Stumbling upon stations

If a Big Day Out is meant to prominently feature the destination's main railway station, then with Bath I have failed. Normally, of course, I would arrive by train, and depart likewise, affording ample opportunity to photograph the station's frontage, ticket hall, shed, platforms and whatever other features took my fancy. I have to tell you, I have not even seen the front of Bath Spa station, let alone the interior. However, perambulating on Saturday, I did manage to creep up behind it, via the car park.

And that was charming enough.

In some ways - particularly as the replacement bus service was so good, and so well signposted - coming at a weekend when no trains were running was a bonus. The station was ghostly; empty of people, with automated announcements about 'the next bus to depart...' ringing out over deserted platforms.

Look at the great wide gap between the tracks - the legacy of Brunel's 7' (and a quarter inch - gosh, how remarkably similar to the beam of a GU boat) gauge.

A bit of a battle of the fonts was in evidence.

But enough of Bath Spa, which was in fact the last station I visited on this trip. Earlier in the day, on the doorstep of where I was staying, I stumbled upon another station - which I would have known about if I had read my Jenkins more thoroughly in advance.

This one I did get to go inside, because Bath Green Park (formerly Queen Square) station now serves as a covered market (and, admittedly, car park), which was just starting to pack up as I arrived. There are worse fates, and indeed, the structure would seem to lend itself admirably to the purpose. Green Park was built in 1868-9, nearly thirty years after Bath Spa, and closed in 1966.

Whereas Spa is, of course, the Great Western station, Green Park (or Queen Square as it then was) was the work of the Midland Railway, eager to outdo its older rival in elegance.

And while we're on the subject, here's a little detail from another fabulous Midland Railway station that I passed through on my journey.

Possibly the most gorgeous station I've ever seen

And no, it's not in Bath

I was completely spoilt for railway stations on this trip, managing to take in three, all of which warrant a mention in Simon Jenkins' Britain's Hundred Best Railway Stations - a tome which I drool over nearly as much as CAMRA's National Inventory of Historic Pub Interiors (and that got a hammering on this trip too). OK, one of the stations wasn't in Bath and so including it is a bit of a cheat (especially as it's potential destination number 123) but I am including it because, firstly because of engineering works, it was where my train journey began and ended; secondly, I've seen it from the inside many times, but never from the outside, because this is one major English city that I have so far never visited, and thirdly, because it is stunningly, awesomely,  jaw-droppingly gorgeous.

I did not get this view when I arrived in Bristol. Unusually, in my experience, the route to the rail replacement bus was well and clearly signposted, taking me past a child-friendly mosiac of the Great Man (incidentally, in an age when all manner of Victorian names are enjoying a resurgence, I remain perplexed as to why Isambard hasn't caught on)

and down a dank tunnel where it looked as if we had no right to be

I have to say that the rail replacement buses on this trip, in both directions, worked without a hitch, although I did have to take the precaution on arriving in Bath of checking where it would leave from, which wasn't the station itself but the bus station. Everyone was very helpful and the buses were luxury coaches. (I suppose it was ten years ago now when we came back from Three Bridges to Lewes on a knackered old double decker with condensation streaming down the windows and chewing gum stuck all over...).

And when we were dropped off back in Bristol, my first sight of Temple Meads station really did make me catch my breath and swear in awe. To my mind, it even gives St Pancras a run for its money.

The platforms are fabulous too. You know how I love faiance

Someone is still making these castings:

... at £275 a pair plus you've got to go and get them. I'm sorely tempted.


But that's enough of the station I wasn't even meant to be visiting. I think Bath's stations will have to wait until tomorrow now.

Like Saltaire, but more of it.

Big Day Out in Bath - First Impressions

You wouldn't have thought, would you, that a small northern mill town and a city that's the epitome of Georgian elegance would have much in common, but my first two Big Day Out destinations have thrown up a surprising number of similarities.

Both have the waterways double of a river and a canal. Both are largely built of stone. Both are a monochrome, tasteful, shade of beige. As befits their shared status as World Heritage Sites, both have the sense of being preserved in aspic, with nary a plastic window and scarcely a modern building to be seen.

