in Gibraltar making news at the moment, many people are citing the examples of Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s own possessions in overseas territories (exclaves), as a good reason why Madrid’s kettle should stop calling the UK's pot black.  Perhaps rightly so.  But, in addition to Ceuta and Melilla which nestle on the north African coast of Morocco, there exists a little-known third Spanish exclave which, like Gibraltar, is located on the European mainland. However (and unlike Gibraltar) there don't appear to be any problems for those wishing to drive into it.

Situated two miles over Spain’s northern border, and surrounded by the Pyrénées-Orientales départment of southern France, is the small and attractive Spanish town of Llívia.  Like Ceuta and Melilla, Llívia is a throwback to Spain’s past but rather than being a vestige of colonialism, its present isolation is the simple result of border changes several centuries ago.  In 1659, the Treaty of the Pyrenees ceded a number of Spanish villages in the area to France although not Llívia, which, as a city, was to remain Spanish.  It had been the ancient capital of Cerdanya and was perceived as too important to give away.  Today it is a quiet tourist centre - location of ‘Europe’s oldest pharmacy’ - with a population of around 1500.

The principle complaints arising in Gibraltar arise from the Spanish insistence on delaying (and possibly eliciting a fee from) cross-border traffic. Such traffic travelling through France between mainland Spain and Llívia moves effortlessly on a quiet highway but this hasn’t always been the case.

Look on any Spanish map and it is the N-154 that links Llívia to Spain.  Look on any French map and the N-154 becomes the D68 for 2 km through France.  For many years, this road, on which foreign vehicles were prohibited until 1995, formed a crossroads at its junction with the Avenue Emmanuel Brousse - the deceptively unassuming name given to France’s main N20, the European trunk route E9, in that particular area.  And it was here that belligerence (from both countries) raised its ugly head.

For the Spanish, the concept of having to yield to foreigners on what they considered a direct link between their own cities was out of the question.  For the French, the N20 linked Paris to the Pyrénées and was a prime artery on its national road network. 

Unsurprisingly both countries claimed right of way at this junction and it became the site of ‘la guerre des stops’.  Priority became a matter of national pride. For years any ‘stop’ signs erected by one country were quickly taken down by the other and, unsurprisingly, the junction was the scene of many horrific accidents until the Spanish built a flyover - El Pont de Llívia - in 1983.  (To add a certain frisson to negotiating the dangerous intersection, a level crossing with a 3rd rail electrified narrow gauge railway - ‘Le Train Jaune’ - was also incorporated into the site). 

Closer to the exclave of Llívia, a less expensive compromise was reached when a roundabout (described, for some reason, as ‘lovely’ in local tourist literature) was constructed at the junction of the link road and the D30, the only other French road it crosses, which serves nearby villages.  Even here, however, jingoism had its way.  Despite having four roads feeding off it, the roundabout featured an astonishing number of no-left- and no-right-turn signs festooned along each of its approaches, which prohibited all traffic from going anywhere other than straight across. Other than giving way to the left, the two nations could cross each other’s path in relatively calm oblivion.

And it is this very European D68/D30 solution by which the Gibraltar problem can be solved.  We might ask our old allies the French to tax the Spanish as they pass through their sovereign territory (the French could keep the income as ‘foreign aid’) but that would be unnecessarily confrontational. No, visitors to the rock should do what the Spanish and their neighbours do at Llívia - and which motorists across Europe do elsewhere to this very day.

Ignore the stop signs.