A North-West Rail Rover ticket costs just £70, or £46.20 with a senior citizen’s railcard, offering seven days unlimited travel in an area between Cheshire and southern Scotland, including Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool and the Cumbrian coast. The nearest stations to the North-East are Kirkby Stephen or Hexham. Aroving, the column finds the trans-Pennine way greatly to its liking.

DAY 1
KIRKBY Stephen’s where the Blackpool buses stopped, some more illuminated than others. It also had two railway stations, one on the old LNER over Stainmore and the other, a mile west, on the LMS. Now it’s the Settle and Carlisle line – celebrated, scenic and still very much in use.

We start for Shipley, across Ribblehead viaduct – “400 yards long, at least I hope it is,” says the conductor.

From Shipley we walk along the canal – there’s a houseboat called Llamedos, not even reversing – to Saltaire, Sir Titus Salt’s unchanging mill town that’s now a World Heritage Site.

Pinch of Salt’s, savour of Bradford and then back to Silsden, where Tow Law Town are playing, and winning, in the FA Vase. It’s in Cobbydale, which sounds like something from 1950s children’s television, circa Muffin the Mule. The 18.40 heads back from Skipton to Kirkby Stephen.

Number of trains: five. On time: five. Total miles: 127.

DAY 2
NORTHWARD on the 10.54 from Kirkby to Carlisle, then south on the west coast main line towards Liverpool.

Approaching Carlisle, the lady of the house asks if we go back the same way. It’s why women can’t read maps. Or do logic.

Virgin past Lancaster, the guard also makes a surprise announcement.

“Will passengers please remember to flush the toilet.” It’s a bit like the baby class at Timothy Hackworth infants.

Sunday lunch is a Greenhalgh’s pork pie in Wigan – a town pierless if not peerless – then via Liverpool to a night with friends in Chester.

There’s an old pub that was the 17th Century town house of the Earls of Shrewsbury. It was also where John Lennon’s auntie lived, though for some reason it doesn’t say that on the blue plaque.

Trains: four: On time: four. Total miles: 311.5.

DAY 3
CHESTER-Liverpool-Southport- Wigan-Manchester-StalyBridge- Leeds-Keighley-Kirkby Stephen. The Daily Mail has a story about the Prince of Wales spending £90,000 on a five-day trip by royal train. Hasn’t he got a senior railcard?

In Southport we pass Leo’s Bar, appropriate because our old friend the Reverend Leo Osborn – chairman of the Newcastle upon Tyne district of the Methodist church – will become president of the Methodist Conference at a service in Southport next July. Is there something we haven’t been told, Mr President?

Stalybridge has the world’s best station buffet, almost unchanged since it was opened in 1885 and better yet when the fire’s lit. A great galaxy of real ales, food like corned beef hash and black pudding with black peas – carlins to the uninitiated – and signs advising to beware of pickpockets and loose women. There are even two old chaps playing chess, as always there seem to be. They may be part of the fittings, like the old lads in the Muppet Show.

Back, less cerebrally, for the season’s first game in the Darlington 5s and 3s league. We lose, inevitably.

Trains: eight. On time: eight. Total miles: 501.

DAY 4
THE papers are on the royal train again – furnished more like a Travelodge than a palace, says the Telegraph.

The Duke of Gloucester, meanwhile, is due to mark Timothy Hackworth school’s centenary tomorrow and, due to the straitened circumstances now facing minor royalty, may have to travel on the No.1 bus to Shildon.

We head for Blackpool, are greeted by a thunderstorm, spend precisely 18 minutes there – the very antithesis of an endurance record – and head instead for Carnforth, home of the country’s second most famous station buffet.

It’s where Celia Johnson filmed Brief Encounter in 1945, writing to friends that she was surprised how “awfully nice” the porters were.

Since filming was at night, however, she was somewhat discomfited when the herring train landed from Aberdeen.

The buffet is restored, preserved, welcoming and does great sticky toffee pudding.

Thereafter to Grange-over-Sands, a wonderfully unspoiled place with a Grade II-listed railway station. Bill Bryson reckoned it one of his six favourite places to visit – Durham, inevitably, another – the barman at the Grange Hotel reckons it’s known locally as God’s Waiting Room.

Whatever the gerontocracy, old Bill may have been right as usual.

Trains: six. On time: six. Total miles: 698.

DAY 5
GRANGE-over-Sands is in Cumbria.

So is Carlisle. The train journey between the two embraces 100 miles, takes three hours and ten minutes and is one of England’s glories. Mostly coastal, it calls at stations like Cark, Corkickle and Kirkby-in-Furness, takes in Ulverston (which begat Stan Laurel for Bishop Auckland) before heading through the Rugby League duopoly of Whitehaven and Workington. Hundreds of gulls, gullible, fly screeching at our approach.

The Ravenglass and Eskdale, forever the Ratty, saunters enviably east. A wonderful journey.

A tour around Lancaster, a couple of pints in the Railway at Skipton – you can tell it’s the Railway, there are a couple of fellers discussing the relative merits of trucks – back for fish and chips in Kirkby Stephen before once again tucked up at home.

Trains: five. On time: five. Total miles: 998.5.

DAY 6
A SUNNY afternoon in Windermere, still crowded, then on to Morecambe.

The last time we visited the iconic, art deco Midland Hotel it was crumbling, almost tumbling onto the beach. Now it’s wonderfully restored, coquettish and curvaceous, the evening stay made better yet by a chance meeting with David Armstrong, an old friend who was head of Deerness Valley comprehensive in Ushaw Moor.

Though goodness knows they’ve worked at it, Eric Morecambe’s statue trying valiantly to bring sunshine, the remainder of Morecambe appears less successful. There are statues of cormorants, too. The lady of the house thought they looked like flashers. Funny lass.

David was 75 gone Saturday, did his basic army training in the Morecambe area, returned to mark the occasion.

He’d started teaching half a century ago at Alderman Cape in Crook, Harry Brook the only teacher with his own transport.

Harry’s converted post office van may long be off the road. Harry, happily, runs still.

Trains: six. On time: five – ten minute delay, Carlisle-Preston. Total miles: 1,176.

DAY 7
MIST over Morecambe Bay. The first wet morning of a lovely week suggests something discursive. Eight journeys, punctual to the minute, embrace five different train operating companies from Arriva Wales to Scotrail and towns from Warrington in the south to Dumfries and Lockerbie – where there’s also a bit of a Scotch pie fest – in the north.

We’re back in Kirkby Stephen at 19.11, the fish and chip shop still open. Just 35 minutes to home.

Total trains: 42. Total on time: 41. Total miles: 1,523.5, cost 3.3 pence a mile – and that’s the Rover’s return.