Feeling a bit King's Cross

King's Cross station in London has changed a lot in recent years. For the longest time, passengers were disgorged from the underground station into a grimy, frequently rainy, forecourt under a sprawling, utilitarian, and deeply unlovely awning. Pedestrians were squeezed between a wall of dull glass-fronted kiosks and the busy Euston Road. Inside the station, passengers huddled together, in a crowded and confused space before the train tracks, hoping to catch sight of their train listing on the display boards. There were few seats to be had, and the whole experience was, on the whole, pretty dismal and depressing.

Britain's railways, dating back to their early days, contain examples of some spectacular engineering and architecture. Following the decline of (and massive underinvestment in) the railways in the 1960s, however, the nation's railways and their buildings felt for many years like a coma patient in terminal decline (pun half-intended). Stations became grimy utilitarian spaces, where they had once been glorious statements of an expanding nation's self-confidence, and it felt like there would be no reversal of the relentlessly downwards spiral.

Then something happened, in relation to Kings Cross, at any rate. Between 2005 and 2007, a £500 million restoration plan was put in place, the old mess of buildings in front of the station was done away with and, on 19 March 2012, the new - glorious - station concourse, shown above, was opened to the public. It occupies a space to the left of the old station and, with its organic-looking vaulted roof, new shops and a mezzanine floor with restaurants, it now feels as if passengers are welcome to the station rather than, as was the case before, a regrettable inconvenience.

I arrived at the station early for my train, and wandered around the new concourse, utterly entranced. It does perhaps, speak volumes for the previous standard of railway travel in Great Britain, that a decent location warrants surprise and pleasure, but be that as it may, I found myself delighted. I pottered around the large airy space, marvelling at how sensitively the new merged with the old, each enhancing the other.

The original station offices, which I cannot recall at all from the old station, have now been repurposed (or, perhaps, returned to their original, logical, purpose) as ticket offices and shops, and the original yellow London brick buildings feel, if it is not too fanciful, to have a restored sense of pride. I was pleased, but not entirely surprised, to discover that in 2013 the restoration project had been awarded a European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage / Europa Nostra Award.

King's Cross is known to millions of Harry Potter fans across the world as the location of Platform 9 3/4, and the Harry Potter Store to one side feels appropriate, as does the luggage trolley disappearing into the brick wall. When I was there, a long queue of fans was waiting to have their photo taken, Hogwarts scarves flying, pretending to be about to join the Hogwarts Express. Elsewhere to my childish delight, a falconer was flying his hawk around the space to deter pigeons, and the station felt - as I like to imagine it might have felt when it was first built - like a vibrant and exciting place to start a journey.

Puffin away

The small island of Skomer lies of the south west coast of Wales, and is accessed via a small fishing trawler, refitted to hold a few hardy souls. The journey is not a long one, but when the sea swells, it can feel like a reasonably arduous endeavour. As the little boat, which has been bobbing quite wildly in the water, rounds a particular headland, it wrestles wth an evil-looking swirl of water, and sways alarmingly from one side to the other. The extent of the tipping is so wide that, at one point, I genuinely wondered whether it would right itself, or if this is how shipwrecks feel, when they begin.

All being well, however, in a little under half an hour, you arrive at the foot of a set of steps cut into the cliff on Skomer. At the top of them, the warden greets you, and sketches out the island's points of interest and, before you know it, you are wandering among the last of the bluebells, seeking out the puffins. The puffins are what makes Skomer famous, and a Mecca for bird-lovers.

The island is not large, but as one starts to explore it, it feels like the chances of seeing a puffin, other than as an ambiguous black dot, bobbing away in the sea some distance away, might not be great. As is often the way with such sights, you start by doing your best to appreciate the initial somewhat unsatisfactory views. "Well, well," you think, slightly disappointedly, as you squint at some kind of seabird, no bigger than a pin-prick away in the sea, "Now I can say I've seen a puffin."

Then, you round a corner, and walk down a path between the burrows, and you see one of these enigmatic creatures, less than half a metre away. When this happens, you forget the rough sea crossing (and the inevitable replay of it that awaits you to get back to the mainland) and the vague sightings of earlier. They are such familiar birds, that being in such close proximity to them - and there are several of them close by, pottering around, sometimes posing for photos - slightly takes you by surprise. It's almost like coming face to face with a famous film star or musician, except these birds seem to have no objection to having their picture taken.

The puffins of Skomer are, and no other word quite seems to do them justice, charming. Up on the cliffs, where their burrows are, they stomp around, quite oblivious to the snap-happy visitors, like a group of sad-faced clowns going about their daily lives. Every now and then, one of the puffins that has been flying around the little bay comes in for a somewhat awkward landing. As they appear to crash land - every time - it is hard to resist anthropomorphising them, and imagining them thinking "Oh, no! Oh, no!" as they skitter to an inelegant stop among the clover, before they right themselves with dignity and stomp off, as if nothing had happened.