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Stayed the night in the Hilton Nottingham, a pleasant facade with a (presumably) Victorian/Edwardian hotel behind it. Comfortable enough, though the staff were fairly unhelpful. The oddest thing was that my room was too cold, while just outside the door the corridor was far too hot (it must have been 30 degrees at least). Somewhere, there is an air conditioning unit having a duel to the death with a boiler.

Then off to Mansfield on the Robin Hood Line, a (hurray!) reopened railway running between Nottingham and Worksop that reopened to passenger traffic in 2000. And very handy it is, too, though it won’t win any awards for scenery at the Nottingham end. The station building at Mansfield Town is particularly fine – opened by the Midland Railway in the late 19th century, but with the yellow local stone making it look a little bit Georgian.

Mansfield seems to be recovering a bit from the end of coal, with lots of redevelopment and many fast, boring roads. You can see the football ground, Field Mill from the railway station, which is rather lovely, although some of the terraced streets that presumably used to surround it have been replaced by pale-brick warehouses containing Burger King and Blockbuster.

Simon Jenkins, a columnist I usually disagree with, has a good article in today’s Guardian, in praise of the steam engine. Jenkins, who is fascinated by others’ fascination with trains, talks about the revolutionary nature of rail travel, and the engineering marvels that the great steam trains certainly were.

Now that the great steam trains of the past are mostly confined to pottering at 25mph along enthusiasts’ lines, like great pandas scratching out their fur in the zoo, I still think that there is something glorious about train travel. A Southern electric train may not be the great belching beasts of old, but it is still the social, communal form of travel, linking the hearts of cities and villages through hundreds of welcomes and departures, with thin iron lines, rushing over bridges and level crossings, a pure and solitary vehicle, no matter how many trains there are elsewhere on the network. For all the crowds and mess on the railways today (and ever), it’s a world away from the visual clutter and congestion of the roads, or the spare utilitarianism of air travel.