The Forgotten Branchlines and Recalcitrant Kestrels of Mid-Cheshire

Dr Beeching tends to get a bad press nowadays, as if the wholesale and politically motivated butchering of the regional rail network which he oversaw sometime in the 1950s was overwhelmingly a Bad Thing.  I suppose it was, really, but in the Good Doctor's defence we can point to one (albeit presumably unplanned) happy by-product of his destructive urges: the creation of those miles and miles of idyllic, sunken cycle tracks which ferret their way through the English suburbs and countryside.

The Middlewood Way is entirely typical of the genre.  A photographic history in the Visitor Centre recalls its past carrying vast quantities of coal and small quantities of passengers between Marple and Poynton.  Nowadays it follows the same route, but the cargo is made up of well-behaved familiy groups, ambling away their Sunday afternoons on foot, bicycles or (most frighteningly middle-classly of all) ponies.  A lot of Sundays our own family unit (Two adults, one child, one child's bicycle, no ponies, they don't allow them on the Manchester-Buxton trains) are to be found among them.  

Last Sunday the 'Way' (as we regulars call it) was unusually busy - which is to say we came across maybe a dozen people, half that many bikes, and a quarter as many ponies, on the 30 minute walk from Middlewood station to the abandoned platform at Higher Poynton, which is our usual destination (well OK, the Boars Head pub, a short climb up the embankment from the abandoned platform at Higher Poynton, is our usual destination).  At this point we were greeted by the unusual sight of four large marquees, each of them thronging with middle-aged people in North Face jackets and small face-painted children.  A banner attached to the overhead road bridge gave the explanation- 'July 18th- annual Middlewood Way Fun Day!  Morris Dancing!  Brass Band! Free for all!  Car Parking £2!

All of which (well we can't vouch for the carparking, we came on our ponies, I mean on the stopping train from Piccadilly) turned out to be absolutely true.  There were also (and this was just in the first marquee)... 

--an offputtingly overenthusiastic representative of the Mid-Cheshire Wildlife Trust hawking subscriptions to a child's magazine containing educational photographs of hedgehogs 

--a mild-mannered eccentric with a moustache and several missing teeth, wielding a small bat (the airborne mammal, not the baseball accessory)

and

--a face-painted pre- teen overseeing a child's paddling pool, where 20p bought the oppornity to hook a duck.

 With retrospect that last attraction- from which Frankie emerged triumphant, having maintained his 100% lifetime success record at hook-a-duck, which I am beginning to suspect is a cunning scheme for unscrupulous fairground operators and for that matter innocent-looking Cheshire schoolchildren to offload 'prizes' whose wholesale cost is less than the face value of entry into the 'competition'- turned out to be the highlight of the afternoon.  Our visit to the second marquee was marred by an encounter with the stern-faced lady in charge of the recycling stall, who took offence at Frankie's shy (note, shy- not discourteous) reaction to her invitation to step onto a giant rain-sodden recycling-themed Snakes and Ladders board (don't ask, I didn't understand either).

'So would you like to have a try of the game, young man?'

'No'

(Turning a shocked face to us, as if what he had actually said was 'fuck off, old lady') 'Oh- very polite!'

At this point (perhaps fortunately, as I was seriously considering giving the stern woman a piece of my mind on the subject of her own manners, and one which could have featured some actual real-live choice vocabulary) a Town Crier passed by ringing his bell and summoning the entire gathering to the 'Bird of Prey Display'.  Which turned out to consist of a harried cockney in a North Face Jacket, bellowing instructions through a field microphone at a surly-looking pair of kestrels, perched fifty yards away at the top of a large tree, who had clearly decided from the outset that they were going to have nothing to do with the whole sorry spectacle.  The increasingly resigned tone of their would-be master suggested this was not the first time he'd been shown up in public by his winged charges: 

'Right then ladies and gentleman, Rocky- who you can just make out in the branches there- is now going to swoop down at my command, and take this fruit straight from my glove'

'ROCKY! HERE! ROCKY!'

'She'll be down any second now, ladies and gentlemen. Any second now.  ROCKY!  COME HERE ROCKY'

(long pause, expectation giving way to foot-shuffling embarrassment on all sides.  A dog barks.  Small children begin to wander off in general direction of Ice-Cream van)

'Oh well ladies and gents- looks like Rocky's not quite in the mood today.  Probably the wind.  Or the rain.  Maybe we'll get Maggie down instead.  MAGGIE.  MAGGIE....!

We could still hear him as we stepped on the 15:57 for Piccadilly via Levenshulme, and for all we know he might still be there now, wishing he' d taken up a less problematic traditional countryside activity, such as bat husbandry or being unnecessarily abrupt with small, shy children.  Fair play to him I say- and all eccentric old bleeders like him who put the fun into Fun Days on rainy Sunday afternoons across Britain.  We might not have a rail network anymore, but we've got the most damn incalcitrant kestrels this side of the Pyrenees, and in an uncertain world that's something to cling on to, at least. 

Comments

[Forest Pines]

Dr Beeching also gets the blame for an awful lot of closures that weren't actually his fault. Beeching was Chairman of BR from 1961 to 1965; "The Reshaping Of Britain's Railways" was published midway through his term. All of BR's closures had to be approved by the government of the day; the responsibility for signing most of them off was down to Barbara Castle.

(there are, to be fair, plenty of problems with Beeching's analyses - for example, for most routes he didn't seem to consider any intermediate efficiency-saving steps instead of closing routes completely)

[Cocktails]

Speaking of kestrels, I just re-watched Kes last week. Maybe, in another world where the education system didn't let him down, Billy could have avoided the pit by doing the rounds of country fairs with a team of incalcitrant kestrels instead. Now there's an alternative ending!

[Cocktails]

Did I just post something?

[ISBW]

Sounds wonderful. There's something uniquely endearing about this almost willfully crap kind of British Summer Venture. You have to love them. And it wouldn't have been the same if Rocky had just played along, would it? If you're going to have a kestrel, you may as well make it a surly one.

[looby]

"Fun" days seem to be run by older people who were brought up in a time when children found getting out of the chimney for a few hours so exciting that they'd happily watch paint dry.

[jonathan]

Forest Pines- thank you for the clarification, I have to admit my knowledge of Dr Beeching was very much of the back-of-a-packet-of-Bensons variety and your expert contribution has just extended it approximately sevenfold. I don't know, what with you this week and Simon and his correction of my schoolboy 'colour of Ghana's national football shirts' error last time out, you people really keep me on my toes. Which I am thankful for, as the budget here at Crinklybee towers doesn't stretch to the engagement of a Factchecker.

Cocktails I will have to put Kes on my rental list, it's like the career of Dr Beecham in that the only bit I am familiar with is the school playing field scene with the teacher who thinks he's Bobby Charlton.

ISBW and Looby- yes, well it was kind of crappy (the Fun Day) but also kind of... well, fun. Although if you're asking if I'm going to spend every available weekend between now and Christmas watching ill-equipped cockneys and surly kestrels engaging in battles of will through the medium of the field microphone, then- well, I think you know the answer to that one.