The difference is that with Bath, there's so much more of it. Finish admiring one breathtakingly designed, perfectly executed, meticulously preserved square, or circus, or parade... turn the corner... and there's another one - a groundhog day of architectural excellence. In Saltaire, it's charming; in Bath it's oppressive, like being drowned in golden granulated sugar.

Which is not, of course, to say that there is nothing to admire in Bath, nothing awe-inspiring, or beautiful, or stunning; nothing interesting, or historic. On the contrary: there is far too much of it. You almost feel that Bath is hogging more than its fair share, and some of this beauty should be redistributed to places with less of their own.

As my rail replacement bus to Bristol eventually reached Bath's banlieues, the sight of an ugly building came as a relief.

And one more I found down the back of the sofa

Oh, ok, on my photostream on the iPad - fortunately just before it got bumped by the dozens I took on my Big Weekend off - of which the tale will begin tomorrow.

In the meantime, Beaulieu has been added to the Sticker Album. Sixty-one down, twenty-five to go.

Two more for the album

Scrolling through last year's photos on the iPad the other day, I realised I had two more for the sticker album: Gainsborough and Greenlaw.

I now have, in the album, 60 out of a possible 86.

I could, however, have had 67 - there are another seven I know I have seen, but either didn't photograph, or can't find the photo - including, ridiculously, Purton, which I see everywhere we go, and have been on quiz teams with its owners. Also seen but not collected are Beaulieu, Bexhill, Bournemouth, Elstree, Halsall and Shirley.

The nineteen remaining that to my knowledge I either haven't seen, or might have but I'm not quite certain I've remembered correctly are: Barnham, Buxton, Caldy, Calstock, Cambourne, Coleshill, Cantley, Dunstable, Epsom, Kelso, Oakley, Pinner, Reading, Renton, Rufford, Stirling, Sutton, Tipton, and Usworth.

I also finally tracked down this photo, which I'd already blogged back in 2009, in which Yeoford is hiding.

'It's how you knew you were home'

Had I a better sense of orientation, I might have photographed their absence. As it is, with my two terrible, off-horizontal, shots, I don't think I did.

The Tinsley Viaduct is interesting enough in itself, a double decker road bridge, built 1965-68,  carrying the M1 (above) and the A 631 (below) across the canal, the river, the railway and the tramline.

When I worked in Huddersfield, before I had ever visited Sheffield, on the very rare occsaions I travelled by car I would look down from here at the city nestled in its basin of river valleys, and it was characterised by the glint of Meadowhall and the brutal, beautiful mass of what I now know to have been the Tinsley Cooling Towers:

Photo: Tim Herrick (used under Creative Commons licence)

These were built in the same year as Chertsey (well, 1937-8), providing additional capacity for the 1921 Blackburn Meadows coal fired power station, and as such were very early examples of the hyperbolic design that is now the familiar - even iconic - symbol of a power station.

Blackburn Meadows was closed in 1980, and most of the site cleared. The towers, however, couldn't be demolished without risk to the viaduct, so they stayed for nearly another thirty years. Shorn of their function, they became a landmark - towering, in a more literal way than many of their counterparts, over their surroundings.

Photo: Sheffield Star

But following the strengthening of the viaduct  in 2006, the towers' owners, E.ON, decided to demolish them, and the decision was carried out - in the face of much local opposition - in the early hours of August 24th 2008.

One person described them to me as 'Sheffield's Angel of the North'.  A Yorkshireman of my acquaintance, who, if not exactly taciturn, is certainly not given to displays of emotion, told us after a couple of pints how upset he was when they were demolished, saying that seeing them from the motorway was 'how you knew you were home.'

Photo: BBC

I must confess that it was a long time after arriving in Sheffield that I noticed that those massive symbols of the city were no longer there. It's like I said the other day - you turn your back for a moment...

Restorative thoughts

The other week Paul asked if I was a member of any restoration groups. The best I could offer was a lapsed membership of the Wey and Arun Trust.

So I followed the failsafe practice that led me to join the Ramblers, got up very early, and downloaded a couple of membership forms and wrote a couple of cheques before I could think better of it.

