Working out where to go on holiday has always seemed like slightly hard work. How do you choose? Do we go to Italy? We've been before. Do we go to France? They'll only want us to wear Speedos at the swimming pool. So where shall we go? We were delighted when we discovered a friend in Belfast, who had recently had a baby, would be up for a visit. A mutual friend of ours, was also planning a trip back to Ireland from where he lives. We've known each other for 25 years now, and have travelled before as a group. Why not get the band back together and spend some time in Ireland this summer? That was the thought, and so the Reilly family made plans. Passage was booked on the Liverpool to Belfast ferry. Grandma Reilly kindly leant her car to the Twickenham Reillys, so that myself, Lisette and the boys could roll Northwards and over the Irish Sea to Ireland. We were leaving an English summer that was that rarest of things: warm and sunny. The week before we'd left, Twicke
It was the start of the summer holidays. The Reilly family had headed North to the Peak District to go youth hostelling, prior to heading East to Newark for the Focus festival. A good time had been had by all. We'd been staying in the picturesque and slightly remote village of Hartington. The weather had been typical of British summertime. Which is to say, a combination of not raining whilst looking like it might, actually raining and on occasion, being suspiciously pleasant. One must roll with whatever nature throws at you in this country. The UK loves a railway. We have many. But we used to have more. Back in the 1960s a man named Dr Beeching wrote an infamous report on the profitability of our forest of railway lines. And as a consequence there was deforestation; many of those railways became ex-railways. Death can lead to rebirth. Whilst many railways stopped being railways, they left behind them tracks, tunnels and paths that joined up destinations. By and large, these trac