Did the earth move for you?

By now, some six and a half hours after last night’s earthquake, more than eight hundred people have logged on to sheffieldforum.co.uk to share their seismic experiences. With any luck, this electronic outpouring of collective “hey-I-was-in-bed-asleep-when…” will reduce the amount of dead end chit-chat about in Sheffield today. I doubt it, but one can hope.

And no, I’m not going to tell you if a) I felt it, b) what I was doing when I felt it, c) what I thought it was. Because that would make the blog even more boring than it might already be. That’s what discussion boards and Facebook are for…

Snapshots: to the lighthouse

My horrendously early (but still late) start on Saturday morning got me from Sheffield to Berwick-upon-Tweed before 09h00. I was rewarded not only with a spectacular sunrise en route but also the entirety of a gorgeous day under cold, clear blue skies. Being British my relationship to the sea is very simple: whenever I get near it I respond to a compelling intrinsic urge to go and look at it, but not for so long as to develop any attachment or affection for it. So I struck up for the end of Berwick’s pier, and the old lighthouse that guards the mouth of the Tweed’s narrow estuary.

Berwick-upon-Tweed lighthouse

Berwick-upon-Tweed, seen from the lighthouse at the end of the pier.

Spittal Promenade, seen from the lighthouse at the end of Berwick-upon-Tweed’s pier. This line of houses seems to have been lifted from some other northern town and dropped onto the sands of Spittal.

Welcome to Scotland. Almost.

Alarm clocks and I no longer go well together. I set two to go off at 04h15 on Saturday morning so that I could catch a train at half-five. I set my clock-radio correctly, but I hadn’t properly turned the alarm function on, and my pile-of-cack Nokia phone (on pile-of-cack network ‘Three’) had a miniature nervous breakdown during the night and turned itself off. For reasons still unknown to me I woke with a start forty-five minutes before my train was due to leave, and hurled myself down the hill to the station while still buttoning my shirt and pulling up my flies. Luckily there was no-one around in Sheffield at that time of morning to see me stumbling half-dressed through the streets.

The passengers on the 05h29 Sheffield to Beverley were the sleepy remnants of the day before and the sleepy beginnings of the day to come. Boisterous clubbers collapsed onto the uncomfortable Sprinter seats and after ten minutes of complaints about the temperature, fell into deep sleep. At Doncaster I changed platforms and boarded the first Glasgow-bound train of the day. A once handsome HST125 formed the train, carrying a few more passengers than the last train in some additional comfort. It powered north, picking up speed as the first hints of sunlight turned the night sky progressively blue, purple, orange and blue again. An invigorating sunrise coated the rooftops of York and Durham (above).

The open arms of the Angel (above) welcomed us to Gateshead not long afterwards. This country appears to have compressed in size since I was last in Newcastle, although I spent a good three hours traveling that morning.

Rail passengers have an impressive treat when they arrive in Newcastle from the south; even more so first thing in the morning. The sweeping curve of the railway line brought us across the Tyne and presented a cacophony of different bridges downstream from us. The little table lamps of the first class coaches glinted at the far end of the train as we swung under the impressive arched roof of Central Station. In the interim between ‘GNER’ and ‘NXEC’, the train’s exterior had an odd combination of purple bodies, red doors and a thin white strip. That white strip having been applied overnight to conceal the logo of a defunct (and virtually bankrupt) train company.

We were welcomed to Scotland long before we got there, with this old defensive position handily redeployed to promote Scotland’s largest political party. It was earlier that week that SNP member of the Scottish Parliament Christine Grahame lodged a motion in Holyrood that proposed moving the eastern end of the Anglo-Scottish border “back” to its sometimes-historical position along the River Tweed. This would “return” the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed to Scotland, a country it has been part of on and off half a dozen times in the last millennium.

When I arrived at Berwick station, I found the town was still in England, although only just. Grahame’s motion has responded to a television programme about Berwick’s questionable position at the northern tip of England.

Being so far - more than 550km - from London, it seems that a majority of Berwicker’s would prefer to be governed from Edinburgh. Relocating the border would deliver free undergraduate university education, free home care for the elderly and free prescription medicine from 2011.

