The opening game of the season turned out to be a right blow out for Morecambe but D3D4 Shrimps correspondent Roger Fitton took a look beyond the football and decided to explore Crewe…

In Crewe – what do you do?

I’ve moaned before on these pages about a certain train company, whose name eludes me, in an article entitled Virgin on the Ridiculous. I think we all know that other British train companies have also lived down to the sort of gold/excreta standard offered by Virgin (you pay top dollar for a crap service) in recent months. Some of us have experienced this and we will return to said topic if Northern don’t actually come up with the goods they have promised when I intend to travel to Lincoln next December to watch the Shrimps play at Sincil Bank.

When the EFL fixtures were first published, I knew that my Better Half would not be coming with me to Crewe: she is far too busy working at the Coniston Institute’s Vintage Shop – as ever at this time of year. So I looked for a cheap train ticket to take myself to and from Gresty Road to witness the first game of the new season.

Getting a decent deal seems as much of a lottery as the train timetables in Britain indisputably are at this moment in time in pre-Brexit Britain. If this is a glimpse of the future, god help us all…

National Rail Enquiries offered me a day return for just under £55 over a month ago including a discount for the Old Fogies Rail Card I own. That’s about twice as much as I would spend on diesel if I drove there and back – and diesel at the pump makes no allowances for how old you might be, we must remember. Even more confusingly, if I was to buy a return ticket on the day I wanted to travel, I could do so for £43.20 – much cheaper than if I had booked it in advance. That’s not supposed to happen, is it?

Trainline offered me a day return for just over twenty-eight quid. In other words, half the price for exactly the same journey – more or less.

How does this work? I just don’t get it…

But my brain cell twitched and it occurred to me that a return fare from Lancaster – the next stop southwards down the West Coast line from where I live (just over two quid return on the local service for old farts like me)might be cheaper…

And it was. By how much? Wait for it…

Actually, I’m so astonished by the massive discrepancy between what I actually paid and what I could have done that I have had to keep checking my tickets ever since if only to prove to myself that I haven’t imagined this. Including booking fee, they cost me precisely seven pounds and ninety pence.

Which would basically allow me to make the same journey seven times over for the price I was initially quoted by National Rail Iniquities – sorry – National Rail Enquiries.

As I mentioned a moment ago: I just don’t get this.

The point I have just made admittedly doesn’t have a lot to do with football – but it says an awful lot about how train travel in Britain has more to do with the companies tasked to provide it having their foot in our collective balls more often than not.

But I digress. To get back to the subject, what does anyone think of when the town Crewe comes up in conversation? (If, in all honesty, it ever does.)

They think of railways – Crewe station, with its twelve platforms, is one of the biggest railway junctions to be found anywhere in Britain.

They may also think of Rolls Royce. Traditionally, this has been the town’s second biggest employer over the years although, technically speaking, it is now the Bentley factory, named in honour of the visiting team’s manager today. It is, honestly – I’ve just read it on Twittypedia so it must be true, mustn’t it?

There’s Mornflakes too – I’ve seen the place where these oats are processed from the train as I have flashed on by on my way to London or back again to Lancaster in the past.

(The Mornflakes Stand at Gresty Road.)

But I suspect this is the abiding memory that people who think about Crewe at all tend to share: you may pass through it but you don’t actually stop and get out. And even if you do stop and shuffle round the platforms to go somewhere else, you don’t get a flavour of the town. In fact, you can get totally misleading flavours altogether – like the pastel de nata (a Portuguese delicacy which is basically an Egg Custard on Acid) which I sampled at the station on the way to Shrewsbury last season.

But if you do stop and get out – as I did last Saturday on my way to watch Morecambe’s first match of the season at Gresty Road – what distinct charms does Crewe offer the eager, hungry and thirsty visitor with three hours to kill before the match kicks-off?

According to the internet, it doesn’t bode well. Apparently, if has the `worst Wetherspoons in Britain’; The Gaffers Row.

(Thinks: did this refer to the argument about who should have intercepted Dagenham & Redbridge’s Centre Forward as he scored yet another goal against us at Christie Park not too many moons ago? Today’s Gaffers at the football game have both been Captains and team-mates as central defenders in Sammy McIlroy’s Morecambe team back in the day after all…)

The answer is very definitely – No.

No as in a rhyme for `Row’ rather than `Cow’ as I wrongly assumed above. The Gaffers Row was so bad, apparently, that is has been permanently shut down.

