GeoGuessr – Great Bentley to Colchester

This is part of the GEOGUESSR 1 series of posts.

We got back safely to Great Bentley railway station, and its tall bridge, to journey back to Colchester. I bravely took this photo and didn’t require Nathan’s help, but he pro-actively decided to act as lookout in case I didn’t manage to notice a train was crossing.

I only discovered later on that this line is known as the “Sunshine Coast Line”, making eastern Essex sound like some Californian or Australian beach destination. Anyway, if it works for them….

Oh, and although I have no particular interest with train spotting or trains, I do like a good fact or two about railway stations. Although that’s not really any more inspiring perhaps… Anyway, Great Bentley railway station opened in 1866 and was then known as Bentley Green, but it was renamed to its current name in 1877. Well, that’s what Wikipedia says anyway, although it still seems to have been called Bentley Green for some time after 1877 in the media and by some locals.

One story about this railway station, which is from December 1866. The station master, Samuel Clarbour, was in charge of getting a customer’s dog to Colchester, which isn’t a service that I can imagine the current station staff offering (which is handy as there aren’t any staff at the station now). Anyway, another individual, Herbert Warren, comes along and tried to claim the dog as his. The station master was a sensible man and realised this wasn’t right, and he refused to release the dog. So Herbert Warren hit the station master and there was a scuffle at the station, a case of dognapping and this wasn’t a crime I considered was a problem in Victorian times. For anyone interested, Warren was fined 2s 6d  and also had to paid the costs of 17s (about £65 in total in today’s money).

And our carriage awaits, on time again, we’d (at this point, but as a spoiler, this didn’t last) been fortunate on today’s adventure with some very punctual trains and buses.