Holyhead

The station at Holyhead has an unusual configuration. I can’t think of another example where a station’s platforms are separated from each other by a dock. I would guess that much of the traffic coming into Holyhead, whether by road or rail, doesn’t give Holyhead itself more than a cursory glance in passing, heading straight for the ferry terminal that faces the buffer stops, prior to embarkation for Ireland.

Maybe that’s not a bad thing because Holyhead is not a particularly pretty place, overall, and the proportion of empty shop units in the centre of town is as high as I can remember seeing anywhere. I know that this is a modern blight on town centres generally and I’m aware of the reasons, but Holyhead has got it bad -and it was raining, which hardly helped. We did find the Grade I listed, medieval St Cybi’s church, centrally positioned and with some interesting features including a very ancient font, which could, we were told, be at least 1,500 years old. The volunteers on duty were certainly full of enthusiasm in describing their valuable heritage to visitors. The same was true at the excellent Holyhead Maritime Museum, a short walk away along the promenade and opposite an exceptionally long breakwater.

Back at the station, all three platforms were fully operational, complete with semaphore signals controlled by a sizeable signalbox at the station throat. Class 67 No. 67013 was parked up in a siding at the head of a Transport for Wales rake of coaches when the Avanti West Coast service from London Euston rolled in. Locomotive hauled trains can still be found on a few services to Manchester and Cardiff, but for the most part it is modern DMUs, notably Class 197, which provide regular departures for Bangor and along the North Wales coast towards Chester and beyond.

As we left the Maritime Museum, one of the guides told us that they were expecting a large cruise ship to visit Holyhead the next day, the deep-water harbour being [I would estimate] the only potential dropping off point for tourists available between Liverpool and Milford Haven. I tried to envisage hundreds of wealthy American and Japanese tourists wandering the central streets in Holyhead, perhaps with a sense of disbelief and even of embarrassment. Maybe they got straight onto a fleet of coaches and headed for Snowdonia, raising the blinds once they were out of town.

There is always something distinctly uncomfortable for me about excessive consumption coming face to face with genuine poverty and hardship. It is tempered to a degree by the gratitude and good fortune I feel at being able to waltz around the country like this, adding exhaust fumes to the atmosphere, whilst taking in the sights and offering some bland observations as I go. At the same time, I’m only too conscious of the widening gap between the haves and have nots in our society, evidenced by the dereliction and general disfigurement of the urban fabric, now more easily recognisable than ever before in many of our towns and cities.