If you compiled a list of canal restoration projects in rank order of their likelihood of being completed, I reckon my two would be somehere near the opposite extremes (whereas in an alphabetical list, (and my, what a long list it is) they're both fairly near the top).

It's lucky that I made myself do it on impulse, because I'm already having doubts about the Barnsley, Dearne and Dove Canals Trust. It's not just that there's a vital 'and' missing from their name - that bothered me from the start. There was a Barnsley Canal, and there was a Dearne and Dove Canal. So it should be the Barnsley and Dearne and Dove Canals Trust. It's also that going by their website, they appear not to have done anything substantive since 2006, when they had a feasibility study done, and last posted some news (they showed someone the feasibility study) - ending, hopefully, with 'watch this space' - five years ago.  We shall see what arrives in the post.

The Chesterfield Canal Trust on the other hand seem pretty lively - and I got an e-newsletter two days after posting off my form, and a big package in the post by the end of the week.

I have no particular plans with regard to either of them, but I thought I might get to meet some people, and maybe do something useful, one way or another.

Naburn update

You will recall that four weeks ago, I buttonholed the local CRT volunteer co-ordinator and signed up to volunteer with Naburn, despite not being quite sure how it all worked. Having not heard anything for four weeks, on Wednesday night I sent a carefully crafted email, with carefully selected people copied in, rather sadly wondering why they hadn't got back to me. It turns out there was a reason! And that I have highlighted a glitch in their system that has now been 'raised'.

Apparently, becasue, as a licence holder, I elected not to receive communications (what my charming correspondent referred to as 'newsletters, campaigns, fundraising information or a whole number of things') any attempt to email me was automatically blocked by CRT's system. Glad to be of service CRT.

No sooner had I given my written assent to receiving emails about Naburn's activities, than one arrived. Sadly, it was for today (offside litter picking), when, as on every other week day, I am working, but at least the system is working now.

Anyway, I finished my email by attempting to open a whole new can of worms, thus:

What I find even more frustrating is the wasted opportunities presented by the boat itself. Naburn is one of only a handful of boats that have continuously remained in the ownership of CRT and its predecessor organisations since nationalisation in 1948, and, as I understand it, has been a maintenance boat in the area since 1963. As such, Naburn is a valuable historical resource in its own right that you could be making so much more of - not just using the boat for maintenance work, but as a true community boat, used for educational purposes and to promote the canal and CRT waterways - and CRT itself - more widely. You only have to look at what the Chesterfield Canal Trust are doing with Python (another former maintenance boat converted from an older carrying boat) to see some of the possibilities. I would be delighted to work with you to explore and develop ideas and opportunities around this.

Maybe there's scope for a 'Friends of Naburn' or 'Naburn Association' to do just that..?

What's been lost?

Any Sheffielder - native or adoptive - will know the answer to this, but here's a spot the difference for the rest of you.

I was going to give the answer tomorrow, but as no one so far has even had a go at it, I shall keep you in suspense until Sunday. After tomorrow night, Sheffielders, if no one else has cracked it, you are welcome to show off your knowledge.

(It's nothing to do with bridge numbers)
It's not a pub.
It's not Meadowhall.

Welcome to the 100th post of 2019

Some years didn't make it this far: 2014, 2015 and 2018 all had fewer than 100 posts. 2016 had 100 exactly, and the 100th one was about a filthy face flannel. In 2010, the 100th post was about going to Ely and buying some copper sheet and what became Chertsey's chimney chain. In 2010, the 100th post was likewise on April 10th, because in 2010 I posted every day until October 4th, and then only twenty times thereafter. That's a worrying thought for this year's prospects, but I shall have to see if I can do better. 2010 still holds the record for the most posts in a year, with 297.

Next, with 197, is the following year, 2011, closely followed by 2017 with 195. 2011's 100th post included welcoming a newly painted and signwritten Chertsey back from Grendon, whilst 2017's was a sad farewell to another blog. In 2012, when we were living on Bakewell, the 100th post was about having repainted the cans, and in the final year to boast a 100th post, 2013 ... well, it's a mystery, because it was just a photo, and Blogpress (with which I am very displeased) has eaten it. Scrolling back and forth a few posts, I conclude that this related to the abortive attempt to take a trip on the paddle steamer Waverley. Post 100 did not occur until October that year.

