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A Train Journey to Dundee

Nick Bourne tells of his summer train journey to Dundee via Durham and Hartlepool. And all by rail.

By Nick Bourne

5 Sep 2011, 10:11

Each year in the summer I head off on a train journey, usually to a town or area that I don’t know well, to explore the many attractions of my own country and to marvel at our railway system.   No man is an island (indeed how is a man an island) so I would like to think that my striking out alone was not to discover my inner self, or through a misguided sense of misanthropy or even to undergo a carthartic experience like hermits do but from a sense of adventure and pioneering that had propelled our ancestors from the British Isles to all parts of the world.

This year I travelled to Dundee via Durham, and by booking well in advance it is possible to get very reasonable fares. I stayed in Durham for two nights wanting to look at the Cathedral (the shrine of St Cuthbert), which I hadn’t seen for many years, and also to visit Hartlepool where I briefly lived as a boy and where my brother was born.  Both lived up to my memory and my expectations. 

The Cathedral stands dramatically on a virtual island at the side of the River Wear, a compelling and majestic building.  Durham Cathedral has been touted to be the greatest Norman building in England and looking at it, this may be so. It was begun in 1093 and largely completed within 40 years and is the only cathedral in England to retain almost all of its Norman craftsmanship, and certainly one of few to preserve the unity and integrity of its original design.  So much so that together with the Castle, it was one of Britain's first World Heritage Sites.  It has the honour of being voted the nation’s best loved building in a nationwide BBC poll held in 2001.
 
Hartlepool on the other hand was dimmer in my memory, although returning to the road and area where we lived prompted memories to come back.  Hartlepool was founded in the 7th century AD, around the Northumbrian monastery of Hartlepool Abbey and information that I read there also tells me that its name was derived from “Hart” - the Old English name for a stag or deer which appears on the towns crest and “le pool” which means “by the sea”.  Aparently, people moved here to hunt where there were deer by the sea and eventually settled there.  I am not sure how to square this with the Northumbrian monks hunting and stalking deer but that did not occupy my thoughts for long. It has changed, of course, massively since I lived there.  It now has a pleasant marina where the old docks used to be.  It has also slowly crept up in the polls – it was recently declared the 9th best place to live and host for the prestigious Tall Ships Races in 2010. Hartlepool also boasts the patronage of Lord Mandelson but I could not see any signs of this recent claim to fame, though when I previously met Lord M, to be fair, he was well up on matters Hartlepool.

The ultimate destination was Dundee, a city I have never visited.  There was the promise of the Scottish Tourist Board that Dundee was Scotland’s sunniest city.  Admittedly that is not necessarily saying a lot.  When I was a student at Aberystwyth it used to boast of its sea, scenery and sun, and certainly it had a lot of two of those commodities, and still does. The third was in shorter supply though apparently we have the same climate as Seattle.

Anyway, back to Dundee.  The train journey north of Edinburgh takes one first over the Firth of Forth by the Forth Bridge through Kirkcaldy, home of Gordon and the Raith Rovers football ground, and on through Fife skirting St Andrews to Dundee across the Tay Bridge.  I felt impressed and awed when crossing over both bridges.    The Forth Bridge in particular is an impressive part of our history and the world’s first major steel bridge. With its gigantic girder spans of 1710 feet many rank it as one of the great feats of civilization and rightly so.

Dundee is actually Scotland’s fourth city after Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen in terms of size.   It is known for the three J’s of Jam, Jute and Journalism.  As every schoolboy and schoolgirl knows, this is where many of the famous comics like Dandy and Beano are produced.  

After checking into the hotel my first port of call was to see Scott’s Discovery, the jewel in the crown for Dundee’s tourist industry because it was here the Discovery was built for Scott’s Antarctic expedition of 1901 to 1904.  This, of course, was the forerunner of the ill-fated Terra Nova expedition of 1910 to 1913 when Amundsen pipped Scott’s expedition to the South Pole.   It is a well organised exhibition and includes a visit to most of the Discovery itself.

The girl at the Tourist Information Centre told me that I have arrived too early for the next big event in Dundee’s history, a satellite for the Victoria and Albert Museum.  This sounds very sensible and will add to Dundee’s attractions.

Sadly at the moment traffic works seem to make Dundee inaccessible to pedestrians and motorists alike.  The Tay and Scott’s Discovery are, at the moment, cut off from the rest of the town and the pedestrian bridge across the road works is not open in the evenings.  The town itself has all the usual modern shops and rather quaintly its own attractive statue.  On previous train journeys I have seen statues of  Sir Humphry Davy of the miners’ safety lamp and poetry fame in Penzance, I have seen Earl Grey of Prime Ministerial tea fame in Newcastle, but in Dundee it is Desperate Dan and Gnasher that reign supreme in the main hopping area. Why not, after all, Dublin has Molly Malone.

There are other attractions in the town, a very good museum, the McManus Museum, which also has  a good art collection including some William McTaggart’s, a Scottish artist that I like, famous for seascapes.

I manage a day trip from Dundee to St Andrews.  I have never been here before but it is easily manageable, only sixteen miles from Dundee, and a short bus trip.  I coincide it with the Lammas Fair and was able to go round the town and visit the art gallery, the ruins of the old Cathedral and the University Museum.  Here I was hot on the heels of Kate and William who had visited recently before their wedding.  There is also a very good town museum dedicated to the preservation of St Andrews.  As a town it has civic pride, smart shops and attractive buildings.  

The golf course is not far from the centre of town either and I visited this too.  This is an attractive university town with an ancient university.  In some ways there are echoes of Aberystwyth in terms of its size and its intimate clubby feel.

I had never been to St Andrews before, nor did I know much about it.  Imagine my surprise when a few days later, I picked up a Val McDermid book, she of the compelling murder mystery, to find that it was actually set in St Andrews, and so I was able to devour it with great glee recognising many of the places referred to in the novel – ‘The Distant Echo’.  Thankfully though, hers is a work of fiction and not meant to reflect on anyone in St Andrews.  For anybody that hasn’t read Val McDermid they really are page turners, and this one even better than most.

I should not complete this article without thanks to the staff of the railways who were invariably helpful, cheerful and pleasant.  On the only occasion where my plan route and pre-paid tickets were in danger of not being realised as per the programme, the staff at Durham stepped in with phone calls through to Edinburgh and were very solicitous of my comfort and travel plans.  They were truly excellent - British service at its best.