Another local railway legend, of some interest, relates to a forlorn platform that no living person ever saw put to any manner of use. It stood some distance to the north side of the existing station for Uphill and Bleadon, and was popularly supposed to be a station erected by the Company in accordance with the letter (certainly not with the spirit) of an agreement entered into between the Company and a local landowner through whose land the railway had been made, at an extravagant cost, in consequence of the high price this freeholder had put upon his holding. He, it appears, finally insisted upon having a station built for his own personal convenience, and the Company agreed. But nothing had been said about trains stopping there, and so no tickets were ever issued to or from this freak building, and no trains ever halted at it. Nowadays with its twenty-five thousand inhabitants, Weston welcomes, instead of repelling, the visitor. Nay, more: it has arrived at that stage of existence to which most other seaside towns have come, and lives for and on visitors, and when the summer season is over ceases to be its characteristic self; always remembering that in winter its climate is mild and inviting to invalids. It has long been the fashion in many quarters to depreciate Weston-super-Mare, and to style it “Weston-super-Mud.” Mud there is in plenty, far out in this shallow bay, and it is exposed for a great distance at the ebb, but it never intermingles with the fine broad yellow sands that form a paradise for children along the entire two miles’ sweep of the bay, from Anchor Head to Uphill, and make a fine track for the donkey rides that are so great a feature of the children’s holidays here. The scenery surrounding Weston is delightful and singularly romantic. Boldly placed in mid-Channel are those twin, but strongly dissimilar islets, the Steep Holm and Flat Holm, the last-named provided with a prominent white lighthouse, and both in these latter days the site of massive forts presenting an embattled front to any possible hostile voyage up the Severn Sea. These islets are outlying fragments of the Mendip range of hills, which ends south of the town in the quarried hills of Bleadon and Uphill, and in the almost islanded gigantic bulk of Brean Down. Overhanging the town on the north is that other outlier of the Mendips, Worle Hill. In every direction, therefore, we find hills peaking up with a suddenness and an outline almost volcanic in appearance. The air, too, of Weston is brisk and enjoyable; and if there be indeed nothing of interest in the town itself, modern creation as it is, the same criticism is applicable to many another seaside resort. The stranger, therefore, who has for many years been familiar with severe and undiscriminating criticisms of Weston finds it, when at last fate brings him hither, a very much more likeable place than he had dared hope.