Going back further, every one of the Warrior blog's years hit the 100 mark. Its first year, 2006, equalled that of a decade later, with a round 100, the last of which was a review of the year - buit of course, it had only started in April.  2008's 100th (of 245) has Sebastian modelling a Keep Calm and Carry On t-shirt (an original Barter Books one) and a sinister grin, in mid-June. 2007's 100th post was the blog's 200th, and came in May, with repairs to the castle painting on one of Warrior's back doors. 2007 went on to clock up 247 posts, but was beaten by 2009's 267 - of which the 100th was easily the most momentous and significant of this collection - the first time I ever steered a big Woolwich, only slightly less than ten years ago.

I thought I'd append a list of years in descending order of blogging profligacy:

1. 2010
2. 2009
3. 2007
4. 2008
5. 2011
6. 2017
7. 2012
8. 2013
9. 2006
10. 2016
11. 2014
12. 2018
13. 2015

1970

Long time readers will recall that a few years ago I was sent some fabulous photos by Richard Pearson - including this one of Chertsey loading at Gopsall on August 18th 1970: 

and unloading at Croxley Mill on August 24th:

I know I've posted both of these before (although not together, I don't think) but I'll never have too much of them. More prosaically, these are the ones I know Richard is happy for me to post.

Richard, in case you were wondering, was Chertsey's steerer on that trip - Chertsey's last commercial carrying run. Over the course of it he took some very good photographs, and he has now put them on Flickr, starting here. I love this one, which I hadn't seen before until Richard sent it last week - is that a young Ian Kemp? But most amazing of all, is this - Chertsey on the Grand Union with 23 tons on; the last time (certainly to my knowledge) she was ever loaded. This might explain the mystery - which I recall Alan Fincher commenting on - of the loop of rope protruding from the mast box in the first photo - it appears perhaps to be a means of retrieving the mast? If you look through his albums Richard has some further fabulous working boat pictures from the 70s, including a lot of lovely northern boats of various sorts.

Although this was the only Gopsall-Croxley trip that Chertsey did under Richard Barnet's ownership - and the reason that young Richard Pearson ended up steering was because Richard Barnet really wanted to make the trip before the traffic finished (which it did on September 3rd that year) but couldn't get the time off work - records that Nick Hill has kindly shared with me show that she was a regular on the papermills traffic under BW ownership in the late 1950s and very early 60s.

Ever since assuming custodionship of Chertsey nearly ten years ago, I knew I wanted to do something to mark the fiftieth anniversary of this trip next year, and plans - albeit at an early stage - are now afoot and some key participants already on board, as it were - so barring catastrophe (or my boss not giving me the time off, in which case I likewise will have to recruit Richard Pearson to take my place) - at least two of the boats present that week will be retracing their wakes - and hopefully many more (I haven't even asked everyone yet). I think I might wait until after Hebden Bridge...

A canal I hadn't heard of

On our walk to Rotherham, Paul introduced me to a canal I don't think I had even heard of before.

The Greasbrough Canal opened in 1780 (following many abortive plans dating back a number of years) and remained in use for only about sixty years. A surprising amount of its short length remains in water, and we saw (but I did not photograph) another section further up when we were looking for the Parkgate tram stop.

Hopefully this knowledge will stand me in good stead in a HNBC quiz at some point.

For nearly a quarter of my life ...

... I have been blogging. Thirteen years ago this week, I made my very first blog post; thirteen years ago today, my second.

