The annual figures for passenger use of Britain’s 2,597 railway stations have just been announced. It seems a media-story thing now, in the same way that the arrival of Beaujolais Nouveau isn’t. Anyway, I couldn’t resist riding from Yorkshire’s least-used station (Rawcliffe, 498, 25th least-used nationally) to its most-used, thirty-odd miles away (Leeds, 24.9m, 16th most-used nationally).
I got to Rawcliffe by train (not easy, as you’ll see) and took the train home from Leeds (logistically more straightforward). The journey in between took me from bleak post-heavy-industrial landscapes to beautiful nature reserves, which as it happens are also post-heavy-industrial landscapes. Also, sausages.
Rawcliffe is a ‘ghost station’: one the rail company would like to close, but can’t afford the legal processes involved. So they maintain the minimum statutorily required services: so-called parliamentary trains. Only three trains stop there a day, and less than ten people get on or off a week.
And often, the services that do run are hidden from the timetables. For instance, you can’t buy a ticket from Ferriby (where I was last night) to Rawcliffe, even though there’s a very convenient connection at Goole. That’s not a ‘permitted route’. It’s illegal, in other words. Websites, ticket machines and phone lines won’t show you that journey.
Nevertheless, having bought my two legs separately, I rolled up at a drizzly, grey Rawcliffe at 7.50am, to the slight bewilderment of the guard. I’m not the first person to come here purely because it’s a ghost station – YouTuber Geoff Marshall came here in 2020, as part of his entertaining series visiting all Britain’s least-used.
Unsurprisingly, I was the only person here this morning, so I had the run of the single platform, exclusive use of the waste bin, and personal access to the two cycle racks.
Having exhausted the frankly limited opportunities for entertainment at Rawcliffe station – I thought that staring through the windows of the old station building, now a private home, would not be acceptable – I could set off on my bike ride west towards the station at Leeds, Rawcliffe’s polar opposite.
This part of Yorkshire was the seat of heavy industry for decades – coal mining, power stations – much of which has been outmoded or superseded by other, cleaner activities. Power is now generated at Drax, for instance, by growing sustainable wood in Canada, machining it into chips, transporting it across the sea using fossil fuels, moving it around Britain using more fossil fuels, then burning it in special new power stations, before the most vital part of the entire process: claiming the poorly-thought out subsidies which actually generate more carbon emissions than the original.
Anyway, I trudged through the icy showers and got to Snaith, a pleasant little East Riding market town with all the things the cyclist needs: cosy cafe, supermarket, brewery, and at least four pubs, which is probably more than the number of people who use Snaith station in a day.
It also has a butcher which sells the Snaith Sausage (secret recipe, apparently ‘a bit like a Cumberland’) which is world-famous in this part of Yorkshire.
My fingers temporarily thawed out over a flat white, I carried on through the rather flat, grey countryside to Hensall. The village station here is another ‘ghost’, and rivals Rawcliffe every year for least-used status. As a station it’s rather grander, with two platforms and a handsome private house in the old station building tastefully decorated with period railway memorabilia.
I plodded along the Aire and Calder Navigation’s grassy, austere towpath to Kellingley, another post-industrial site. Here was Britain’s last coal mine: it closed as late as 2015.
Nothing is left of that now. In its place are banks of solar panels, and an industrial estate under development, all steel sheds and promises. And Section 106 cycle infrastructure – required by councils as a quid pro quo of planning permission – that doesn’t link up with anything.
I picnicked at Knottingley by the canal, and crossed over the Aire on the old, confusingly named, Ferrybridge Bridge.
This used to be the A1, or Great North Road. In fact, through the villages of Brotherton and Fairburn there’s a collection of roads including the A1(M), the Old A1, the Old Old A1, the Great North Road, the Old Great North Road, and the Old Old Great North Road.
At Fairburn things looked up. The clouds cleared and the sun came out against an ice-blue sky, and the pleasanter side of post-industry accompanied me from here to Leeds: nature reserves on former mining land. Pits have become lakes and ponds, spoil heaps green hills. Birds like them very much, and so do birdwatchers, and so do I.
Fairburn Ings has a series of trails which I was invited to explore by bike responsibly by the friendly and helpful staff at the RSPB Info Hut, so I did.
I had the paths and bird hides to myself: I saw more lapwings than walkers, but alas not the spoonbill that was apparently fossicking around the Lin Dike area, aka Spoonbill Flash.
A scruffy old railtrail took me to Allerton Bywater, where St Aidan’s Reserve is another bird-friendly wetlands of old mineworks.
From here it was all along the Aire/ Aire and Calder Navigation, car-free, on NCN67: the Trans Pennine Trail.
Since I last came they’ve tarmacked it for the entire last seven miles from Woodlesford to the centre of Leeds, and it was a delight cycling it this chilly but sunny afternoon.
Leeds is installing decent segregated bike paths in the centre, and it’s now not a bad place to cycle round.
I got to within quarter of a mile of the station on some of the well-signposted separate paths, then spent half an hour trying to get to the station itself, thwarted by roadworks.
And so, as the sun began to dip below the skyline, to Leeds station. It’s Yorkshire’s busiest, with over 70,000 users per day. In other words, Leeds exceeds Rawcliffe’s annual passenger figures every ten minutes.
Some years, Leeds has been the busiest station outside London. It’s certainly got more platforms than anywhere outside the capital: 18 in all, including one numbered 0, which opened in 2021.
Leeds station is well provisioned with shops – Sainsbury, McDonald’s, Wetherspoon, M&S, Boots, Pret and countless others – but I resisted the siren call of a Wetherspoon Afternoon Deal and got the train home. A delightful day.
Miles Rawcliffe to Leeds: 36