Image generated using GROK AI
Did we ever get to Lille? Those who know, know. Yes, we did, at about episode 70 of this humble racenteur’s hitty-missy Postcard of the same name that was once a staple of Saturday evening entertainment on Going-Postal. Thus asked an unread commentator beneath last week’s unread first part of our Scandinavian railway mystery – our Jernbanemysterium.
We finally pitched camp in the French provincial city at about 140,000 words (the length of two full novels) into my modest (unreliable?) memoir. As the long-suffering reader might have guessed, recounting as an anonymous first-person narrator allowed me the latitude required to enliven the prose with mild exaggeration and slight embellishment.
It also provided a convenient excuse, should I ever be interviewed by Andrew Neil or electrocuted at a border post in some middling Central American autocracy, to say, “Well, half of it’s true.” And, if feeling particularly brave under further interrogation to add, “But I’m not telling you which half.”
The bad news? I was immediately distracted by a detail in the Cabinét De La Tropiqués after popping into the natural history museum on Rue Claude Bernard. Next to the embalmed foot of a long-dead French Impressionist’s 14-year-old colonial wife sat a rare Polynesian bloom. This reminded me of a hurried trip to collect cuttings from a poisonous rhododendron found only on a remote island off the least fashionable beach in Sarawak.
Needed by our man in Jaipur ahead of a low-ranking but troublesome Rajastan maharaja’s Wednesday afternoon tea party, I arrived in northwest India via Indonesia just in time. A tall tale for another day that serves as a reminder of the unpredictable joys of both interruption and of the unplanned journey. Nothing beats the tingle sent down the spine of a midshipman – sailing a desk in an anonymous south London building – when his superior marches towards him across the floor tiles looking for a volunteer.
Our old working quarters sat on a street corner just far enough from the heart of the British establishment’s secret world to be able to pass itself off as if a provincial polytechnic’s London campus. The kind of place that might teach grammar school boys and minor public schoolgirls from out in the sticks to speak a foreign language or to be a quantity surveyor. Taps nose.
Within those walls there was a six-word sentence – five monosyllables topped with a bisyllable – which every chap or gall in their early twenties wanted to hear. The working day would begin after stepping off the Tube following another sleepless night in damp, noisy digs in late-1970s Tooting. We all hoped the next eight hours would include a flustered boss standing in front of our desk wondering, ‘Can you do me a favour?’
The Cold War, The Troubles, bolshy unions, unruly colonies – all hands to the plough. Not your pay grade, of course. You could say no, but you wouldn’t dream of it. Something’s come up in _____, and it would please Her Majesty if you could help.
Puffins can fill in the blank themselves. Hint: anywhere from Marrakesh to Manchester, from Matlack to Mongolia, a willing pair of hands is needed. Straightforward stuff. A bit of fetching and carrying. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but I immediately thought of yourself. If it’s not in a contract or a job description, all the better.
Renumeration? None, other than spending less than your subsistence and keeping the difference. Best Mrs Thatcher can offer. Got into trouble? Never heard of you. Should have kept your head down. The Department has bigger fish to fry.
Tell mummy and daddy you’re going somewhere nice with that pretty girl from the motor pool who you stare at cow-eyed in the canteen. And tell Nathalie the driver you’re going somewhere nice with mummy and daddy. There are tickets for the boat train in an envelope in your pigeon hole. Leaves in forty minutes. Chop, chop.
Late the next day, one might find oneself – via the Hook of Holland and Helsingborg – in cough neutral cough Sweden, fetching and carrying and trying to mind your own business while trying even harder to mind other people’s – especially those of a red flag with a hammer-and-sickle inclination. The weekends might be spent exploring, not least in neighbouring Norway.
Almost half a century later, one is prompted to put reminiscing pen to nostalgic Postcard From Lille-style paper. In doing so, I lingered over Google Maps when pointed at the warm side of a Scandinavian glacier. There, I am reminded of an odd Cold War anomaly often spotted when out and about in the high latitudes all those decades previous. Despite the return of similar difficult times, am I free to explain? No, but I will.
Our tale begins in Bergen over 40 years ago. On a weekend away from over-fussy Stockholm, I decamped to pleased-with-itself Oslo and took a sleeper train for the 308-mile trip to Norway’s second city. The overnight had been cold, dark and sleepless, but not to worry. After a couple of Sunday morning hours exploring the deserted fjord-side metropolis on Norway’s west coast, I found myself back at the railway station. Snug on the 10:00 am train to Oslo, I anticipated a seven-hour excursion along what the guide books promised to be one of the world’s most spectacular rail journeys.
Departing Bergen the route hugs the fjord shore as it ascends through lush valleys and dense forest. Dramatic landscapes unfold at every turn. The line climbs towards the mountains, passing picturesque villages and nestled lakes of Alpine beauty. As it continues to climb, the lush landscape gives way to stark wilderness.
Rising to an altitude of 4,000 ft., the train enters an icy terrain. The casual visitor, peering out during the gaps between snow covers and tunnels, can no longer distinguish frozen hillsides from ice-covered lakes and ancient glaciers. The summit of the route is at Finse, about 85 miles east of Bergen, after which all eyes turn south, marveling at the frozen lakes of Tungevatnet and Bergsmulfjorden.
© Always Worth Saying 2025, Going Postal
However, the discerning traveller might look the other way. By doing so, they may spot something ordinarily concealed from the inexperienced tourist or the over-familiar local, but obvious to a Cold Warrior whose faculties are fine attuned to similar curiosities spotted at the lineside in the most unlikely parts of Sweden.
All these years later, despite the best efforts of those who wish such things to remain secret, I was able to rediscover this mystery with the help of satellite mapping software and photographic plates from the collection of an obscure Norwegian adventurer. One feels obliged to explain all in the next episode of Jernbanemysterium!
To be continued…
© Always Worth Saying 2025
