Burton-on-Trent

"How's it take 40 minutes from Nottingham to Burton?" we'd wondered, looking at the map by the ticket office window, but we soon found out as we crawled towards Derby. There were level crossings and streams, back gardens so close you could almost touch the washing lines, and the ugly metal heap of Pride Park, rising above a grass embankment.

Burton was much nicer, like a living museum of Victorian Industry in red brick and steel pipe: Midland Railway Grain Warehouse Number Two, the Great Northern Hotel and the famous Burton breweries, now with Coors Moulson emblazoned across the gates. We walked there from the tiny railway station, following the smell of curry, beer lorry fumes and hops.