A Yorkshire dawdle on the train

Jackdaw, Todmorden Station 

The weather forecast offered a day of biblical rain and such was delivered. I have a bunch of free tickets to anywhere on the Northern Rail network so I decided to have a day watching scenery go by.

Today's plan was to get myself an old man's explorer ticket, get up to Carnforth, connect with the train to Leeds, use one of my free tickets for the journey between Carnforth and Todmorden via Leeds then back home via Blackburn and Bolton and see what birds I see along the way. There are no coastal stretches so the likelihood always is a predominance of woodpigeons and corvids but there's some good scenery along the way and you never know if there'll be any surprises.

The first stage was to get into Manchester, get my ticket then get the Blackpool train to Preston, the Windermere train to Lancaster and the Carlisle train to Carnforth. If nothing else sorting out the connections keeps my mind agile. We were held at signals outside Deansgate and I could see the plan falling at the first hurdle but the Blackpool train was running late so I'd be OK. It was running even later when it finally turned up and later yet departing from Bolton where we had the announcement: "We're sorry for this slight delay, we're being held at a signal while they let a train running even later than us through." I scratched the Windermere train off the plan and replaced it with the Barrow train. We couldn't miss that as it would be following our trail quarter of an hour behind us and couldn't overtake in any case. But I would be missing the Leeds train at Carnforth and would have to wait two hours for the next so the question was: spend the interval getting the trains to Ulverston and back or have an hour in the rain at Leighton Moss?

The light rain of Manchester became the heavy rain of Lancashire. Woodpigeons clattered about fields of ripe barley or sat sullen and sodden on railway furniture. Carrions crows and jackdaws fossicked about in fields and occasional lesser black-backs and black-headed gulls passed by. The large gulls on the roofs of the sheds by Preston Station are usually a mixture of lesser black-backs and herring gulls, today they were all lesser black-backs.

I got the Barrow train and, watching the rain as we travelled North, decided to stay on to Ulverston. I was checking to make sure that I wouldn't be missing the next Leeds train at Carnforth when I noticed the train I'd been aiming for would be getting to Lancaster five minutes after the Barrow train and I'd be able to make the connection. I got off, crossed over to platform one and waited for the Leeds train in the teeming rain. When it arrived it arrived at platform five so there was a panicky rush across the station which turned out to be entirely unnecessary as there was a ten minute wait before we set off.

The train between Morecambe and Leeds, connecting with Cumbria and the South at Lancaster and Carnforth, curves up the Lune Valley, follows a stretch of the Wenning then meanders down the Aire Valley into Leeds. For nearly all that length it's very picturesque, textbook basket of eggs glacial drumlin topography with a backdrop of North Yorkshire Pennines. Whenever I went on geology field trips to the North Yorkshire moors it was always pouring down so today felt comfortably familiar, with the added advantage of sitting down out of the rain watching the scenery pass by. The rolling dips and rises were punctuated by becks and dry stone walls, the hills drifted in and out of the cloud and misty rain. Like I say, picturesque.

There wasn't a lot of birds about in the open fields and most of they were carrion crows and jackdaws. Rooks joined the jackdaws in the fields near High Bentham. A couple of times the train surprised small flocks of linnets feeding by the trackside. Swallows hawked around old station buildings. A buzzard glowered at the train from a dry stone wall near Eldroth. Dozens of black-headed gulls and lesser black-backs loafed by Hellifield Flash and a flock of greenfinches flew away as we passed Sugar Hill. As we drifted down along the Aire the crows and jackdaws were joined by more rooks and woodpigeons. A heron stalked a field near Bell Busk, a little egret in the Aire by the Riparian Way near Cross Hills. A couple of juvenile kestrels tried to shelter from the wind on telegraph poles at Low Uttley, an adult male hunted by Marley Water Treatment Works where a flock of swifts became my new last sighting of the year for them. Thin pickings but pickings to be had and it was a very pleasant journey.

I resisted the urge to use one of my free return tickets to go there and back to Nottingham just for the sake of it and got the next train to Todmorden which was sitting waiting for us as we got in. If the pickings were thin in North Yorkshire they were scant in West Yorkshire and it came as a relief to see a dozen pigeons as we called at Halifax.

I had twenty minutes to wait for the Blackburn train at Todmorden so I nipped out to get a pastie for my lunch and evaded the eyes of hungry jackdaws while I ate it. The rain hadn't abated any.

The view from Todmorden Station 

I'd been sniffy about Yorkshire but pickings were as slim on the right side of the hills. There's never much bird life in Burnley but today even the crows and pigeons weren't about. Rose Grove sometimes has its moments, today wasn't one of them. A bit of balance was provided by the pigeons and dozen black-headed gulls on Accrington Bus Station and the mallards and black-headed gulls on Rishton Reservoir. 

At Blackburn I walked across the platform onto the train to Bolton. It was a quiet journey home, rain punctuated by very occasional woodpigeons, carrion crows or pigeons. A low key end to a day of low key birdwatching but it had been a pleasant way of spending a day of atrocious weather.