Same intro as last time please – we will tweak on screen, thanks.
This month’s history destination is from a folio that burns like a white-hot crucible in the heart of every decent Briton – railways. As a youngster, I’m aware that my generation is pre-disposed towards train sets. I hate being dragged to church every Sunday (that Father Leslie Carter keeps looking at me) but I would gladly walk across broken glass and swim upstream in shark-infested cholera water to worship at the altar of Hornby. Yes readers, let us clasp our hands in prayer and give thanks for the joyous miracle that is the Settle to Carlisle Railway!
Many of you grown-ups, I know, with licences and motorbikes may have already parked for a moment of quiet awe before the veritable temple-cum-shrine that is Ribblehead viaduct. But readers, I must respectfully submit that this is old news. The true believers, the most ardent apostles, pass through the confluence of the B6255 and the B6479 and then head seven miles north, up into Dentdale to stand in hushed wonder before the epic Arten Gill Viaduct.
Arten Gill is the inexplicably under-recognised jewel in the Settle to Carlisle Crown. Ribblehead, the over-visited over-valued Kim Kardashian to Arten Gill’s far more stylish (and actually MORE beautiful), Julie Christie. I have a Czech pen pal who lives under the Soviet yoke in a place called Bratislava. My dad says there’s talk that he might get to come over on an exchange programme through the Scouts. If he does, and I had one chance to show him why the British are the superior species on this planet, I would whisk him up the M6 to Arten Gill!
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