Berwick-upon-Tweed has some impressive medieval and Elizabethan ramparts: tall, broad barriers of stone and earth are now topped with luscious grass and punctuated by aggressively designed bastions. The town sits on the northern banks of the River Tweed, where it flows into the North Sea. The ramparts would have provided the greatest protection to invaders from the north; by comparison Berwick presents a soft and vulnerable underbelly to the south.

Perhaps this will change if Berwick-upon-Tweed switches sides and becomes Scottish once more. A new generation of earthworks and bastions might have to be constructed along the Tweed’s derelict waterfront to keep out the hoards of English students and pensioners who will form a simultaneously youthful-and-aged pincer movement on Scotland’s generous (and, as some will point out, Anglo-subsidised) social system.

Perhaps the government is ahead of ITV and Christine Grahame on this issue. A new-looking sign announces the northern-most outpost of the Home Office in an old warehouse on the Berwick waterfront. Where do I sign for a Scottish passport?

The ontheroad podcast episode 07: People With Valentine’s Day Flowers, Sheffield Midland Station, England

A cold Valentine’s Night in Sheffield. With no flowers of my own to deliver, I went to Sheffield Station to see who was giving who some floral arrangements. Having trouble finding the feed? Go to http://jamesbrownontheroad.libsyn.com/

Great car design #1: Skoda Roomster

If you are a parent and you own a car that has seat-back DVD players like these installed, you might want to skip this post. Why? Because I’m about to call you a bad parent.

I have realised that one of the reasons I enjoy studying architecture and designing buildings so much is that I enjoy looking at the world around me. I am a born traveller, comfortable on board an aeroplane, bus or train as long as I’m near a window. I’ve had some of my most memorable travel experiences while on the road (hence this blog’s name, and hence also ontherails), most often when I have been in motion, soaking up the sights of a new landscape through a great big picture window. The luxury of a train ride is that, of course, you don’t have to do any driving. You get a ground level panorama with no obligation to concentrate on steering and controlling a vehicle.

When did this passion for window gazing begin? I’d argue that it began as soon as I was strapped into the first car I remember my parents’ owning: a metallic red 1982 Mark I Volkswagen Golf Cabriolet, purchased new just a few weeks before I was born. Perhaps it was a last impulsive moment of youth before settling down to raise a child, I don’t know. But I credit that choice of car with helping to develop much of my inquisitive character. Successively smaller and less structural childseats held me up so that my young eyes could peer over the lowest edge of the back seat window. And then as soon as the weather cleared, the roof came down. There was no more exciting way to travel, and no better way to inspire jealously in the school yard when I was collected at the end of the day in a little red car with a carefully folded roof.

So seat-back DVD players are, to me, anathema. Such vital hours, days and even weeks of a child’s life can be spent in the car. Every moment is an opportunity to observe the world around and take it in, maybe ever pester the folks up front with a question or two. In-car entertainment systems are a lazy way of silencing a child while in transit. I’m not claiming any expert knowledge in parenting, nor proclaiming that children should never watch television. But I am bemoaning the sad intrusion of TV into travel - the wonderful opportunity for children to see so much more of the world than their home environment.

So my first nomination for a truly great car design is an oddball. But it’s a brilliant design. It’s the Škoda Roomster.

It might look like two designers independently created the front and back halves of the car, before splicing them together, but that’s the point. I really admire smart small MPVs like the Nissan Note and the Fiat Idea: it’s a great combination of a small car platform and an upright, adaptable body. But the Roomster is easily the most innovative. Just look it.

Like a great building, you can read this car instantly. This is a family car. The parents sit up front, and the children sit in the back. And the kids get the biggest windows, because they’re the ones who get the chance to see the world as it goes by without having to concentrate on driving. What’s more, the back row of seats is lifted a few centimetres higher than those in the front, enhancing views forward and sideways. A high roofline creates a spacious and very practical interior, and the overall shape is perhaps the boldest mini-MPV on the market that hasn’t been adapted from a panel van (such as the equally clever but slightly less appealing Renault Kangoo).

If I wasn’t planning on becoming a designer of buildings, I’d want to design cars. Perhaps one day I’ll get the chance to do both. But until then, you can expect me to carry on noticing and commenting on some great car designs.