The Railroad to Wembley draws tantalizingly near its destination

I am monarch of all I survey

My right there is none to dispute;

From the centre all round to the sea

I am lord of the fowl and the brute.

– William Cowper, The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk

Selkirk was a Scottish sailor who at the start of the 18th century spent four years as a desert island castaway and with not even Kirsty Young to console him.

Rather like the Jumblies, he’d become convinced that they had gone to sea in a sieve. When the Ship tied up at an uninhabited archipelago 400 miles off Chile, Selkirk urged the captain to leave him behind.

He soon regretted his rashness – the sea lions kept him awake during mating seasons, and sea lions are at it most of the year – and was said to be almost incoherent with joy when finally rescued by a privateer called the Duke, which took him back to Erith, in Kent.

The story became the basis of Daniel Defoe’s hugely successful novel Robinson Crusoe, Erith still boasting a Selkirk Road, a Crusoe Road and even a Friday Road. The local Rotary Club marked the 300th anniversary in 2009.

There’s just one snag: local legend has it that when Selkirk saw where he’d been put ashore – back to Erith with a bump – he begged to be taken back to the Juan Fernandez Islands.

Erith and Belvedere have drawn North Shields in the FA Vase quarter-final, the Railroad to Wembley resuming on the 7 28 from Darlington, engineering works necessitating a diversion through Lincoln greenery.

The hymn Dear Lord and Father of Mankind – “Forgive our foolish ways” – keeps going around my head and seems unable to find an escape route.

The conversation turns quickly to royal longevity. “I wonder who’ll send the Queen a telegram when she gets to 100,” says the ever-loyal Mr Kit Pearson, also in attendance. It’s pretty profound for half past seven in the morning.

Nine-tenths of standard class appears to be asleep, and in varying positions of discomfiture. That’s the chief difference between the classes: first class dozes, second class crashes out.

Though it’s the final day of the East Coast main line franchise, none save the RMT chap in that morning’s paper – “a gross national betrayal” – seems very much to be bothered.

There’s not even the promised demonstration at Kings Cross, not unless they mean the silly woman with her Pomeranians, anyway.

Though they’ve two Kentish towns from which to choose, Erith and Belvedere no longer play in either of them. They ground share with Welling United of the Conference – “a lovely ground, untouched by modernity,” says the younger bairn, who’s been before.

It’s an interesting arrangement, a bit like (say) the Duke of York and his former flame who still share the same palatial gaffe but accept no greater intimacy than the occasional tea for two.

Erith and Belvedere have a separate entrance, separate dressing rooms, separate stand, separate hospitality. They get on very well that way.

Welling should also not be confused with Welwyn Garden City, though the etymology – “pace of the spring” – is thought to be the same.

The high street seems more functional than floribundant, the local Wetherspoons anxious to promote the coming of the railway in 1895 – Shildon had had it seventy years by then – but the jewel a brilliant micro-pub called The Door Hinge, just a couple of minutes from the ground.

The landlord patiently explains that his mother’s maiden name was Indge, and her first name Doreen. At school, perhaps inevitably, she was known as Dor Hinge, though sometimes as Rusty for a change. It’s a lovely memorial; she’d approve of the home made sausage roll, too.

Erith’s programme recalls the seven previous occasions on which they’ve met Northern League sides, the last in 1960 when Shildon travelled down and whooped them 7-2. Johnny Curran – whatever happened to him? – scored five.

A few years earlier, two bus loads of Erith fans had travelled north for the tie at West Auckland, found six inches of snow on the pitch and manfully helped locals to shift it. Virtue unrewarded, they lost 3-0.

The most memorable may have been the first, however, the 1922-23 Amateur Cup quarter-final in which Erith were drawn at Cockfield. The southerners sallied forth on Friday lunchtime – “an age when you still got score flashes in the window of the local newspaper,” the programme notes – finally reached Hazel Grove and lost 4-0.

What most impressed the visitors, however, was that the man entrusted with the Cockfield tea pot was Alf Common, who when transferred from Sunderland to Middlesbrough in 1905 has become Britain’s first £1,000 footballer. He later ran a pub in Darlington.

The programme’s clearly in awe. “It’s a bit like today’s Deres travelling to North Shields and finding Alan Shearer in charge of hospitality,” it says, a fanfare for the Common man.

North Shields won the FA Amateur Cup in 1969, sank and have recently risen remarkably. Their fans congregate behind the near goal, unfurling flags with legends like Curva Nord and, more solemnly, Remember the Fallen.

Erith and Belvedere play in the Southern Counties East League, that of Cray Valley, Croydon and Canterbury City.

The first half’s tense, goalless. The chairman of the Ebac Northern League meets his (female) counterpart in solemn conclave and agrees that it’ll be a one-goal game. Ten minutes after the re-start – Dean Holmes and Adam Forster – the Robins are leading 2-0.

About half the lights are on, sparking debate about which club has forgotten a shilling for the meter, the Shields fans self-illuminating. “Tell yer ma, yer ma, we won’t be home for tea….”

The home side presses in vain, the spirit Welling but the flesh weak. It ends 2-0. “Beyond our wildest dreams,” says Robins chairman Alan Matthews and though there are red red Robins rejoicing all around him, is monarch of all he surveys.

The 8pm from Kings Cross, again diverted through Lincoln, is due into Darlington at 11 40pm and Durham 15 minutes thereafter. Shortly after leaving Durham it will turn, however improbably, into a Virgin.

We’re so hungry – man shall not live by home-made sausage roll alone – that when the guard announces something about Peterborough we assume that he’s said pizzeria and determine to order a margherita.

The guard also says that Coach B is the quiet coach – “but only until York.” Any who have made a Saturday night train journey from York would wholly understand.

There’s no fuss, no lone piper, no Auld Lang Syne. There’s also no at-seat service, the trollies lined up sombrely in the buffet car, a bit like those sad old photographs of redundant steam engines, awaiting the burners’ torch at Darlington scrap yard.

The sole buffet car guy is American, talks a bit like a cross between Jack Benny and Dustin Hoffman. It’s a bit like they’re emptied out the larder, though he finds a bacon panini. “I’d have some brown sauce with it,” he advises.

There’s not even any John Smith’s Smooth. “Grateful for small mercies,” says Kit.

Though the atmosphere’s akin to the lead car in a Co-op cortege, the last train arrives exactly to time. For East Coast it’s the end of the line, for the Ebac Northern League, the Railroad to Wembley yet again rolls on.