Tales of the track
New book recounts best mates’ journey round UK and touching stories of ordinary folk they met
A PAIR of Scottish pensioners have completed a 15,000-mile odyssey along every UK rail line.
Author Stuart Campbell and pal John Aitken clocked up 442 different journeys over 43 days, taking in bustling commuter routes as well as savouring some of the world’s most scenic journeys.
Along the way they chatted to hundreds of fellow passengers who shared their stories, providing a fascinating insight into the lives of ordinary – and not- so- ordinary – travellers in 21st Century Britain.
Now retired lecturer and mental health worker Stuart, 68, has chronicled their touching, bizarre and enlightening encounters for a new book.
“I do like trains but calling myself a buff would be overstating it,” Glasgow- based Stuart told The Sunday Post.
“When I was 12 I was a train spotter, standing on platforms noting down the numbers of steam locos, but that was a long time ago.
“I’ve been looking for fresh things to do since I retired and writing has given me that.”
Dad-of-four Stuart, who moved from Edinburgh four years ago with wife Morag, has previously written a book based on his travels around Scotland with four mates after getting his bus pass.
His new one, called Daniel Defoe’s Railway Journey, is on a whole other, epic scale.
Robinson Crusoe writer Defoe wrote of 13 journeys around Britain in the early 18th Century. Stuart and former secondary school head teacher John, also 68, from Keith, let the train take the strain for their marathon.
“We did it in nine blocks of journeys, taking one part of the country and completing each in about five days,” said Stuart.
“We spent about £ 1000 on fares.”
The duo would frequently jump on and off around 15 trains daily, with one exceptional day on the commuter network around Glasgow and Lanarkshire involving 22 different changes.
Astonishingly, over the nine weeks they only had a couple of really late trains and one that failed to show up at all.
A massive part of the undertaking was to find out about their fellow travellers and around 300 passenger conversations are recounted in the book.
“I’m not actually very good at talking to strangers, which is a bit of a drawback considering what I set out to do,” smiled Stuart.
“John would have to prod me to go to speak to people.
“When I told them I was travelling on every rail line in the country, they were almost without exception lovely people. They’d start off by saying they didn’t know why I wanted to talk to them as they weren’t interesting people – and then proved they were.”
Many of the meetings are still fabulously fresh in Stuart’s mind. One was with a 92-year-old former sailor in Cornwall.
“He was a bit deaf so he spoke