10 - Viva Lewes

Trains, and boats and planes, they mean a trip to
Paris or Rome... so went the old Billy J Kramer hit,
though accessing Paris by boat may have been a
little unusual.
But the song did reveal a certain truth, namely that
travelling can be as much fun as arriving. Let me
qualify that. It depends how you travel. Personally,
I’ve always disliked air travel, and not just for
carbon reasons. There is something faintly absurd
about this clumsy heavy metal shell, filled with rows
of compliant people, taking to the air. It may have
been exotic and romantic to fly fifty years ago, but
now it’s just a trudge, though the crew on board still
act as if the frisson of excitement exists, as it did in
the 1960s when so many girls wanted nothing more
than to be an air hostess. For me, the idea of being
strapped in for hours and force-fed various bits of
plastic food at regular intervals to keep you occupied
most certainly does not appeal.
At least with a car there’s a certain flexibility. You,
after all, control the schedule, even if the open roads
with breathtaking scenery used in car adverts never
seem to exist in reality. And there are undoubtedly
cars with a certain style, a touch of panache. We all
have our favourites but for me, there was nothing to
beat the Triumph Herald. I got through about six of
them. Lovely cars, though they were always breaking
down or developing faults, it has to be said. I
confess sadly that these days I do prefer the comfort
and reliability of a modern car.
Then there’s the bicycle, and the exhilaration of
freewheeling downhill with the wind in your hair,
or at least over your scalp. But then cycling up
School Hill or Station Street is certainly less fun.
Which brings me to the train, for me easily the
most civilised way to travel (except perhaps on a
train from Victoria to Lewes in the rush-hour). You
can get work done, plug in your laptop, read a book,
wander through the carriages, pick up a cup of tea. I
have to travel a lot these days in my role as transport
minister, and I always travel by train if I can. The
W W W. V i Va L E W E s . C o M
NormaN baker
...on the train
c o l u m n
great thing is, the more you do so, the more you
can make the system work for you – the optimum
routes, the shortest journeys, the cheapest tickets,
the best place to stand on a particular platform, and
so on. I am of course highly delighted to have had
my transport portfolio expanded recently to include
rail performance and contract monitoring.
It is an exciting time for rail, with the country
embarked on the biggest rail investment programme
since the Victorian era, and passenger numbers
higher than they have been since 1929, with a
network half the size. Slowly the network is growing
again. Do I see light at the end of the Lewes-Uckfield
tunnel?
But I can’t finish this piece without enthusing about
the first steam train to set off from Lewes since
1967, the recent excursion from here to Ely. As
some will know, I blagged a trip on the footplate for
part of the journey, and what a fantastic experience
it was too. What a magnificent creature a steam
train is, powering along at 60mph up to Haywards
Heath and Redhill, ever hungry for coal, a big beast
responding to the lightest touch of the controls. I
have encouraged the company that ran the special to
return to Lewes as soon as they can!
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