Three Line Tales : The train home

photo by Wilson Lau – click here for full res version

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Gravity tugs on my spine as the train enters its last, long climb.

Outside the carriage, clouds gather over fields fluffed with sheep and diced by walls, over hunched cottages of blackened sandstone, over smoke and rain laced skies.

Finally, the train slows, stops – the end of the line. I stand on the platform, suitcase in hand and the grey green valley christens me with chill rain.

I lift my face, let it soak me.

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This photo prompt – brilliantly chosen by Sonya for her Three Line Tales – reminded me of train trips ‘home’ to Buxton in Derbyshire – the long climb up the valleys, the fact it’s always colder and nearly always raining as we reach the end of the line.

With its grey drystone walls and green fields and moorland, Buxton is not unlike the town described in Green and Grey, one of my favourite songs. The singer of New Model Army, Justin Sullivan, wrote it about Bradford I think, but he could have written it about any small Northern town and that pull people feel to go to the city, the tug to stay in the valleys.