I’ve been reading about this all week, but before I got round to blogging it the Guardian’s been and visited it . A friend told me they’d linked up the Welsh Highland Railway and the Ffestiniog, as it used to be, crossing the mainline on the level and running through the streets of Porthmadog. It’s true:
Though that bit isn’t officially opened yet.
Ffestiniog trains can run from Blaenau Ffestiniog right through to Caernarfon (Welsh Highland trains can’t run through to the Ffestiniog though! The loading gauge is bigger on the WHR). That’s a run of 40 miles.
This history of the project is extraordinary, and actually encompasses two railway companies. The relaying of the line was bizarrely driven by the Ffestiniog’s attempts to block it. The politics and business arrangements are so complex I think I’m going to have to read several books on it.
The section from Dinas to Caernarfon, which has been open for 12 years, wasn’t actually part of the WHR. It used to be standard gauge, though originally Parliament approved a WHR extension on the route that was never built. There’s a nice symmetry to this, because the full length route is truncated at the Ffestiniog end, where the old Ffestiniog and Blaenau Railway route is now standard gauge (standard gauge transporters used to convey the narrow gauge wagons until the closure of the quarries).
Oh yeah, and I’ve realised what’s wrong with my job: unlike Partrick Barkham I don’t get paid for riding narrow gauge trains.
I’m not that keen on dance. Usually I’ll run a mile at the merest whiff of a dance receital. Actually, I don’t go to the opera that much either. But look at this, from David McVicar’s Glyndebourne production of Handel’s Giulio Cesare:
I know it’s wrong (surely you aren’t meant to be able to swing your hips to Handel), but how can something so good not be right? So George Frideric may not have realised he was writing a cabaret, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t.
And this isn’t even the best bit (Cleo’s opening scene when she kicks Ptolemy’s butt is great). Though Danielle de Niese (Cleopatra) may not be the best singer in this rather spiffy production (only because the competition is fierce), but she’s an amazing performer.
It’s a bit like parsnips in soup. Dance in opera can not only be palatable, but rather tasty.
“I cannot personally get enough of these grey squirrels, people are eating them. If I was getting a hundred, they would take a hundred each and every day, the demand is so high. They are sold as soon as they hit the counter.”
How long will it be, then, before some unscrupulous entrepreneur starts breeding the pests and all the good work will be undone?
