A Slow Train Along the Salt Coast

By Tobias Wren

The branch line to Saltmarsh Quay takes forty minutes to cover eleven miles, and the guard will tell you with some pride that this is exactly the point. The carriages are old, the windows open properly, and the seats face one another so that strangers are obliged to become acquaintances somewhere around the second station. By the time the marshes appear, most of the compartment is sharing a flask.

Beyond the glass the landscape slowly empties. Fields give way to reeds, reeds to mudflats, and the mudflats to a thin bright line of sea that seems to belong to a different and much calmer country. Egrets stand about in the shallows like people who have arrived early for a party. At the halt called Gull Lane, a single passenger gets off and walks away along the sea wall without looking back, and everyone watches until she is a dot.

The town itself is small enough to cross in ten minutes, which leaves the rest of the day for the important work of choosing where to eat. The fish stalls on the quay sell crab sandwiches wrapped in paper, and the tearoom above the chandler serves a lemon cake that has quietly ended several diets. Locals recommend taking both, in that order, and then going for a long walk to justify it.

On the return journey the light turns the colour of honey, and the same guard comes through the carriages calling out the stations as though announcing old friends. Somewhere past Gull Lane the compartment falls quiet, and people lean their heads against the window and watch the evening arrive. It is, without any doubt, the finest forty minutes the railway has to offer.

Before you leave, climb the shingle bank behind the lifeboat house. From the top the whole coast lies open in both directions, pale and unhurried, with the little train waiting at the platform like a patient animal. It is a good place to decide whether you will come back in winter, when the quay is empty, the tearoom steams its windows, and the sea does all the talking.