On a typically rainy Irish afternoon, I boarded an express train at Ireland's capital Dublin. Here we are, about an hour now out of Dublin and we've just crossed over the border from Ireland into the British north. But there has been and there will be no passport control, not customs check. And it's the same if you travel by road.
The British-Irish border is so open you can easily miss it. But here is the thing, post Brexit Britain is supposed to be about controlling immigration, not letting EU citizens simply come and go as they please. And literally every passenger I've spoken to in this carriage is worried that this will mean reinstituting boarder checks between southern Ireland and the north.
I work between Dublin and Belfast. So I'm on this train at least once every two weeks.
We've moved so far in this country in terms of having a concept of Ireland as a single island that people do business across. I think it could be a huge step backwards to go to a situation where there were physical barriers between people moving around.
I got off the train just five miles over the boarder in Northern Ireland where a council meeting was underway to discuss local spending plans.
We'll work to develop an action plan.
It's the kind of day-to-day bread-and-butter topic on which Northern Ireland politics now focuses but far a cry from the days when violence and sectarianism dominated any political discussion. But when a leading local councilor took time out to speak with me, it turned out that he too had serious worries about Brexit. Gary Stoke is from the nationalist party, the SDLP and said the return of border posts between Ireland and the British north could encourage those who seek a return to conflict.
The fact that you had no border between north and south. We had a sense of you know being together and the north south question being less important. The thought that you might see any kind of checkpoints, passport control or something like that, that brings back the memory for people of British army permanent checkpoints you know. "Look, here is the border back in operation, partition is back." They could use that to try and go and get some support. Basically we don't need this. It's another obstacle.
It takes us certain courage to come out as a leave voter. I only met one. He is a long-time campaigner for lesbian and gay rights in Northern Ireland. He, too has his worries.