Oh dear. So what else is there to do? Or even, not to do…

As the Intercity trains I have travelled on in the past trundled through the junction and I clocked glimpses of Crewe through the windows, I caught sight of what people of my generation probably universally recognise as the prototype of the APT – Advanced Passenger Train. This – like the TSR2 (a front-line strike aircraft literally way ahead of its time which also came to nothing after massive private and public investment) ended –up being a very costly White Elephant. I believe the only multi-million pound TSR2 which actually flew ended-up being shot to pieces on a gunnery range somewhere in Britain. But at least the £47 million APT survived derailments, scorn and public humiliation to rest – sorry – rust in peace at the Crewe Heritage Centre. This as Pendolinos whose basic design – the ability to tilt as they go round bends – was based on it blast past its final destination as they forge their ways to Glasgow Central in the north or Euston in the south.

Some places – and I live in one, Carnforth, a few score miles north up the main west coast line from Crewe – are not known for much apart from the railway. We can’t all be like York – another massive railway junction but with an even more massive weight of Roman and Viking history.

But we don’t have a brewery – even a micro one – here in Carnforth. Crewe does, though. It’s the Offbeat Brewery. Well, that sounds promising and it could be well worth a visit – the beer attracts excellent reviews. It would be good to try some. But I couldn’t: the Brewery is never open on Saturdays which seems a little odd to put it mildly. Or Stoutly. Or even Bitterly, depending on what range of beers they actually brew.

Well – how about a market, then? Places like that usually give you at least a flavour of the place you are visiting. Crewe not only has one but it is apparently quite an interesting Victorian example of the genre. Maybe I could go there and sample some of the local produce before the game.

But guess what?…

Oh dear. The entire place was virtually empty; the stall-holders moved elsewhere as `regeneration’ takes place.

So what does that leave? On TripAdvisor, the place I was ultimately bound for on Saturday was pretty high on the list of things to visit in Crewe. And this place is Gresty Road, immortalised by the Xmas carol “Gresty Merry Gentlemen, let nothing you dismay” (apart from probably this crummy attempt at a joke.) Yes, Gresty Road, home of Crewe Alexandra football club.

Crewe Alexandra. Not Crewe Town; Crewe Rangers; Crewe Athletic or anything else as run of the mill as that you might note. (Crewe Lokomotiv has a certain ring to it in my humble opinion…) So why `Alexandra’?

Seeking enlightenment, I discovered the following on a website called thebeautifulhistory:

“Crewe Alexandra played cricket and probably rugby at the Earle Street Ground before they decided to form a football club in 1877. The origins of the name of the club are still unsubstantiated. Whether they took the name ‘Alexandra’ from a hotel, patronised by those connected with the railway works and where they held their meetings, or whether it was after Princess Alexandra of Denmark, who married Queen Victoria’s eldest son, later King Edward VII, is a matter of conjecture.

The establishment of Crewe Alexandra FC in 1877, known affectionately as ‘The Alexandrians’, coincided with the club moving to the newly built Alexandra Recreation Ground, also known as the Nantwich Road venue, encompassing a cricket field, a football pitch and a cycling track.”

So now we know. Or not as the case might be.

Anyway, the Big Day finally dawned and I donned a Morecambe shirt, got into my van and drove the seven miles from home and parked near Lancaster station as I have done lots of times before. Then I walked the short distance from there to catch the train. I drove in the first place because the only thing reliable about trains is that they are totally UNreliable in a Britain heading for Brexit and feared not being able to get to Lancaster on time from Carnforth if I didn’t go in my van.

To be fair, the London-bound train was only three minutes late and it didn’t stop permanently at Preston as it did last time I attempted to make this journey. It took about an hour to get to Crewe. The centre is where I wanted to go.  But it’s at least a quarter of an hour’s walk from the station. This put me in mind of the old joke about some posh gent with lots of luggage getting off at Dent Station on the Settle-Carlisle line only to discover that Dent village is actually four miles away.

“Might it not have made more sense to build the station nearer to the village?” he said huffily to the Porter on the platform.

“Aye, well now then – aye. But on second thoughts, we decided it might be better to build it nearer the railway line tha’ knows!”

The centre is not exactly four miles away but it is a brisk walk which I completed – eventually. But first of all, I wanted to visit the Crewe Heritage Centre mentioned above.

So I walked through a maze of decaying 1970s Public Housing, complete with fly tipping such as beds and mattresses to get there. Given that it’s effectively part of the station, it’s a hell of a long way to walk.

I had already bought a ticket for the match – I was the first customer as a young lad opened-up the Gresty Road Ticket Office and sold me an Old Fogies ticket for a mere £17 (as opposed to £22) using my Driving License as proof of my date of birth. Being an Old Fogy in Crewe means being over 60 (65 at Morecambe FC) so I got a reduction at the so-called Heritage Centre as well – four instead of six quid.

