CUMBRIA’S not far, is it? Twenty minutes up the A66 from Scotch Corner and you’re there, albeit amid the perpetual rain clouds which lugubriously embrace Stainmore Common.

Barrow’s different. Cumbria undoubtedly, but Cumbria twice removed. Barrow’s back of beyond, at the end – the dead end – of what folk like to call Britain’s biggest cul-de-sac.

Elongated by road, it’s even trickier by train – and last Saturday, Holker Old Boys, Barrow boys, entertained Durham City in the second qualifying round of the FA Carlsberg Vase.

It was the start of the 2014-15 Railroad to Wembley and more fraught and more frustrating than ever could be imagined.

Because of engineering work north of the border, the 8 06 from Darlington is to be routed directly to Carlisle, from where another train – the 10 43 – will dander down the two-and-a-half hour Cumbrian coast route to the Furness peninsula.

At Newcastle, the first train is halted. The guard announces that there’s been a landslip on the Tyne Valley line to Carlisle and that, as he puts it, the situation is being evaluated. Who said the earth didn’t move any longer?

Seasoned travellers will know that, whatever the official phraseology, it always translates as “We’re buggered.” Soon afterwards it’s announced that the train will now go to Berwick, whence a bus will take passengers to Edinburgh.

So what of Carlisle? “Your guess is as good as mine,” says a chap on the concourse with “Customer service” written, paradoxically, on the back of his high-viz jacket.

Finally there’s a train to Hexham, from which a bus will go forward to Carlisle. Clearly the 10 43 to Barrow will long have departed, so what chance the 11 38? “Possibly,” says the guard, clearly having attended the same customer service class as his colleague.

The other problem is that there are twice as many people on the train as there are seats on the bus, and standing’s not allowed.

So the overflow hangs around in the cold and drizzle outside Hexham station, waiting like Mr Micawber for something to turn up. An irritating old codger announces to no one in particular that it’s what’s called a knock-on effect, just like his gall stones operation had proved to be.

Medical details ensue. “It wasn’t like this in the olden days,” he adds. “Not when they built the Roman Wall.”

Coincidentally, a government transport minister called Baroness Kramer – Billy J’s auntie? – has been in Hexham a couple of days earlier extolling the virtues of the Tyne Valley line. Clearly she hadn’t had to wait half an hour in the rain, or listen to some bloke conducting a biopsy on his own deceased gall stones.

We’re in Carlisle by 11 50, just in time– if you get the drift – to miss the 11 38. The lady of the house rings while I’m awaiting the 12 47. “Have you heard about the flooding between Carlisle and Whitehaven. Serious delays,” she says.

I’m travelling alone; it’s easier to slash your wrists that way.

HAPPILY the floods have receded, happily the sun’s shining and, happiest of all, the Cumbrian coast line is as captivating, as Irish eyed, as always. There are so many intermediate stations – Silecroft, Seascale and Sellafield, all semaphore-signalled solitude – that the guard has to get his pipe half way through their litany.

The sea looks lovely, a sort of Morecambe Bay-watch. It’s as if a reepentant Mother Nature has brought on the dancing girls by way of compensation.

Journey’s end arrives at 3 20, the outward trip having taken seven-and-a-half hours. It would be quicker to fly to New York, jog a few laps of Central Park and be back at JFK for the next plane back to Blighty.

Barrow, anchored to shipbuilding, was named in 2008 as Britain’s most typical working class town – something to do with the number of chip shops, bookies, workmen’s clubs and trade union offices per head. Sadly, however, there can be none of the astute anthropological observation for which the Railroad is renowned.

Finally a taxi arrives, the driver winding down his window. “Are you Becky?” he asks.

“Do I look like I’m Becky to you?”

“These days you never know,” he says.

We arrive at the ground just before half-time, the match still goalless and City fans pretty frustrated. “Never mind your train,” someone says, “our lot still haven’t got off the bus. We should be possing teams like this.”

The ground’s pretty basic but it doesn’t matter. Barrow-in-Furness may never hitherto have been regarded as the Promised Land – may never be again – but right now it comes pretty close.

NAMED after the former Holker Street Central School, the hosts play in the North West Counties League – so greatly geographically adrift that that the nearest away game is at Nelson, 73 miles away.

The ground’s on the site of a former isolation hospital, which seems appropriate as it’s the back of beyond of the back of beyond.

You know the old joke about the chap ringing to ask the time of kick-off and being in turn asked what time he can come. They might have waited.

Still, they prove to be most hospitable, the tiny guest room shared with a defibrillator. “It’s for when we’re kicking up,” says one of the Old Boys brigade. The netty’s called the Jim Redfern Suite. Jim Redfern’s the club president.

Durham are managed by ultra-successful former Whitley Bay boss Ian Chandler –a man who seems to have a Vase final season ticket – and chaired by former Newcastle United defender Olivier Bernard, a Frenchman recently named in the Magpies’ all-time best Premiership X1.

City include 22-year-old Ryan Noble, who played for Sunderland and Hartlepool and six times for England Under 19s, and Moussa Bakhti, newly arrived from Toulouse Academy with a kit bag but not, it’s said, a word of English.

“Mind,” someone says, “he’s come to a queer place to learn it.”

After 90 minutes it’s dour, dull and goalless. Chairman Olly, hooded, needs little of his admittedly fluent second tongue to sum the situation. “It’s not good, is it?” he says.

The match goes to extra-time, as if the players have collectively taken pity on the late arrival and decided to compensate for the missed half hour.

It’s little better, Holker – ecstatic – scoring the game’s only goal with two minutes remaining. The booked taxi back to the station arrives two minutes after the final whistle.

The homeward journey’s via Carnforth, Leeds and York. Carnforth’s where, in 1945, Noel Coward produced the classic film Brief Encounter, with Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard. Since the splendidly restored refreshment rooms are closed, it’s a chicken sandwich from the Co-op instead.

At Shipley it’s announced that a bus replacement service will operate into Leeds, an elderly double decker meandering like a Yorkshireman’s discourse. It all seems pretty familiar. Though it’s 11 30pm when finally the train pulls back into Darlington, Brief Encounter seems pretty appropriate, really.

For some of us the Railroad to Wembley will continue in all sorts of diverse directions, but it’s not an auspicious start.

UP TO SCRATCH

STUART Green travelled from Hartlepool to Newton Aycliffe on Monday night to watch Hewin’ Goals, the touring theatre production that marks the Northern League’s 125th anniversary.

“An ingenious and evocative presentation and a really talented company,” he reports.

What made it all the more impressive, says Stuart, was that it was played to an audience of just five – “reducing to four as a back injury forced the withdrawal of an audience member half way through.”

The next performance is at the Voodoo Café in Skinnergate, Darlington, tomorrow at 7pm – when the column will be among what it’s to be hoped will be a much bigger crowd.

Thereafter the show is at Woodham Community Centre in Newton Aycliffe on Saturday, back at the Voodoo on October 13, the Forum in Borough Road, Darlington on the 14th, Bishop Auckland FC on October 16, Aycliffe Village Hall on October 17, Crook Town FC on October 18 and ending with three nights at the Mining Institute in Westgate Road, Newcastle from November 6-8.

All shows start at 7pm; admission’s just £5 – concessions £3. The play’s produced by the Crook-based Backscratch Theatre Company. Please try to scratch theirs, too.