Time was when I used to go backpacking. My method of choice was to stick a pin in a map, grab both the tent and the dog and hop on to a train. Remember when that used to be possible? The simple pleasure of deciphering the timetables and wending your way, normally with a maximum of two changes, to just about anywhere in the UK. Those small strips of cardboard that provided your passport there and, if you tore them in half, back. Strange mystic symbols would be punched into them by the ferryman.

Your journey was punctuated by mystery and serendipity, more often than by failed signals or the wrong kind of rain. Today as I travelled there and back to Liverpool, and the train angled itself into the bend at 120 miles an hour I remembered those times. Something lost and something gained.