A train ride
Its August and I am about to make the long pilgrimage to Australia to visit family. Just to be clear I am not from Australia so this isn’t a journey home for me. Australia is very similar to my home or once home, South Africa so there is some sort of familiarity to the landscape. I am getting ahead of myself here with irrelevant information, so let’s get back to Edinburgh where I am catching the train to London. I will spend a night there with a friend before catching a sanity destroying flight to Brisbane via Hong Kong. It is safe to say that the train to London is the most comfortable and enjoyable experience out of the whole mission.
Train travel is hands down my favourite type of public transport because it offers comfort as well as a view of the changing landscape. I board the train, find my seat and scroll on my MP3 player for Motorhead Live at Hammersmith to get things going. Nothing like the best rock n roll band in the world to get you ready for a journey. As the train pulls out and Motorhead launches into Metropolis, I get that familiar feeling of starting journey which requires me to recalibrate my head to deal with the uncertainties of travel. For now though I can sit back and relax and watch the world pass by. Once out of the city the landscape looks like a patchwork brown squares with green borders. The UK is going into its 5th heatwave and there has been less rain than normal so the green hills are browner than usual. A lot of it is also harvested farmland but I get the feeling that the further south I go not only will it be getting much warmer but it will look much drier.
The train down the the east coast has a few distinct landmarks. Torness nuclear power station is one of them. I am always interested in seeing it but when it comes to alternative energy sources to fossil fuels then my knowledge about nuclear is not up to scratch. I am aware of the debates around it but just haven't had the time to properly research it and so I will not pass any judgement on the issue. After this the train runs along the coast and you are treated to some picturesque cliffs that drop off into the ocean. There is something dramatic about seeing the earth that you live on abruptly come to an end. The permanence of the land ending makes me feel that the world isn’t always permanent. There is slow change all around us. Off the coast far off on the horizon I can see the wind farms that provide the UK with renewable energy. I will propagandise about this a bit later.
The train to London only has two stops, the first in Newcastle which is where in the past I would get off to catch the ferry on my bicycle tours of Europe. At this point you may notice that I am all for active travel and experiencing the world at a slower pace and one with less impact on the environment. Newcastle is also lies just over the border from Scotland and it is often, jokingly, folded into an independent Scotland. Newcastle is considered, within British culture, to be very similar to the Scottish. It might also just be that Scottish people like a night out in Newcastle and would like to have it within the border. It is more likely that the class divide between north and south England means that they identify more with Scotland who has for centuries been oppressed by Westminster. I am not overly familiar with the north-south divide in England but from what I gather this has been a long running issue which has its roots in the industrial revolution and was made worse by Thatcherite policies that crippled industry in the region.
We pass the angel of the north and continue onwards to London. The train cruises by some small villages with their terraced housing and new builds. Slowly farms give way to industry and towns and after some time even the windfarms that dotted the north are gone. Shortly after our second and final stop in York we pass a huge power station that when I look it up is Drax power plant. I've heard of this station before as it has been protested on numerous occasions. Drax used to produce energy with coal but has since decommissioned that part of the station and now focuses primarily on biomass. A quick look into biomass doesn’t leave me feeling good about it but like with so many things in the realm of climate change it is a complex issue. Sufficed to say I am squarely in the corner of renewable energy.
Renewable energy and the climate crises has been on my mind throughout this journey. As I make my way south the temperature is rising and the landscape is drying yet the government is doing nothing about it other than providing lip service. I am glad to see that wind energy is climbing in the UK even though the government is pushing to explore offshore oil reserves. I am hopeful that after this summer there will be more people looking towards more climate conscious ways of generating power, travel or living. The start of the summer saw the first heatwave be compared to the 1976 summer but now at the 5th heatwave that excuse doesn’t hit as hard as it did. I said it at the start that people would change their tune when they felt the effects of climate change but I’m not a fan of the “I told you so” discourse because that means the negatives have already come to pass. I want positive change not to mitigate the negative impacts of our actions but to create a better world for everyone.