The Quiet Whitchurch.

I'd left the house within very late dark, and by the few and fading stars found myself standing upon a platform. The sound of the train stations are all rather similar, and yet they are more soothing back in Essex. Although.
I took the train into morning, the transitions of colour sitting comfortably with the transition between joined countries. The colour was magic, I paced through words before me, as the blacks turned to blues and the blues into purples. The rough horizon of greyed clouds at the sky's base seemed not to move at all with the sky and I.
I reached my second train by my own accords, due to asking for help near (I admit, not at, for there was no one there) the Help Desk.
'I don't suppose you could tell me the platform for Whitchurch Rail, Cardiff?' I asked with a polite and yet rushed accent.
'No, I'm not from round here you see', replied the man, in the finest example of a Welsh accent speaking broken English that you ever did hear. And he sounded so sincere. As I bustled off, one woman against a wall of people walking at me down a narrow and windowless corridor, I contemplated where else in the world a plump little white man with a strong Welsh accent might be from.
The second train was much like a two-part bus. With strange seats, on either side of the aisle they faced the opposite ways to eachother. I made no sense to myself as I watched Cardiff slip by beneath me, through the water and mud marked windows. I wondered where I was going, until this week I had never known a Whitchurch to exsist in any other place but Bristol. I assumed it be much the same (with an Asda, old people and chavs), but with a rail station, where I then planned to jump into a waiting cab for the final leg of my important coming destination.
It wasn't far, it seemed, as I nearly missed my stop for reading Pratchett, and always attempting to read the Welsh sign before the English, just to see if it was similar, at every stop. (Lift - Lifft - seriously? Clearly, in your creative attempt to officially make yourself a 'different' country, Wales, you fell short and lacking at public transportation).

What I recieved at the station, however, was complete lack of humankind. I deboarded the train onto what I can only describe as a glorified bus stop, with but one, simple exit down a country-like path. There was not another soul around me, and an unusual quiet. I decided to take the path hastily, lest a 'Creature of the Tracks' (who had obviously eaten but all of the locals) were to view me from beneath the nearby bridge and place a marker upon my head that read ' Foreign Delicacy '.
That said, still do not think it is a seperate country, Wales. It may feel like one, with all the overhead speaking in the main train station, but it ain't.
I then came to find myself on a housing estate. Quite a nice one, I'll give it that, but nothing was moving. There was no sound, no cars in motion, no twitching curtains, heck - it took a while to even see a bird.
The Town without Sound, is what we shall fondly refer to this place as. (TWS).
I looked left to see a bend in the road and veered off out of sight. I looked right to see an endless street of the same, silent, white houses. My shoddy map, printed from Google Maps, with a hand drawn red line to show route to a helpful and waiting Cab driver became utterly useless, in that it showed scarce streets signs, and the ones it did seemed to have been translated.
There were no street signs for a good half a mile in TWS. And when I happened upon one, it had the strangest set of letters, that to my eye read something like Emqaurlarisauras Teq. Or Te Ty To Thumb. Either way, it weren't on the map.
A woman left her house with a child, wordless and slightly staring, they got into a car and went right. So, I went right. Call it instinct. Further up, a man left his house with his two children, and waved off his wife at the front door. None of these people spoke, it was all a silent transaction from one destination to the next, even their farewells were overexaggerated waving and general pecks to the hand with a blow. Not a 'Good bye' here or any where.
I followed the school run until I found TWS's library, cars passed me silently and my only hope was in the few lingering magpies, that hummed and cawed lowly above me. Like breadcrumbs, i mentally noted the strange shapes of the tree trunks I was passing, so as to find my way back. (This would later be proved to work.)

For a good while of this journey I feared I may never see home again, that fate had brought me to wander aimlessly and quietly in the streets of Cardiff. Not even Cardiff, outer Wales. Doomed for eternity, constantly trudging along in a wonderful coat unappreciated by the masses of emptyness surrounding me. Par the odd old person.

A spar! Hooray, of all the other shops on this tiny street I stumbled upon, I found one I recognised. Safety! Surely! Oh little TWS, you have yet to slay my hopes!
'Hello there', I said to the young boy behind the counter inside, mine having been the first voice I'd heard since the last train station. 'Do you know where I can get a cab?'
He looked bewildered, and for a moment I felt a stab of guilt that I'd terrified the poor lad in an overly stated cockney gesture.
'Cab... Taxi?' I corrected myself, speaking slowly like a red man in a spanish sweet shop, wearing a Union Jack vest.
'Ah yes, yes!' He seemed delighted he could help, and scibbled down a number.
I began to type this into my phone, then remembered I hadn't a clue where we were, and so I asked the boy again.
'Rhibwina' he replied, and wished me good luck. Not enough luck wishing, it seemed, that I might not attempt to order a cab to 'Ribena Village' to a Welsh Man on the phone, when he had simply asked for my name. Sure enough when I recieved the text to claim my 'Dragon Taxi' had arrived (have been playing far too much Skyrim for this comment) it was no where to be seen.
And so I hailed one.

I spent the next five hours in a pub older than any one I know, attempting interest and attention and gazing at the ever-changing erratical weather at the window (hail, rain, hail, snow, sunshine, snow etc), praying that should the apocolypse come, it won't happen to me whilst I am in Wales. The test went well, as did the small talk and attempt at caring for said small talk, and my usual trait of remembering not a single name failed slightly, for I remember 'Rog'.

I should think to end it here, at when I made it back to the Whitchurch station through TWS (having followed the peculiar trees, and having had trouble finding the pathway that led to the station, for it seemed to move along a house each time I neared it's mouth). Yes here, quite sure that there was no humanity in this part of TWS, so little that the bus shelter at the 'Train station' had not an ounce of graffitti upon it, and it's bin was entirely empty, par the collected rain water/snow.
There was one track in this station, and two simple arrows depicting that Cardiff was one way, and Coryton the other. They shared the track, and in the hope that one would come from the Coryton direction, one of course approached from Cardiff. But the nice man spied me standing feebly with Pratchett in hand under an umbrella and said I may board the train, for it goes to Coryton and slides back the same way. There is only one train in TWS.

There was more. If it is or if it ain't. Quite.