• Recent site updates
• 'Along These Lines' - the TV series
• Gazetteer Updates
• Richard's Fruit Cake (a truly delicious rambler-reviving recipe)
• 'Railway Walks' - the TV series
• Railway Walks - the books (click for press releases on Wales, GWR & SR, LNER and LMS)
• Strawberry Line project goes online
• This year's news
• Guided busways – a concrete future for some railway paths?
• What was news ...
• Thank you

Recent Site Updates. During 2009, the Webmaster added ten batches of photographs (groups 35 to 44) to the Photo Gallery, some of these being taken during a working trip to Kenya when he managed to explore part of the now closed branch line from Leseru to Kitale. Despite some demanding work commitments – including 3 weeks in Africa – he has kept the News 2009 and Publications pages consistently up to date with new reports and book details. In addition, the online gazetteer is now complete, following a full re-check and revision of all the entries for Scotland.

Along These Lines was an eight-part television series about disused railways and railway walks in the south of England. It was made during 2007 and screened during 2008 on Meridian, the local ITV station covering Medway to east Dorset – but it has now received its first national airing. Discovery Real Time showed the series, two episodes at a time, from Wednesday 17th June to Wednesday 8th July, with repeats on the following Saturdays. We are indebted to Jamie Barratt of Platform 14 Ltd for this information; Platform 14 made the series.

Gazetteer Updates. Jeff Vinter's magnum opus is now complete and is being kept up to date as the latest news comes in. The most recent path opening was part of the Great Northern Greenway, which starts just north of Derby and will eventually link Derby with Ilkeston via 13 miles of the GNR's former Egginton Junction to Nottingham line. Click here to visit this part of our site, but note that this area is for members only.

'Railway Walks' – the TV Series. During 2008, a series of six half hour programmes entitled 'Railway Walks' was made by Skyworks and broadcast on BBC4 during October and early November. The episodes were presented by Julia Bradbury, and superbly produced by the Skyworks team; a notable feature was the amount of aerial photograph. (That, of course, is why the company is called 'Skyworks'!) The series was repeated on BBC2 from Monday 9th March to Monday 13th April 2009, and the viewing figures were about four times those for BBC4 – in fact, the series was the third most popular on BBC2 during its run. We are sure that that further repeats will follow, possibly even on BBC1 and eventually the Yesterday channel. The Skyworks team hopes that a second series will be commissioned, but this could not happen in 2009 because Julia and the team were away filming a series of African walks. This will have been a very expensive undertaking in the current economic climate, so there are hopes that a second series of 'Railway Walks' will be commissioned in 2010. It will be a lot cheaper than flying everyone to Africa again!

Railway Walks – the Books. The History Press has now re-published all of Jeff Vinter's Railway Walks books, namely Railway Walks: Wales, Railway Walks: GWR & SR, Railway Walks: LNER and Railway Walks: LMS. The first of these (Wales) sold out very quickly but the good news is that more are being printed with delivery expected in January 2010. The publication of the Welsh book coincided exactly with the ending of the 'Railway Walks' TV series on BBC2, which was superb good timing. The first reviewer on Amazon gave this book 5 out of 5 stars and described it as 'sad but good ... a facinating book, so good for people who like to see something of our past and get some exercise' – sentiments which can be applied to the whole series. For further details, see our Publications page.

Strawberry Line Project Goes Online. In Somerset, the Strawberry Line project now has its own website, which can be accessed from our Links page. The project aims to create a railway path from Cranmore to Clevedon via Wells and Cheddar, with spurs to the north and south, often using other old railways such as the Blagdon branch. The project is supported by Sustrans Ltd, Somerset County Council, and all the local district councils, which is a good start. Have a look at the website and add your support using the online petition.

Here Comes the Concrete ...

Bath-Bristol Railway Path Still Under a Cloud. Contrary to previous reports, Bristol City Council has not abandoned but merely postponed plans to turn the Bristol end of this immensely popular rail trail, built by Sustrans in the late 1970s, into a guided busway. Click here for further details. On 19th June 2009, Bristol became one of Britain's 'Cycling Capitals', although the BBC failed to mention how much the city owed to Sustrans for this accolade; so what, then, is Bristol doing in promoting a scheme that will spoil one of the company's (and the country's) flagship cycle routes?

Guided Busway Planned for the Comber Greenway. This route in Northern Ireland, part of NCN99, re-uses the old railway line from Belfast to Comber via Dundonald. The first 2½ miles from Belfast to Belfast Lough are already open, with completion of the remaining 4½ miles due in September this year. According to a 2006 survey, the trail is already generating 122,000 walking and cycling journeys at a single town along the route, but – before it is even complete – the government has announced that it intends to establish a guided busway (called Eway) along part of it. Sustrans is keen to prevent this important route being compromised, but seems not yet to have an official voice in the proceedings.

Comment. This is Sustrans' response in a recent edition of The Hub, its quarterly magazine for supporters: 'While Sustrans fully supports plans to improve public transport, we do question whether bus routes should be built at the expense of walking and cycling paths. It seems counter intuitive to develop public transport in direct competition with walking and cycling when the aim is to tackle road congestion and greenhouse gas emissions [and rising levels of obesity - Webmaster]. What this trend seems to show is how under-valued walking and cycling are as transport choices in their own right.' Many share this view. Many also question the wisdom of building guided busways in the first place. Not only are they visually intrusive structures that deploy vast amounts of concrete, but the recently completed example between Cambridge and St. Ives cost millions of pounds more than reinstating the railway which it replaced.
 