I was working at the University of Huddersfield, living on Andante, and we had just bought Warrior. At work, for some reason I can't now recall, I wanted to set up some kind of interactive web presence. The departmental techie told me that they couldn't take the risk of hosting anything open to the world at large on the university's servers, but why didn't I try this Blogger thing? (The same techie, by the way, reverently handed me my first memory stick - all 128 MB of it - which I still use for carrying my teaching PowerPoints around)

I never did set up the work-related blog, but I did set up my own. At the time I was a regular reader of Pharyngula - which I am amazed and delighted to see is still going. I found that blog through a really nice post about the July 7th 2005 London bombings, which happened while I was in Huddersfield. Sadly I can't find that post (basically about how great and calm and stoical Londoners are compared to Americans) now, but I stayed with Pharyngula for the wit and the atheism (I can never read an abbreviation of free school meals without thinking of the Flying Spaghetti Monster), and that was basically my entire knowledge and experience of blogging, but I very quickly discovered the (then) famous Granny Buttons, Canal World Forums, and the world of boating blogs, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The Warrior blog lasted for nearly four years, but at the beginning of 2010 I transferred operations to Chertsey, so this is my tenth year of blogging here.

All this is by way of background to introducing the few changes I have finally made. I have weeded the blogroll a bit - I've removed most of the blogs that haven't posted for more than a year, but left Blossom's because it's such a good read. I've added a few - none of them historic, sadly - I'd love to hear of more historic boaters blogging. The one's I've added are the ones I'll enjoy reading. Welcome Briar Rose, Free Spirit and Harnser - all, incidentally, bloggers whom I have met. For a more comprehensive list, head over to Halfie or Briar Rose. Scrolling down those blogrolls now, I'm struck by how quickly I come to ones that haven't updated for a long time. I've stuck up a new masthead photo, but forgotten how to make the title visible again - I think I turned it into invisible writing at one point, but I fear these old templates are getting less and less supported and fewer and fewer features. And, of course, I've added Paul's Waterway Routes, where he blogged about our little jaunt last week, to the links list.

And you might also notice, amongst the gadgets to the right, that the chart position thingy has reappeared. Looking back to Warrior days, I see that I was in fact a very early adopter of this - the sixth site to sign up when it was launched a little over ten years ago. When I signed Chertsey up, early in 2010, I was user number 131 (and how I kicked myself for not signing up that little bit sooner). For some reason - probably in one of the fallow years when I posted very little and it must have been becoming dispiriting - I unsubscribed. And so things would have remained, but for Paul mentioning last week that he has now taken over the UK Waterways Sites Ranking website, and why didn't I sign up again.  So I did. This time my number is 1146. But it's a very different landscape out there now. Many many blogs must have come and gone, but it seems that there are a great deal fewer regularly active ones. The days of a top hundred blogs are gone, it seems. Still, it will provide me with some innocent fun as I track my popularity - entirely uncompetitively, of course.

Sheffield's slightly mislaid river

Sheffield famously has seven hills, and five rivers. Four of the rivers are easily seen, and I've walked alongside each of them at some time, sometimes for yards, sometimes for miles. The fifth I have probably walked over, maybe heard, but until last Sunday, hadn't seen. Ironically, Sheffield's least visible river is the one that gave the city its name.

Here is the River Sheaf, emerging form its culvert to join the River Don at Blonk Street Bridge, not far from the canal basin.

I said it's ironic, but there's a certain logic to the fact that the river that founded the city was ultimately swallowed by it. Slightly more of it may soon be revealed, however.

Having signed up again for the waterways websites hit parade (of which more tomorrow), I feel honour bound (and indeed contractually bound) to write about more wet stuff, so it occurs to me that getting out and about along and above Sheffield's rivers could be a nice little sideline.

The poignant ephemerality of dereliction

It's not putting it too strongly to say that I love decaying and derelict buildings, especially industrial ones, and especially ones that were well built, beautiful and proud in the first place. It's not the sort of love that makes you happy.

It's not that I get pleasure from seeing them in the process of ceasing to be; of dying. It actually makes me sad that that's happening, that their glory days (no matter how hard or cruel) are gone, and that soon so will they be, replaced by something bland and banal, or maybe strikingly ugly, that won't last a quarter as long. Or maybe an even worse fate, to be gutted and cleaned and made fit for consumption and occupation by the ever-so-slightly edgy...

So it's sad, but it's moving; it's stirring, and it's magnetic. That's still love. It's the romantic longing for something lost, and the safe yearning for something unattainable.

