The gradient increases as the train winds its way ever higher into the mountains. After so long on the plains the air feels fresh and sharp and the scenery is dramatic. One can see, in the valley below, the River Ankh threading its way down to the plains. Ahead, the bright white scars in the rock face indicate that the train is approaching the Gravelhang Quarry stop. This is just a station and sidings that serve a small quarry in which a few families chip a
living from the calcareous rocks. Once widely used by sculptors and masons – and in vast quantities – the Carrack marble is here almost exhausted, due in no small part to the construction of the Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork, in which no wood, paint or indeed cushions were employed if marble could do instead.
•GRAVELHANG•
POPULATION: 45
CLACKS TERMINAL
Site of a small quarry producing prime Carrack marble.
GRAVELHANG HAS NO inns, no public buildings, and one small general store that sells only canned food, tobacco and banjo strings.
There is now, due to its geographical position only, a clacks relay station here. Wisely the Grand Trunk have insisted that only men used to long service in bad stations operate this relay, and no goblins are allowed. The former might it is supposed eventually enlarge the gene pool and the latter would get eaten, though this might be the other way round. There is some dispute over that in the Grand Trunk Species Resources department. The train continues its climb into the Carrack Mountains through the night, eventually coasting gently down into Zemphis as the sun rises.
•ZEMPHIS•
POPULATION: 780
CLACKS TERMINAL: at the station.
ACCOMMODATION: The Station Hotel. Modern Zemphis is a lawless and dangerous place for any but the most experienced and well-armed traveller.
THIS ANCIENT CITY, its high stone walls visible for miles around, is located at the junction of three trade routes as well as the river route to Ankh-Morpork. In times past the vast central square held a great covered market where traders bought and sold precious metals from the Ramtops, wool from Lancre, coffee, spices and silk from Klatch, as well as the produce of the Sto Plains. Merchants from all over the world settled here creating a wealthy if transient cosmopolitan community. Sadly those days are gone and modern Zemphis has become a place where everything and everyone has a price. The friendly hubbub of international commerce with its many tongues has been replaced with something more akin to a local bazaar; the high-earning cross-border trade is now mainly in contraband such as adulterated treacle, raw Slab and undomesticated imps, and the only common languages that the dealers understand are money and the knife. Travellers are strongly advised not to venture into the city unescorted, and anyone tempted to explore the ruins of Downsized Abbey (now a souk) does so entirely at their own risk.
Even Zemphis Station is very different from anywhere else we’ve been, and it has a foreign smell of strong goat’s cheese and Klatchian cigarettes. The main concourse is full of small-time traders, a few displaying silk carpets (some seemingly of the flying variety). The railway guards chase away the many unlicensed beggars who have moved here from Ankh-Morpork to dodge the Beggars’ Guild rules and rates, and to ply their oozing trade wherever they can find a nook or cranny to slump into.
There is, however, one excursion that I can more safely recommend to the visitor determined to see something of this exotic corner of ‘foreign parts’: the famous Zemphis Falls.
The traditional viewing point for the falls is a little way outside the city. Here the waters plummet one hundred and fifty feet from the clifftop high above into the foaming river below. The spray hangs in the air, creating rainbows, and a watery mist lies over ancient stone arches and doorways like tissue paper. It is a memorable vision and after twenty-four hours in the train a welcome and refreshing break.
6
THE LOCAL SERVICE between Zemphis and Ohulan Cutash has now been in operation for some time. However, at the time of writing work is still continuing on the infrastructure of the track onward from Ohulan Cutash to Bonk, to bring it to the necessary standard for commercial traffic. When the promised international express comes into service on this route, be assured that your author will be among its first passengers. The first train from Zemphis leaves early in the morning, and is favoured by those serious mountaineers who aim to climb the eight summits of the Paps of Scilla (earning themselves a Papist Medal), or even attempt the icy peaks of the Ramtops, as well as by holidaymakers planning a gentler walking tour among the foothills. Other travellers will include people visiting family in Lancre and The Chalk and dwarfs making the long pilgrimage to the home mines of Copperhead Mountain.
The danger of rock falls and ambush by brigands on this journey means that there are two railway watchmen keeping lookout on the footplate of the locomotive as we leave the station. About half an hour out of Zemphis and just before the train starts the long climb to the mountains it stops at Hugglestones Halt, which serves the renowned Hugglestones School just across the bleak, windswept moorland. It was the start of the school’s Spring Prime vacation on my visit and fifty or so boys poured on to the platform from open-topped coaches. The senior boys had their baggage carried by diminutive first-formers, bent double with the weight. Porters transported several stretcher- and wheelchair-bound boys into the luggage van, followed by two small coffins draped with the school flag. I have myself met some adult survivors of Hugglestones, where the boys of wealthy and titled families are educated in life’s more rigorous challenges on blood-soaked playing fields, and have some sympathy for what they endured, but cannot for the life of me understand why they subject their children to the same brutality.
Within minutes of leaving Hugglestones Halt we are in the foothills of the Paps. This range was created when a huge mountain fell apart leaving eight razor-sharp peaks. The views from the train are spectacular: trees appear to cling to the sheer rock-face and rushing white-water streams run through deep ravines. Further towards the high pass the mountains close in, the towering slopes above us shutting out the sun, and from time to time there is a sudden blackness as the train enters a natural tunnel with water dripping from the roof and running down the windows. Eventually the descent begins towards the welcome sight of the small town of Twoshirts. It is not more than a hundred miles, as the crow flies, from Zemphis to Twoshirts, but the journey takes a good four hours because of the steepness of the gradients and the fact that the track, by a wonder of engineering, traverses chasms and steep ravines in a series of zigzags.
•TWOSHIRTS•
POPULATION: 65
CLACKS TERMINAL: at the post office.
POST OFFICE: Counter in souvenir shop.
ACCOMMODATION: The Jolly Macerator Inn.
MARKET DAY: Friday.
SITUATED ON THE Whitstone River, a tributary of the Ankh, Twoshirts was, and still is, a staging post on the way from Lancre to The Chalk. Since the arrival of the railway it has become a centre for walkers keen to explore the green downlands of The Chalk and the wooded river valleys near by. Mrs Umbridge’s souvenir shop sells guidebooks and maps, walking sticks and waterproof clothing in a range of unnatural shades to the visitors, as well as small carved wooden items and postcards. There is a daily haulier’s cart that will carry passengers the slow five-hour journey to the village of Arken at the base of the Downs. The track passes a well-known landmark in the form of a great white horse cut into the chalk of the hillside.
Brassica from the Sto Plains is brought into Twoshirts by barge and then preserved by crushing the already stale yellowing cabbage leaves in barrels of salted vinegar. This bucolic activity is celebrated in the name of the village’s inn, The Jolly Macerator, and dotted around the walls are pictures of this process. Proudly displayed in a glass case is a fine pair of huge leather lace-up boots, which, according to the brass plaque on the front, were worn by Mister Jackson Muchworthy who, if the size is anything to go by, must have been a champion macerator indeed.
Leaving Twoshirts on the final stage of our journey we approach the lower reaches of the great Ramtop mountains which loom large on the horizon, their snow-capped peaks clearly visible. The countryside is hilly with wooded areas, and in the winter months many grazing animals have to be brought down from the extreme cold of the mountains to these sheltered plains. The town of Ohulan Cutash which serves the needs of this rural community nestles beneath the rimward slope of a steep hill. Situated on the Upper Ankh River it is the transit point for the main road to the Kingdom of Lancre and has a small quay from which barges travel downstream all the way to Ankh-Morpork.
OHULAN