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JULIE GOES LOCO!
Julie Walters explores Britain’s most charming coastal railways in a magical new series – and fulfils a dream by riding on Harry Potter’s Hogwarts Express
Julie Walters had a wizard time playing Ron Weasley’s lovable mum Molly in the Harry Potter films, but she had one lingering regret when the blockbuster franchise finished in 2011 – she’d never taken a ride on the Hogwarts Express. She puts that right in the first episode of her new Channel 4 series Coastal Railways With Julie Walters when she climbs aboard the Jacobite steam train on Scotland’s West Highland line – the Jacobite was used to portray the Hogwarts Express, which Harry took to go to school.
This journey takes her over the dramatic Glenfinnan Viaduct, which also featured in the films. ‘It was an amazing experience, not only because I never got to do it on screen but because the scenery’s so extraordinary,’ says Julie. ‘And everybody was so welcoming. Before we set off they made me a bacon bap, cooking the bacon on a shovel over the coals of the engine, and then the catering manager gave me a liquorice wand as it was something Harry Potter bought on board the Hogwarts Express. I waved it to try to get the train moving but it didn’t seem to work!’
Later in her tour of some of Britain’s most beautiful coastal routes, Julie journeys from Newcastle to Edinburgh, checks out Cornwall’s stunning scenery from the St Ives Bay line, and in Wales takes the Talyllyn Railway, which inspired some of the Thomas The Tank Engine books. ‘I’ve been fortunate to travel to all sorts of foreign places for my work, but never really explored what’s on my own doorstep,’ says Julie. ‘So this series was an ideal opportunity to do that. And coming from land-locked Birmingham, I regard the coast as a place of magic.’
Julie certainly clocks up the miles, and the experiences, during the four-part series. In the first episode she travels from Fort William to Inverness via Skye, en route visiting the Arisaig estate, where special agents were trained to go behind enemy lines during the war. Julie tries her hand at unarmed combat but admits to being distracted. ‘My trainer, a retired major, sounded so like my fellow actor Richard E Grant it was hard to concentrate.’ Later, she gets an unusual beauty tip. ‘I met this wonderful crofter, Morag, who has 18 Highland cattle, and she told me that udder cream, used on a cow’s nether regions, is excellent on our skin. It did make me wonder. I live on a farm, run by my husband Grant; I wonder where he’s been putting his udder cream?’
In Wales Julie, who’s 67, has a go on a zip-wire. ‘It was terrifying when the wind picked up. I thought I was going to end up unhooked!’ And in Cornwall she heads out in a choppy sea with the
RNLI. ‘I felt so ill! I was trying to interview this crew member about how the lifeboat operates. She must have thought I was so rude because while she was talking I was staring out at the horizon turning green!
‘But it was the “hands-on” experiences I enjoyed most because I like trying on other people’s lives for size – it’s probably why I’m an actor. When I got to join train driver Adrian in his
GRAND SPAN
The Glenfinnan Viaduct (main image), finished in 1901, cost £18,904 to build, the equivalent of £2.1m today. It’s the longest concrete railway bridge in Scotland at 416 yards and rises 100ft above the River Finnan. cab, whizzing along the Northumberland coast, I was in my element.’
But the Hogwarts Express ride topped the lot. ‘It made me feel proud,’ she says. ‘To have appeared in films that created such an interest in this wonderful old engine is just the most marvellous feeling.’ Coastal Railways With Julie Walters, tomorrow, 8pm, Channel 4.