When things are gone, I can't remember them. When they are half gone, I can't remember them as they were. The awareness of this adds an urgency to my need to assimilate this frozen moment of super-slo-mo collapse.

Autistic people are supposed to be bad with change, and I think that's true up to a point. We're bad with impending change; the knowledge that change is coming throws us into a panic. But, apparently ironically, we're really good at embracing change once it's happened - and I think these are two sides of the same coin. What we can't do is handle two possible realities simultaneously - so we can't cope with the current reality alongside the possible future reality, and that makes change difficult in advance. But because we equally can't accommodate the past alongside the present, we have to let the past go, so we don't keep harking back to it and comparing present reality with it - once change has happened we just get on with the new normal.

And this, maybe, is why witnessing the process of change is a big deal for me; knowing that this state is ephemeral makes me uneasy; seeing something proud and beautiful corrupted and dying makes me sad, and angry, and I don't want to turn my back and walk away in case it's not there when I look back.

Whoah! Didn't see that flash of insight coming.

Down the river to Rotherham

Every previous time, when I've got to the bottom of the Sheffield Canal, I've turned round and come back. But not last Sunday, when instead I turned left across a bridge, and found myself on the towpath of the River Don, heading towards Rotherham. For much of its length, the Sheffield and South Yorkshire Navigation is embanked and canalised, but there are some rivery stretches too.

Here we are looking back toward Sheffield - Sheffield to the right; weir to the left.

And here, that sign in the distance promises the far off glamour of Doncaster, Goole, Leeds and Keadby.

Along the way we saw a fair few local people enjoying the river. Some were just strolling the wide, well-made paths. Others were fishing, or magnet fishing, and one lot had lit a fire on the bank - they weren't all what everyone would consider the most desirable characters, but they were all minding their own business and didn't cause us any trouble. The only moving boat we saw all day was Ethel, the wide community boat from the Basin, which was taking a small party of children in enormous lifejackets as far as the top lock.

There were swans in this very large winding hole.

And so we approached Rotherham

Rotherham Central station - there on the left - piece of cake to find. Parkgate Tram-Train stop... not so easy.

On this lock, one top and one bottom paddle have to be left open to feed the canal. Paul wondered why some people seemed to have trouble understanding this... But the sign actually says: 'Please ensure headgate and tailgate sluices are left fully open when leaving the lock. Offside sluice [sic] are kept closed and locked by CRT.' It's not exactly helpful, is it.

Below the lock is the remains of a swing bridge.

From Tinsley bottom lock to here was just under two and a half miles - as Paul pointed out, it's easier to keep going to Rotherham and get the tram back than it is to turn and walk back to Sheffield.

A local boat for local people

I wouldn't like to swear that this was a Sheffield keel (or Sheffield boat) but it's certainly the nearest thing I've seen on my travels so far. I realised in conversation with David the weekend before last that I know next to nothing about these boats, and now I'm here I really should, so I've started giving myself a crash course, starting with Paget-Tomlinson's British Canal and River Craft (1979).

What I learned first from David, and have since built upon, is that the term 'keel' actually denotes the kind of sailing rig that the boat would have had, rather than actually telling you anything about its hull. They come in various sizes, with the Sheffield size being the most common.

Now this is interesting, because a Sheffield boat is 61'6" x 15'6".

My new 2017 edition of Nicholsons (p. 149) says 'No boat longer than 60'0" may now use these [Tinsley] locks.'

So have the locks suddenly got a foot and a half shorter? Is this why they felt obliged to use a cut down large Northwich instead of a Sheffield boat to lead the bicentenary parade? I was speaking to the lock keeper on Sunday (of which more, perhaps, anon.) Maybe I should have asked him. Or maybe not.

Is it a tram? Is it a train? No! It's Supertram Tram-Train!

Paul confessed to me on Sunday that when we were tentatively agreeing to meet and undertake our respective surveys of the Sheffield Canal in tandem, he was unsure how he was going to break it to me that we would have to travel back on the tram train so that he could add it to his railway experience collection, and thus was relieved when I suggested that no day out to Rotherham would be complete without such a trip.

