Tuesday, March 27, 2018

Britain who will never need Viagra as long as there are steam trains in operation

From The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain by Bill Bryson. Page 198.
Beyond Salthouse the walk is close to the sea and over sand and shingle and along the tops of giant dunes for a couple of miles before climbing upwards on to big grassy fields seventy or eighty feet above the sea. It is all lovely. I was doing a very long walk – eighteen miles from Holkham to Sheringham – but the route was mostly flat. Just before I reached Sheringham, the air was pierced by a shrill whistle, loud enough to make me start, and off to my right a steam train passed, chuffing away and filling the air with a long chain of white smoke. This was the North Norfolk Railway. Even from a fair distance, I could see that the train was packed. Hundreds of happy people were on an eighteen-minute journey from Holt to Sheringham at a speed much slower than they had used to get to Norfolk, on a conveyance almost certainly less comfortable, and they were in heaven.

Very few things are more reliably astounding than the British when they are enjoying themselves, and I say this with a kind of cautious admiration. They have the ability to get deep and lasting pleasure out of practically nothing at all. Give them a form of transport that was becoming obsolete in the time of Clement Attlee and they will flock to it. Did you know, Britain has 108 steam railways – that is surely 106 or so more than any nation needs – run by 18,500 volunteers? It is an extraordinary fact but a true one that there are thousands of men in Britain who will never need Viagra as long as there are steam trains in operation.

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