A railway station serving almost nobody? This is the hidden corner of England that’s worth seeing

For a railway station that serves a local population of roughly zero, it was no real surprise to learn that arriving or departing from Shippea Hill posed timing issues that far more punctual and resourceful people than myself would struggle to resolve.

On weekdays, there is one service a day that passes through this implausibly remote part of the Cambridgeshire Fens at just after seven in the morning. There are two services on Saturday and none at all on Sunday. According to the latest available rail passenger statistics, a grand total of 76 people have alighted or boarded at Shippea Hill in the previous 12 months.

I was never destined to be the 77th. Such are the absurd logistics involved in getting from London to Shippea Hill by rail, I reluctantly decided I had no choice but to find this oddest of places by car.

My chief question upon arrival, hours after that early morning loco had trundled past the platform, was this: why on earth is there a railway station here at all, serving, so it would seem, absolutely nobody?

Image may contain Terminal Railway Train Train Station Transportation Vehicle Architecture Building and Utility Pole

There’s a slew of what enthusiasts call ‘ghost stations’ around the UK. These are railway stations with absolutely minuscule passenger numbers that tend to have, at most, one or two trains a week passing through them.

The main reason for the continued existence of stations such as Elton & Orston, Barrow Haven and Stanlow & Thronton (why do so many of these all-but-obsolete stations have names that sound like firms of solicitors?) is that to completely close a railway station in the UK requires an Act of Parliament.

Such is the bureaucracy involved in this that rail authorities generally decide it’s less hassle to keep these stations open, albeit with a service that could hardly be described as skeletal. I’m drawn to Shippea Hill as it appears to be the most mysterious ghost station of them all. The other ghost stations scattered around the UK do at least seem to be located near where people live. Here, however, I’m surrounded by nothing but flat fields, vast Fenland skies and the odd passing heron.

If the prospect of queues, crowds and excessive noise is deterring you from a domestic holiday this summer, then the area around Shippea Hill is the ultimate antidote. This is, without doubt, the most muted, quiescent place I have ever visited in England. All the more so for the fact that there isn’t a settlement or a hamlet, let alone a village called Shippea Hill at all.