The tram train (or Tram-Train) only started running last October, which represents pretty early adoption for me. It's a tram, that runs - for an admittedly short distance - on a railway track. This means that it has to be a special tram, just that bit tougher than an ordinary tram, and that it has to have special signalling, because it's not nearly as tough as an actual train and thus has to really avoid having a train running into the back of it.  (Paul explained this to me, along with what the signals we saw along the way meant.)

The tram train starts at Rotherham Parkgate, hidden round the back of a shopping centre. The SSYN towpath delivered us with ease to Rotherham Central station, but we had no hesitation in agreeing that we needed to start at the very first/final stop, so spent another half hour or so trying to find it.

There are three tram trains an hour, but not at regular intervals - they have to fit in around the other (real) trains. We arrived with 23 minutes to wait (not an hour and 23 minutes, as it appeared, the next tram/train indicator being on BST but the clock display still showing GMT). It was a pleasant enough and quiet place to wait. Very quiet.

You can tell which are the tram tracks, because round these parts they're the only ones that are electrified.

Eventually we heard the tram train approaching...

I've seen these new models plenty of times in the city centre, but not here doing what they were built to do. So on we got, and nabbed the best seats directly behind the driver's cab (there was at this point, only one other passenger) which gave an excellent view both of the inside of the cab and the controls, and also of the track ahead.

As a fully integrated part of the tram network, a single ticket to nearly all the way home, including a change, was £2.50.

The conductor brought the driver a bar of chocolate (he seemed quite touched by the gesture, and put it aside for later) and then we set off.  It was as well that we'd taken the trouble to start from Parkgate, as we were very soon at Rotherham Central, then soon after that we passed a sign saying 'trams only' then one that said something about line of sight operation (I forget the exact words, but it meant that there were no more signals), and by the time we got to Meadowhall/Tinsley South, we were just on an ordinary tram.

I could have stayed on the tram-train tram until it terminated at Cathedral, but a single ticket doesn't allow you to double back on yourself, so Paul needed to change at Fitzalan Square/Ponds Forge for his connection back to the (Midland) station (well, we kind of started from Victoria...) so I got off there too, and almost immediately, along came a yellow line for Middlewood, so I quickly said farewell to Paul and thanks for his excellent company, and within another five minutes I was making the final climb home after an absolutely splendid day out. I do like the tram.

Walking a Waterway Route

When I last posted about bridge numbering on the Sheffield Canal, Paul from Waterway Routes left a comment, inviting me to get in touch, which I did, and Paul very kindly send me a copy of his SSYN map, which I have to say was splendidly clear and easy to read. More on bridge numbers later, but this post is going to become the third in a series which should probably appear at 5.30 a.m. on Radio 4, called Walking the Sheffield Canal With... Because it quickly transpired that Paul was planning to visit Sheffield very shortly to check on whether any updates are required for the maps he so painstakingly compiles, and we then established that we would both be more than happy to walk from Sheffield Basin to Rotherham and then come back on the tram train, so yesterday that's what we did.

I must confess I hadn't previously paid a great deal of attention to Waterway Routes - I recalled Halfie having given them a trial a while back but it all seemed a bit techie for me. However, Paul has now given me (my first ever freebie in thirteen years of blogging!) a copy, and having re-read Halfie's glowing review of the Memory Map version I'm so keen to give it a go that I may well buy an Android tablet for that purpose (if I understand Paul correctly, it's a lot harder on Apple devices, and it would be good to have a less expensive device (and incidentally one that doesn't actually, technically, belong to work) to take boating). So I will try it and report back, and of course I shall be fearlessly honest, but I must be honest up front and say that Paul is such a nice chap that I really wouldn't feel able to say anything bad about it even if I thought it, which I'm sure I won't - it looked brilliant on Paul's phone. I think the biggest problem I am likely to encounter is installing it, and then finding my way around it - but I'm not a complete IT dunce, as long as I have (a) time to play around, and (b) the motivation of actually wanting to achieve some outcome from it. I have, after all, by those means become (probably) the second most advanced user of Google Drive in the whole department :-)