Get on the right track
Gareth Huw Davies explores the fabulous world of ‘rail line’ footpaths
I’ M STROLLING in deepest Britain, far from anywhere, on a route originally set by a Victorian theodolite. Empty flat fields stretch silently away. A wren, an animated ball of feathers, whizzes across my path to break the purest peace. Far in the distance a little dot is growing bigger. Once it might have turned into the express from Oxford to London, all fire and fury, trailing smoke over the ancient hedges. But that is now deep hist ory. The dot becomes a l one commuter on a bike, taking the scenic route home on this safe, car-free, surface.
This is one of the long-lost Great Western Railway routes, through the Chilterns and across Buckinghamshire farmland, the HS2 of its day. It was the vision of illustrious t op- hatted engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, to carry his great broad-gauge expresses from Paddington Station.
It didn’t last. Passenger numbers dwindled. Other lines took over. Mighty locos were replaced with dainty tank engines. The 1.47 local, calling at Tiddington and Littlemore, puffed sadly into history. ‘No churns, no porter, no cat on a seat,’ as comedy duo Flanders and Swann reflected in their lament for our lost railways, The Slow Train.
And that might have been that. After the Beeching report in the 1960s, 4,500 miles of closed lines disappeared all over Britain under neat housing estates and eggpacking factories. Those t hat weren’t rescued by sooty- faced enthusiasts and restored as steam railways were sold off to farmers and absorbed into the landscape.
Which leaves just a select few, turned into some of the most exclusive footpaths in the country. They are safe and easy underfoot, trailing through sumptuous and tranquil countryside. I’m on one of the best – although there’s stiff competition.
This old line is now the Phoenix Trail, running eight miles in Buckinghamshire from Princes Risborough to Thame. It is open to walkers, cyclists, wheelchairs, pushchairs, horses and any other conveyance that doesn’t have an engine. There is a convenient bench every 500 yards, and sculptures in wood to add a dash of culture.
The Phoenix Trail is one of the chosen 50 in Julian Holland’s excellent book Exploring Britain’s Lost Railways. He lists the finest lines to be turned into public byways, detailing their history and explaining what they offer the walker and cyclist today. Some have grand titles to match the famous old express trains that ran on them – such as Midshires Way, Drake’s Trail and the Speyside Way.
The keen-eyed landscape sleuth can pick out original features, such as ancient fence posts, a giveaway straight line of trees, stations and signal boxes turned into private houses, and even the odd bit of crumbly platform in the undergrowth.
But there’s only so much the book knows of their mystery. It can’t help me with the origins of that incongruous apple tree just west of Bledlow. Did it sprout from a core a schoolboy threw from a carriage window? We will never know. It’s all part of this time-softened landscape, where nature is back in charge.
There are more powerful remind- ers of the great days of Victorian railways in Holland’s book. In Devon I walk the vertiginous 120fthigh wrought-iron Meldon Viaduct, where once a T9 class 4-4-0 might have suddenly appeared around the corner in full fury, hauling transatlantic boat train passengers from Plymouth to Waterloo. No such peril today. I enjoy the view deep into North Devon.
THE 140- year- old viaduct, all wrought-iron russes and restles spanning a deep ravine, must have sent scrapmetal merchants into ecstasies of anticipation when the line shut. It’s our good fortune that it sur- vives, part of t he seven- mile Granite Way from Okehampton to Lydford, curling around Dartmoor’s glowering northern edge.
These paths, many of them part of the Sustrans National Cycle Network, have a sense of utter calm which is increasingly hard to find in the countryside. You hardly ever hear a car, or even see one. They are mostly flat, or on obligingly gentle inclines – old steam locos didn’t like steep slopes.
The featured walks, all over Britain, include the easiest of strolls. Holywell to Holywell Junction in North Wales is just a mile and a quarter long. The path skirts the not so well known remains of pretty 12th Century Basingwerk Abbey.
You don’t even need to visit the countryside to find an old line to walk. Close to Manchester is the Middlewood Trail, a rewarding ten-mile stretch between Macclesfield and Rose Hill.
The 15-mile trail from Ryhope to Hart on the old Sunderland to Hartlepool railway i s another. One of the most popular walking and cycling ways follows the old Somerset and Dorset line from Bristol to Bath.
Yorkshire was a positive spaghetti bowl of railway lines, curling lazily through Dales and Wolds. The railway barons’ public transport ambition was impressive, to link remote Kiplingcotes, Bubwith and Foggathorpe with York and Hull and the wider world.
Dr Beeching, the smiling assassin, claimed most of them, but four old lines live on as 47 miles of walking and cycling ways in the East Riding.
Perhaps the best of all the old railways is the 27- mile Deeside Way in Scotland, from Aberdeen to Ballater. This is the royal route. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert first used the line in 1853, the last leg to Balmoral. The Tsar of Russia rode it in 1896 on a secret train from London. Timetables were never announced: they didn’t want anarchists tossing bombs from the bridges.
Our Queen was the last monarch to use this railway, in 1965. It closed a year later. Take the path on a quiet day today and – who knows? – in the middle of nowhere you might even meet a little old lady in a headscarf walking her dogs.