Has the last train gone?

I missed the train, yesterday.

I don’t just mean the one which left without me, about four minutes before I got to Corby station. I mean the train from Peterborough to Wellingborough, which would have taken me home as quick as my car does now. I missed that by some margin, seeing as the railway which I’d use as my first-choice commute now, closed in 1964, before I was even born, and is still busy disappearing. Ironically, in my previous job, I used to find myself looking out over the remains of the truncated, disused platforms at Northampton, every morning.

Reminders of the railway litter the drive up the A605, notably at Barnwell, where the station buildings have been re-purposed yet retain their 1950s British Railways signage, and entering Peterborough, where the dual carriageway crosses the remaining stub of the line, now the preserved Nene Valley Railway. In fact, as I left town last night, I crossed the railway, taking my turn at kicking the gate open for the next cyclist, line astern with about four others heading for home. If there was a train, make no mistake, I’d be catching it.

Given the volume of traffic which uses the road, notably articulated lorries with echelons of cars behind each one, nobody can argue that the journey I’m making is an unpopular one, but the most direct route from Thrapston to Peterborough, via Oundle, is a decidedly hostile place to ride a bike; you don’t need to try it, to realise it.

Another place which struck me as being potentially unpleasant on the bike when I was driving in, of which I did get a taste of on my first full ride home, is the Oundle Road, which strikes west out of Peterborough. The length of it is dotted with ‘murder strip’ lines in the gutter, and sure enough, sitting in a proper secondary position, in the nearside wheel-tracks of the motor traffic, I took a couple of nasty close passes - both from vans, the contents of which would probably have fitted without fuss into the brake van of a 1950s passenger train.

How did we get this thing right, and then turn it on its head? Moreover, how did we manage to see fit to destroy the corridors formerly used by railway lines? So many systemic and societal failures wrapped up in that reality.

As I wait for the next train at Corby, which was itself until relatively recently the largest place in Britain without a railway station, it occurs to me that the idea of cycling 25 miles to catch a train that travels 13 miles, to obviate a 35 mile drive, is in many ways really quite silly. The thing is, though, riding door-to-door takes longer than I can ever really justify spending on the bike on a working day, with a young family to get home to. Given that I have access to a car, this cycling commute, with the time penalty it incurs in a busy working week, too often feels like an indulgence - but the inactivity associated with my desk job, necessitates some mitigation, too. ‘Two birds, one stone’?

So, I arrive at the station, scratch around for my face covering (thoroughly sick of the stress of having to remember and find face coverings now, I confess - something else to own multiples of, as part of this endeavour!) and after a wait, I jump on the train, relieved of more than the cost of the diesel to get all the way home from the office, for a seventeen-minute lift which only leaves every half hour, after an hour and 34 minutes on the bike.

But I did it. I stuck my Lycra on, to my colleagues’ amusement, I got out of the office door, I got on my bike, in what looked liked decidedly iffy weather, and set off... then I went back into the office to fetch my bike computer and fill my bidon, left the office again, braved the silly little rucksack on my back, only got lost once, and I got myself home without the car for the first time. And now, I have no option but to do it all again tomorrow morning... because the car’s at the office!

I’ve not quite got my head around all the issues arising from my first commute, like wondering when the next train home from Peterborough will be, if ever. Riding the bike wasn’t one of them, though - even if my front derailleur stopped working and left me in the little ‘ring, and even if I had a nuisance wind to contend with. Riding the bike is the easy bit, in all of this - and yet that’s the part about which everyone else at work fixates, believing it to sound too much like hard work!

I never even got to use my secateurs - but tomorrow I will be reminded why I bought them. Join me next time and we’ll look at occupational hazards for the inter-urban cycle commuter, and all the things of which I now have to have two...