In this extract from Stuart Campbell’s somewhat surreal account of travelling the length of every railtrack in Britain, he and his long-suffering friend are joined by the spirit of Daniel Defoe as they explore the outermost reaches of the country.

JOHN appraised the train stock in Glasgow Central: “Blood and custard”. I assumed he was answering a question I had not asked about his breakfast choice. I already knew that the old Great Western Railway carriages were described as chocolate and cream; this was just something else I had learned.

My next mistake was in assuming the German engineer in our carriage was Dutch. This never goes down well. He was en route to Ayr, “To take photo of old Victorian seaside resort.” “Clearly a spy,” Defoe whispered.

We talked about Berlin. “The city gets younger every year.” Not like Ayr, I thought. “Soon I will have to leave Berlin as I will be too old. And I will have a cup of tea!” I suggested he try a few pints and get a real sense of a faded British seaside resort. The conversation was just about holding together. And then he said to me, “I’m looking at landscape. I not have time for talking.” That was me told. I slunk back to my seat while he took a photo of a sign hanging in Kilmarnock station: COMMUNITY RAIL PARTNERSHIP.

“Ayr, a sea-port,” said Defoe. “Like an old beauty, it shows the ruins of a good face; but it is also apparently not only decayed and declined, but decaying and declining every day, and from being the fifth town in Scotland, as the townsmen say, is now like a place forsaken.”

It was time to play Defoe at his own game. What would he have said at this point? “The Isle of Arran was clearly visible, and we could just discern the Paps of Jura in the distant Inner Hebrides. At Girvan we had a commanding view of Ailsa Craig squatting on the horizon like a dumpling.”

Defoe stopped drumming his fingers on the armrest in a particularly irritating manner, and looked up.

“Ah, a pastiche! I approve. Dumpling is very good.”

The bleak countryside south of Barrhill has been compared to the Falklands, which might explain the thin line of soldiers yomping along the horizon. I had never understood this military term, and was now none the wiser. Close to the track we saw several Argentinian boy soldiers cowering in foxholes.

“The common people here not only are poor, they look poor; they appear dejected and discouraged, as if they have given over all hopes of ever being otherwise than what they are.”

It was pishing in Stranraer where we had three hours to spend before the return train. John was more than happy to spend all 180 minutes in the bleak waiting room. Being of a more manly disposition, I strode through horizontal rain towards the town. Three quick and very wet tours of all inhabited streets were long enough for me to note the prevalence of bored Alsatians growling menacingly from front windows. The exception was the Alsatian being driven up the high street in the passenger seat of a small car. Several strangers smiled at me wistfully, as if they too remembered the day they first set foot in Stranraer. The town does have an ominously large number of voluntary sector organisations offering victim support.

The museum, admission free, promised respite from the deluge. To justify dripping all over the well-appointed municipal space, I feigned interest in several large agricultural implements and a wooden spoon found in a local bog. I met a nice old lady in the education wing who pointed to the children’s play area. “Wouldn’t it be nice,” she said, “to dress up as a lion?” I knew exactly what she meant. While I have neither sympathy nor understanding for grown men who want to be dressed in nappies, I knew what she meant. Then it occurred to me that her husband, who was lurking in the background, would probably hit us with his walking stick unless we stopped.

The next refuge was the public library where I tried to buy a booklet on Stranraer in the Second World War. The librarian handed my not insignificant change to someone else in the queue. After a brief exchange about the redistribution of wealth he relented and returned my money.

As all cafes were packed to the gunnels and well beyond the plimsoll line, I made the mistake of going into a Wetherspoons look-alike pub for a coffee. Before I reached the bar I was aware of a man talking loudly, while nursing a midday pint. I assumed he was talking into a Bluetooth device, but no, his surreal monologue was addressed to me. ‘It’s 540 miles, and that’s from Keswick. I’m no Button or Schumacher but no one overtakes me, know what I mean? That’s at least five gallons of diesel. Do you know that place on the outskirts of Bo’ness?’ There was a difficult moment as he waited for me to respond to his direct question. “I know the place well,” I lied. Our encounter continued in this vein until the arrival of my coffee gave me an excuse to forsake his company.

I trudged back through the rain. I don’t think I was yomping by any stretch of the imagination. The seagulls screeched at me: “What did you expect? What did you expect?”

© Stuart Campbell 2017

Daniel Defoe’s Railway Journey by Stuart Campbell is published by Sandstone Press, priced £8.99