East Midlands Rover: Summary

Here I thought I'd summarise what I did on my East Midlands Rover (EMR). I don't plan to go into as much detail as the All-Line Rover Awards but certainly a few comparisons are worthwhile. First, a summary of where I went:

Day 1: Coventry - Rugby - Stoke-on-Trent - Derby - Matlock - Derby - Kettering (via Corby) - Leicester - Nottingham - Sheffield

Day 2: Sheffield - Doncaster - Grimsby - Barton-on-Humber - Cleethorpes - Sheffield (via Brigg) - Worksop - Nottingham - Leicester - Nuneaton - Coventry

Day 3: Coventry - Nuneaton - Peterborough - Doncaster (via Lincoln) - Barnetby - Newark North Gate (via Lincoln) - Collingham - Leicester - Nuneaton - Coventry

Over the course of the three days, I spent 22 hours and 57 minutes on a total of 28 different trains, covering 935.5 miles of the East Midlands. As I linked to in my initial post, this map shows the area of validity of the ticket, which is pretty generous.

I certainly covered the majority of that area, and though I would have needed another day to completely cover the area, in the end pretty much the only lines that I didn't get to travel on that I haven't been on before are the Bletchley-Bedford line (which I did plan to go on but had to skip in order to get to Sheffield) and the line to Skegness.

The ticket cost just £44.20, but had I just walk-up single tickets each time I would have paid £184.65. (I could probably get that down a bit by being creative with the ticketing, but that's a can of worms I don't want to go into right now!) As such, I averaged 4.7p per mile - even better value than the All-Line Rover!

Of course, unlike the All-Line Rover (ALR), where I spent most of the time taking longer journeys and seeing the sights of various lines, most of the journeys on this East Midlands Rover were quite short and rather more rural in nature.

The key difference was that I avoided one of the pitfalls I fell into on the ALR by planning ahead. I had a pretty firm plan laid out before I started, and while my insomnia the night before I started led to me swapping a couple of days over and cutting one bit, other than that I pretty much kept to the entire plan completely.

Indeed, I planned the EMR explicitly to cover as much of the territory of the ticket as possible; given the nature of the services in Lincolnshire (as I mentioned in Day 3's post) it took a considerable degree of planning to get the plan to work. Had I missed my connection at Peterborough I couldn't have just picked up the train an hour later, but would have had to re-plan everything.

On the one hand, it's immensely satisfying to see a long-held plan come to fruition; on the other hand, it removes some of the excitement of planning it on the spot. However, given the nature of the ticket and the limited routes by which I could get home, a little forward planning was essential, especially given it wasn't valid via Birmingham. I still find it slightly weird spending a weekend on trains in the midlands without even coming close to Birmingham New Street station...

One effect of going round the more rural lines in the region was that I changed trains a lot more than on the ALR; whereas I never exceeded seven trains a day on the ALR (and averaged about five), on each of the three days of the EMR I did nine or ten trains. Some of that stems from the lack of direct trains in the region, some of it stems from the nature of the lines I wished to cover, and some of it stems from my determination to cover everything, even if it means changing three times!

In some ways, in fact, changing trains so many times added to the excitement. Is it going to be late? Am I going to miss my connection? Will I have to sprint? I was pretty lucky that over the course of the weekend I never missed a connection that I was aiming for; the tightest connection I had was the three-minute dash across the footbridge at Kettering on Friday evening.

With going round almost all the rural lines in the area, I got to see pretty much every kind of train that's used. The Sprinters remain my favourite: while the seats are often a little bit hard, they are the workhorse of the rural lines, and without them many of the lines I was on simply wouldn't have a service.

While I've moaned about the Pacers, I can't say I've ever thought they're terrible, but they're not great, certainly for long journeys. My least favourite kind of train remains the class 170 Turbostars, which are a bad copy of the Sprinters and manage to be even less comfortable than a Pacer!

As for the stations I passed through, I must single out Sheffield for some worthy praise. While I've used the station before on a couple of occasions, Saturday morning was the first time I'd noticed how well laid-out it is, and how good the amenities are compared to other stations. What's more, it's fortunate not to have been blighted by automatic ticket barriers (yet!), so Jonathan was able to meet me on the platform, rather than on the concourse.

I used both East Midlands Trains and Northern Rail extensively, and while I like both, I think my preference is still in favour of Northern Rail, for two reasons: one, their trains tend to be more comfortable (even when they're the same kind of train as EMT have), and two, they seem to make better use of their stock and avoid the poor planning that Lincoln suffers from at the hands of EMT.

That said, of the longer-distance services I used, East Midlands Trains wins hands-down: Northern Rail don't really operate any, and CrossCountry and TPE run long-distance services with trains which are too short.

The best scenery was definitely on the Matlock branch: the line climbs through the Peak District, crossing the River Derwent many times, through some of the best countryside in England. I only wish the line still extended all the way to Manchester.

All three days had something to recommend them, but I think my favourite day was probably the Friday, thanks to being able to see both the WCML and the MML in full swing, as well as seeing the beautiful Matlock branch. Saturday was a lovely sunny day in north Lincolnshire, and Monday was particularly interesting for the freight at Barnetby, but I think Friday just pips them to the post.

WHAT'S NEXT?

This East Midlands Rover marks the start of a concerted attempt on my part to have travelled on the whole of the British railway network by the time I'm, say, 30. (I would say 25 but that only gives me another fifteen months!) Of course, one can argue at great length as to what exactly "the whole of the British railway network" actually means, but for the time being I'm thinking of it as colouring in my map.

Having done the East Midlands Rover, there are now only a few lines in the whole of the midlands - Grantham-Skegness, Oxford-Hereford, Chester-Crewe-Stoke, and some of the suburban lines around Birmingham - that I haven't travelled on. By contrast, there are some areas which I haven't touched at all - most notably Kent (which, aside from a Eurostar to Paris in 2002 I've never even passed through).

So what further plans do I have? I hope to do a Heart of England Rover - similar to the East Midlands Rover but covering the West Midlands - sometime in May or June, to finish off most of the West Midlands. After that, I'm planning on spending ten days in Scotland in July with Ian and Matt doing a Freedom of Scotland Travelpass, with the intention of going on all the lines in the highlands. I will, of course, be blogging about both.

You may ask: why not another All-Line Rover? There are a number of reasons: for one, as you've seen, the regional rovers are often better value (though there are areas which don't have one, particularly in the south-east). They also allow you to focus on one particular area, rather than touching on lots of different areas.

Most importantly, however, the ALR is only available in one- and two-week passes; being able to use 3-in-7 or 4-in-8 rovers to do a weekend here or a few days there means that I'm able to spread it out, so that it's more relaxing, and indeed so I enjoy it more! While the ALR was undoubtedly brilliant, it was also a bit exhausting.

There are, however, a whole host of rover (and also day ranger) tickets out there, all of which are extraordinarily good value. By chance, the current editions of Rail (issue 668, April 20-May 3) and of Today's Railways UK (issue 113, May 2011, on sale until May 6th) both have comprehensive guides to all the rover tickets currently available, and if you are even slightly interested in doing one I wholeheartedly recommend buying one (both should be available from most good WH Smith's). Failing that, you can look at the list on the National Rail website, though that includes a number of other things lumped in with it and can be a little more confusing to navigate.

Until my next adventure, then, happy travelling, and thank you for reading.