(“I don’t need to see your Driving License” said the Ticket Man there.

“Shame. I hoped you would say I look far too young to be a Senior Citizen.”

He just gave me a look.

“I’ve given up guessing how old people are. Ever since I offered a Senior Citizen ticket to a woman who turned-out to be only 45…”)

Was Crewe Heritage Centre worth it?

Probably.

In comparison to long-defunct Steamtown here in Carnforth, though, it was very disappointing.  I rode on their miniature track and walked through the Advanced Passenger Train as well. Then I was addressed by a very enthusiastic gentleman  who is trying to raise money to rebuild engines 10000 and 10001; scrapped diesel locos with English Electric engines and bogies which will alone cost at least eighteen grand to buy.

I wondered how it could be possible to resurrect a design whose prototype and second edition do not exist anymore. You fake it and twist the reality of these extinct things, apparently. Using power plants almost identical to the ones long-ago scrapped; non-authentic bodies two and a half feet too short and modern digital controls – “Nobody will see them!”

I gave him a contribution (eventually) and wished him luck. So they only need a further £17,999 to buy the bogies now…

The Cafe on the site provided packaged stuff like crisps and biscuits and not a lot else. The older Scottish woman in charge seemed to have a vocabulary even more limited than her stock. (“No” to the availability of chips or sarnies as she stands there and looks as bored as I had been myself a few minutes earlier.)  She probably once worked for British Rail…

(The height of 1970s cuisine – British Rail style.)

So lunch was a cup of tea and a bag of very overpriced crisps.

But – to put a positive spin on things – I did manage to lay eyes on the fine lines of Lady Diana Spencer

and actually physically touch Robert Burns as well:

Then I carried on walking into town. The fancy, Gothic spire I spotted from afar was that of Christ Church. When I got up to it, though, the church itself turned-out to be a ruin. I wondered why: part of it looked as if it had been burnt-out.

But fire has absolutely nothing to do with its current state, apparently. The ruination is not due to something as dramatic as Luftwaffe raids – as was the case in Coventry – Moslem rejection of Christianity; civil – or even uncivil – unrest. Or anything else for that matter.)

It was Dry Rot.

So why hasn’t it been rebuilt? Or totally demolished?

This fact in itself probably says more about Crewe than I could ever do here.

I walked to the Market then and saw the Lyceum Theatre which is also apparently a Crewe Icon. It was hot and I was thirsty so I visited a pub – Hops – opposite the ruined church which has been a CAMRA champion in the past.  I hoped they might have a local brew to sample: some of their glasses had Offbeat scribed on them after all. But there was no evidence of the beer in any of its guises. So I had a pint of IPA from a micro-brewery I’d never heard of for £3.10.

It was frankly not very good – it tasted like home brew.

Then it was time to walk back to the stadium.

I bought a 500ml plastic bottle of Carlsberg for three quid at the ground in the filthy, open-air pit reserved for Away Fans where you can buy all sorts of crap food for inflated prices.

There, I said `hello’ to fellow fans I have a nodding acquaintance with – and in we went. Like lambs to the slaughter…

After the humiliation on the field (match report here if you bear it), I walked back into town and bought a pair of reading glasses for a quid at one of the many cheap shops there: I’d left mine in my van in Lancaster and I needed them to start to write my match report. There were few people around either time I visited but I heard more foreign than English voices and there were plenty of Polish, `European’ and even Romanian shops. This is why Brexit has happened – the locals simply want them to go back to wherever they come from.

Stoke or Nantwich perhaps….

Then I returned to the Hops, had another indifferent pint of something different to earlier and started to write-up my match report on my phone. To do this, I was using the paper I had taken with me and scribbled on throughout the match but couldn’t actually clearly read without any glasses.

I wasn’t surprised by the result: six-nil to the Railwaymen – I’m far too long in the tooth to be so. I was just disappointed. All that excitement; all that anticipation and pop! the balloon is well and truly burst in less than two hours… But at least I didn’t pay full price for my match ticket and the visit was in itself… interesting, I suppose. If I’d paid fifty-five quid to get there and back, though, defeat would have hurt an awful lot more…

So let’s end this article now with words which are bad enough to have actually been penned by The Old Sheep of the Lake District (change at Platform Eleven) William `Daffodils’ Worthless himself:

When you’re in Crewe, what do you do?

Before walking round it, I hadn’t a clue

Go buy a ticket – no sign of a queue

Visit the vintage trains; none of them new

Return for the match, a shambles to view:

Shrimps’ fans at Gresty all ended-up Blue!