Remembering much-loved and once-heaving Ilfracombe train station

Ilfracombe railway station closed on October 5th, 1970, and Combe Rail has commemorated it with a heritage plaque, made by Fircroft Signs, at the foot of its surviving steps. Â

During its post-war heyday, the terminus handled thousands of passengers daily, as summer crowds flocked to the town’s hotels and B&Bs. Holidaymakers, hikers and Exmoor campers brought substantial revenue to both Ilfracombe and Combe Martin. Â

Contrary to widely-held beliefs, the once busy link with Barnstaple was not recommended for closure by the 1963 Beeching report, but spared. Nevertheless, rail services nationwide had become un-economic, as car ownership mushroomed and continental holidays made ever more affordable. Â

The numerous manually-operated farm crossings between Barnstaple and Ilfracombe were expensively staffed; had newly developed automatic crossing gates been installed just two years earlier, the line may have survived into the present, perhaps even returning a profit. Â

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Freight traffic, meanwhile, dropped across the network. Mortehoe Station was immortalised in Flanders and Swann’s poignant, melancholic lament, ‘Slow Train’. I beg you to watch it on YouTube. Â

Across Britain, newly revived railways are proving their worth. Realistically, restoration of our own link to London is unlikely but it survives on video. Combe Rail’s chairman, John Burch, tells me he is looking for a fabricator to refurbish the former station’s fence segments. Â

John is an expert on the value of efficient and sustainable rail and bus travel. He’s the Confederation of Passenger Transport UK’s South Western regional manager, and part of the driving force behind TawLink, the plan to join Chivenor and Barnstaple with a light railway on the closed line’s trackbed.Â

DIAL M FOR MAYHEMÂ

Has anyone ever shared with me the panic of accidentally calling someone long embedded into their mobile phone’s contact list, but who is little more than a barely remembered acquaintance? Â

Like everyone else’s, there are dozens of numbers stored on my phone. Long forgotten ex-colleagues from decades past are there, including people whose funerals I have attended. Â

Even my Southend-on-Sea dentist from 2003 remains – my next visit might coincide with a filling falling out. Over a hundred individuals are archived on this roll of persons past, some of whom I cannot even recall meeting. Â

So, when I called Ring-Go Parking yesterday, and noticed in immediate terror that instead of preparing to book an hour in the Wilder Road car park, I’d called ‘Bernie’, whose 01702 land-line phone would now be ringing, I launched into a mad frenzy of button pressing in a crazed attempt to terminate the call. Â

I even tried to switch the thing off, but couldn’t work out which key operated the power switch, succeeding only in turning up the volume. To my horror, a voice answered. Â

‘Hello’, said Bernie. ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘I just thought I’d ring and ask how you were.’ The honest truth was that I couldn’t even place the guy. My call certainly bemused the distant chap, who had apparently known a few Daves in his time, but not one with my surname. Â

Nevertheless, chatty ‘Bernie’, who during the conversation told me that he had no recollection of being called Bernie, cheerfully reported his good health. He was absolutely fine, having suffered a touch of Covid, but thankfully recovered, and was looking forward to April, and marriage to his new sweetheart, who at 62, is two years his senior. Â

They had met whilst walking their dogs in lockdown, when their respective pooches’ leads became entangled. I congratulated him and told him that I was now living in Ilfracombe, in Devon, which Bernie told me he had once visited long ago with his parents. Â

Such an unexpectedly pleasant conversation with a total stranger. It was after hanging up that I realised that Bernie was actually the number of Southend’s long-closed Bernie’s Dry Cleaners, the redundant phone number of which had been allocated to some bloke who now wants to call on me next time he and his brand-new second wife are in North Devon. Â

What am I gonna do, folks? Â