We did Christmas properly this year. Properly as in, we came back to North Yorkshire and didn’t pretend we were just passing through on the way back to Spain. The decorations went up, the house filled up, the fridge filled up, and at some point the days became a blur of wrapping paper, odd little arguments about whether you need three types of mustard, and that strange warm indoor feeling where you start craving cold air just to prove the world still exists outside.
By the time the last mince pie had turned into a sort of obligation, Patricia said, very calmly, “We need to go somewhere with a platform.”
That’s how she is. She doesn’t say she needs fresh air or a change of scene. She says platform. Like it’s a medical requirement.
So we went to Pickering.
Pickering in winter has a particular look. It’s not dramatic. It’s not trying to impress anyone. It’s just doing what it does. The stone looks darker, the pavements feel slightly damp even when it hasn’t rained, and everyone is dressed like they’ve come prepared for something mildly inconvenient.
The North Yorkshire Moors Railway sits there like it’s always been waiting. Not in a museum way. In a quiet, practical way. As if steam trains are still a normal part of life and it’s the rest of us who have got a bit carried away with apps and self checkouts.
Bertie didn’t like the first hiss of steam.
He stopped dead, ears up, staring at the locomotive as if it had personally insulted him. He’s brave in fields. Brave on beaches. Brave when there’s a suspicious plastic bag blowing about.
Steam is another matter.
Patricia, meanwhile, was doing her usual thing of noticing everything. The way the signs are painted. The way people stand without quite realising they’re doing it. The small conversations that happen on platforms. There’s something about trains that makes strangers speak more softly, as if the air itself is listening.
We climbed aboard.
The carriage was cold in that honest way old carriages are cold. Not aggressive. Just factual. Wooden seats, windows that look out on hedgerows and winter fields, and that faint smell of something metallic and long remembered.
I had brought a flask. I always bring a flask. It’s one of my small systems. The tea tasted slightly of the flask, as tea always does, but it was hot and that’s what mattered.
Bertie sat down like he owned the place.
This is the thing about him. Five minutes ago he was suspicious of steam. Now he was positioned by the window like a retired businessman on his way to a meeting. He gave a look to a passing spaniel that said, quite clearly, “Some of us travel properly.”
The train pulled away with that slow confidence only trains have. Cars rush. Modern life rushes. Steam trains do not rush. They move like they have all the time in the world, which, in a way, they do.
The North Yorkshire Moors Railway is one of those things that could easily have disappeared. It’s kept alive by people who care in a very specific, slightly stubborn way. Volunteers, enthusiasts, locals who remember when this wasn’t nostalgia, it was transport. It runs through some of the most quietly beautiful landscape we have, up onto the moors where the sky always seems bigger than you expect.
As we climbed, the fields gave way to rougher ground. Heather stripped back for winter. Trees standing bare and unbothered. The kind of scenery that doesn’t need explaining.
It made me think, oddly, of the Windypits.
Not because they’re similar. They’re not. But because North Yorkshire has these places that feel older than you want them to. Places where you suddenly remember the land has been here doing its thing long before any of us turned up with our dog and our sensible shoes.
Bertie wouldn’t go near the Windypits. He knew something was off.
On the train, he was fine. He likes anything that involves being slightly elevated and watching the world go past.
Patricia leaned her head against the window for a moment. She does that sometimes. Not asleep. Just resting her eyes. Taking it in.
And I had one of those small flashes, the kind you don’t announce out loud, where you realise how strange our life is now.
A few weeks ago we were walking by the tide at Esteiro, watching the light come off the water in that soft Galician way, Bertie sniffing seaweed like it was a serious hobby.
Now we were back in Yorkshire, tea in hand, steam in the air, the moors rolling out like an old blanket.
Two worlds. Both real. Both ours, somehow.
The train slowed at a station further along the line, people getting off with rosy faces, the sort of quiet happiness you only see when someone has chosen to be cold on purpose.
Bertie, still acting like he was in charge of the carriage, yawned.
When we got home later, the house felt too warm again. Boots by the radiator. Coats over chairs. That post outing silence where you’ve been somewhere simple and it has reset something in your head.
Patricia said, “That was good.”
That was all.
Bertie fell asleep like a man who’d done a hard day’s work on the railway.
And outside, North Yorkshire carried on, grey and solid and slightly amused by us, as always.
Meta title (optional): A Steam Train Day on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway (With Bertie in Charge)
Meta description (optional): A winter ride from Pickering on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway, tea in a flask, steam in the air, and Bertie behaving like he owns the carriage.
