THE Moorcock Inn stands alone, the only hostelry in the 15 lonely miles between Hawes and Sedbergh. For that reason, if no other, we shall return to it shortly.

More pertinently, however, the Moorcock is at Garsdale, Garsdale is on the Settle and Carlisle Railway, passenger services on the Settle and Carlisle mark their 125th anniversary this very day and Garsdale railway station is so gloriously improbable that there is the most fearful temptation to take it back home in the boot.

We had also asked for it for Christmas, a request quite shamefully unacknowledged.

The railway took six and a half years to build, employed up to 7,000 men, cost £3.5m and hundreds of apparently inexpensive lives.

They lived dangerously in shanty towns with names like Belgravia, Sebastopol, Jerusalem and Salt Lake City, opposed the elements across wild expanses like Blea Moor, Batty Moss, Wild Boar Fell and Dandry Mire, which is near the Moorcock.

For two years in the early 1870s, men poured over a quarter of a million cubic yards of material into Dandry Mire, found themselves as much in the clarts as ever they were, built a viaduct instead.

Without ceremony, the first train left St Pancras at 10.30am on Tuesday, May 1, 1876. Though still lacking a clock, that timeless pre-requisite of railway stations everywhere, Hawes Junction (as then it was known) opened three months later, closed in 1970, triumphantly re-opened in 1986.

Sixteen cottages for "railway servants" had been built alongside the station, a few more by the Moorcock. The Mount Zion Primitive Methodist Chapel opened the same year, but has now been closed by foot-and-mouth disease, the Harpers' all purpose emporium soon afterwards.

William Hodgson Harper kept the little shop for 50 years, was the push bike postman too, won the BEM for his hardy annuals. Edna, his daughter, served until closure in 1995. A telephone box, Garsdale Head 1, stood outside.

It was between the wars, however, that Garsdale really found its station in life, the little waiting room used for church services, the space beneath the 80,000 gallon water tank as a social centre for domino drives, palais de danse and potato pie suppers.

"It were a rart good do," someone is said once to have observed, "we had t'piano ower three times." There was even a railwaymen's lending library, books of a strictly improving nature donated by two maiden ladies from down dale.

Like the Settle and Carlisle, however, and like the long lopped branch down Wensleydale, it declined after the war.

"Change here for the back of beyond," read a John Bull headline in 1950, though Garsdale may yet more greatly be traduced by a passage in Bill Mitchell's book on its railway.

"The station sits uneasily on the landscape," he writes. "You'd think that over a spell of 130 years it would begin to feel at home. It still looks an imposition."

The 16 cottages remain, huddled together 1,100 feet up as if for mutual protection, a little garden set about with toy windmills. When the Helm wind gets to cross purposes it could probably generate enough electricity to illumine half of Teesside, much less a candy man's trumpet.

At the end stands a bus stop, obliquely angled, beyond it the "Coal road" over Shivering Moss to Lea Yeat, 1,750 feet above the sea. "Unclassified", says the sign, though the likelihood is that the coal road has been classified as many things, in winter not many of them fit for print.

The Moorcock, where they held the preliminary inquiry when a Garsdale signalman wrecked the Scots Express on Christmas Eve 1910, had just two other customers before its inviting fire.

The landlady wore a fleecy thing, collar upturned, and the air of its having been too long a winter.

There were three hand pumps, a book of Dalesman cartoons, a history of Hawes once given as a Christmas present to Aunty Hetty and a menu which held few surprises, save that vegetarian dishes were generally £2 more expensive than the carnivorous sort. The radio - Fresh Radio, for heaven's sake - offered something called the All Request Lunchtime. Silently we requested that the egregious object be hurled from the viaduct's highest arch, to lie for eternity at the bottom of Dandry Mire.

The shepherds pie (£5.25) was a bit insubstantial and a bit half scalded to death but had been tasty enough in its day. The "five bean chilli" had been found numerically wanting, transmogrified into a sort of sweet corn chilli instead.

"It's nice," said the landlady, though unlikely to aver that it tasted like something from Garsdale water troughs.

"It's all right," said The Boss.

Back at the stupendous station - imposition, indeed - the afternoon train to Skipton ran exactly to time, just £7.20 return, a splendid day awaiting. Happy birthday Settle and Carlisle, happy birthday Garsdale station. Come home soon.

ANOTHER railway line: Marooned late last Tuesday on York railway station we looked trepidantly - a correspondent from those parts, incidentally, suggests that "trepidantly" isn't a word - into Coopers bar on the concourse. A pint of Riggwelter, Black Sheep's 5.9 abv belly-up butter, was £2 55. There will surely be no advance on that.

HAWES seems awfully quiet, though everyone else appears to have reported from there of late. We contemplated lunch at the Fountain, didn't know whether to be more cross about paying £2 for Black Sheep bitter or the way they spelt to-night, and adjourned round the corner to the Laburnum House tea room instead.

The Laburnum House spelt "tea's" with an apostrophe, but those seeking a grammatically-correct eating house might waste away to nowt before discovering it.

Otherwise, and apart from the irritating intrusion of Radio 1 (see above) it was perfectly pleasant.

A ham salad with new potatoes (£4.95) was full of flavour, hot in the right places, plentiful. There was a prawn salad, too. We observed three or four weeks ago that restaurant owners seemed to believe the prefix "Greenland" gave prawns an inexplicable cachet, but these were "Royal Greenland prawns". King prawns perhaps.

The Boss's "soup and a sandwich" (£3.30, together) was also all that might be expected, but the best was kept until last, the sticky toffee pudding among the finest in many years toffee percolating.

By 1.45pm we lunched alone, turned to the Upper Wensleydale Advertiser for news of the crisis in the countryside, observed in an otherwise thoughtful editorial that when all is clear they must come out "with all guns blazing".

It is what's known, perhaps, as putting your foot and mouth in it.

A FEW miles down dale, Ralph Daykin approaches 45 years as landlord of the Victoria at Worton. A printed notice on the pub door announces that he is an Errol Flynn lookalike and urges customers not to stare.

Ralph hasn't his worries to seek either, his sheep uncomfortably close to the cull, but his wonderfully unspoiled little bolthole - perhaps the last "front room" pun in England - remains a rare delight.

No food, but Black Sheep bitter's £1.80 and a notice points the way to rooms 50-70. Errol Flynn's out there somewhere, too.

.....and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what's yellow and flickers.

A banana with a loose connection.

Published: Tuesday, May 1, 2001