Meridian TV Series.The long-awaited series, 'Along These Lines', featuring eight old railways in the south on England, was broadcast between Sunday 13 April and Sunday 22 June 2008. Click here for the official website which supported the series, and here for details of how to order the programmes on DVD. The production company kindly provided a selection of stills from the filming, which have been added to our Photo Gallery – click here to view them.

Full Colour Brochure. We have good stocks of an excellent brochure which can be accessed in electronic form by clicking the link here. Note that the brochure is in PDF form, so you will need Adobe Reader (available here) in order to view it. Stocks of the printed version can be obtained from the club's Membership Secretary in the first instance (see contact details inside the front cover of the magazine). Several walk organisers have found the brochure to be very useful when approaching landowners for permission to walk privately owned trackbeds, since it sets out clearly what the club is about and helps to convey the professional and responsible impression that we wish to project.

Sustrans' Connect2 Project Wins National Vote! In December 2007, Sustrans' Connect2 project won the 'People's £50 Million', gaining 42% of the overall vote. Huge amounts of research and planning had already been completed, so work started in earnest from January 2008. We have left the link here in place, since it contains further details of Connect2, including a list of those projects which involve the re-use of old railway infrastructure. Connect2 will bridge significant gaps in 79 communities throughout Great Britain with safe, traffic-free routes. It was the only project in the final shortlist of four which offered significant benefits for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Want to Walk or Cycle Into Bath via the Somerset & Dorset Railway? It's on its way! The Connect2 project (see above) includes a scheme to re-open the old S&D from Midford to Bath. This provides for opening up both Combe Down and Devonshire Tunnels, which will have street lighting installed. The result will be of great value to residents in the Midford area, since it will make Bath accessible via a level 4 mile route instead of a very hilly 7 mile route. The project, known as 'Two Tunnels', will also support long term plans to develop the S&D as a cross-country cycling route between Bath and Bournemouth.

Viaducts, Viaducts! Two viaducts now carry plaques commemorating the contribution of Railway Ramblers to important restoration projects. These are at Midford in Somerset, and Haltwhistle in Northumberland. This is a tremendous achievement for the club, and an endorsement of the decision to set up a 'Footpath Fund' to help finance projects like this at a time (1983 or thereabouts) when a few doubters reckoned that it wasn't worth bothering with. So, many thanks to all those who have supported the Footpath Fund over the years – what a difference we've made! Click here for further details.

Message Board. Our message board can be accessed by clicking the link here. Any club member can update this by entering the username and password that are published in each quarterly magazine. The Webmaster does not have time to maintain area walk programmes on the main site, but area organisers can do this easily by posting their programmes on to the message board. Similarly, ordinary members can use the message board to get in touch with each other (remember to include your e-mail address) so as to arrange local walks and shared transport. Honestly – it really is easy, so give it a try!

'On Tour'. If you haven't had a look already, why not visit the page which gives a flavour of one of our occasional special events? Click here to take a look – the event was based on a visit to sites on the former Somerset & Dorset Railway between Templecombe and Blandford Forum. We have a further batch of S&D pictures which we hope to post during the course of 2010.

Search and Site Map. These features can be accessed by clicking here. The site is now too big for more than a part to fit into the site map, but the search feature is really useful if you are looking for information on a specific route.

Access. Our Access page contains guidance on which old railways can and cannot be walked, as well as a brief history of how we lost our railways, and how some came to survive as walks and cycle trails. This page also includes a link to our Non-Trespass policy.

New Railway Paths. All new railway paths are reported initially in our News pages, after which they are added to our online gazetteer. This is a members' only area, which is a good reason for joining the club – click here for details. If you would prefer a printed copy, Vinter's Gazetteer is out of print but is expected to be re-launched by a major publisher in an enlarged and updated edition during the course of 2010. Keep an eye on this and our Publications page for the latest news.

Site Re-Design and Statistics. Our site was re-designed in 2004 but we 'carried over' the hit counter from the original version, which was launched in 1997. Our objectives remain to make the site run quickly, for narrowband as well as broadband users; to keep it simple to navigate; and to provide well written and interesting content. At the time of writing (6 February 2010), the tally on our 'hit counter' had just passed 85,750, and the number of visits had risen from 1,000 per month in December 2007 to a peak of over 4,500 in April 2009. Currently, 85% of our visitors are new to the site, as can be seen from the table below:

Click here to see how visitors to the site found us. 

Above: Visitors to the website during the last 26 months. The blue line shoots up from nothing because the statistics service was installed at the end of November 2007, during which month only a few days were monitored. Numbers climb dramatically during October 2008 and April 2009 due to the 'Railway Walks' series being broadcast, first on BBC4 (Oct-Nov 2008) and then BBC2 (Mar-Apr 2009). The series gives the club a name check in episode 5. Generally, visitor numbers increase after the introduction of new content, which is hardly surprising. Similarly, they usually decline between March and May annually, when the Webmaster's teaching commitments generate a lot of coursework marking, which reduces the time available for voluntary activities such as maintaining the club's website.