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Title: Walking between stations Post by: grahame on May 04, 2024, 06:55:56 From The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2024/apr/30/you-can-walk-virtually-everywhere-in-england-by-using-the-train-the-man-connecting-rail-based-walks)
Quote ‘You can walk virtually everywhere in England by using the train’: the man connecting rail-based walks A new website aims to offer a wide network of walking routes from British train stations, and is calling on hikers to add their favourites. Our writer accompanies the founder on a ramble to Bath Spa station A British railway station can be many things. A place of tended flowers and toytown paintwork. A concourse of shuttered ticket booths and overpriced pasties. A terminus, a meeting spot, a gateway to escape. It can be heart-lifting or drab, bathed in birdsong or heaving with commuters. It can also be the starting point for a properly good walk. National Rail serves 2,593 stations, their locations scattered across the map like cartographic confetti. Many of them sit directly on longstanding hiking trails or within a short distance of paths worth exploring. In a large number of cases, it’s possible to walk between two stations following rights of way, rendering a car or taxi redundant. uch routes are frequently scenic but often little-known, giving value to the prospect of a dedicated database of station-to-station walks. Might a disembarkation at Ffairfach, Whatstandwell or Crianlarich be the passport to your next hike? Quite possibly – which is where the recently launched Railwalks.co.uk comes in. Its aim is to create a crowd-sourced national network of rail-based walking routes, mostly ranging from two to 20 miles. "I like to walk somewhere different every time, and the fact I was able to do that for 15 years and still find new routes made me think there was more to this than people realise" - Steve Melia Article continues, telling us more about Steve who is well known to old hands here, and talking of a walk from Bradford-on-Avon to Bath. The site in question is at https://www.railwalks.co.uk/homepage Title: Re: Walking between stations Post by: johnneyw on May 04, 2024, 12:04:09 This is very much the sort of thing that I've enjoyed doing for years. My home city of Bristol lends itself admirably to rail based day trips....some at quite considerable distances and made quite affordable with the combination to of advanced/split tickets and rail card.
Some trips can even benefit from a link up up with a local bus....example, Bristol to Bath by train, quick transfer to the regular bus service up the considerable hill to Landsown Hill Park and Ride and then it's pretty much all down hill along the Cotswold Way to Bath taking in the Civil War Battlefield (very well marked out with interpretation boards) and back to the station along the riverside path. I'm joining the site and hope to have a few of my discoveries included. If you ask me this sort of thing could be a great marketing tool for GWR and other TOCs. Title: Re: Walking between stations Post by: Marlburian on May 04, 2024, 18:14:17 I use trains to get from Tilehurst to stations in all directions, typically to those on the Didcot line, for walks. However with my seldom otherwise using the car and conscious of the railway's unreliability image, latterly I've been more inclined to drive out.
Several times I've done Tilehurst-Maidenhead, walk to Henley, then Henley-Twyford-Tilehurst. Title: Re: Walking between stations Post by: grahame on May 04, 2024, 18:21:57 Want to walk from Tiverton Parkway?
Quote Looking for a nearby station? • Feniton 16 kms • Whimple 17 kms • Honiton 18 kms • Bishop's Lydeard 19 kms • Pinhoe 22 kms • Taunton 22 kms From http://new.passenger.chat/better/map.html?stn=TVP Those are distances as the crow flies rather than as the rambler walks. The data has been in the Coffee Shop databases for years but I have tweaked a few settings to expose the data. And you can navigate to other stations or put their codes in. The tweak gives you stations up to around 30kms from the start point, and a maximum of around 10 of them. This page is printed from the "Coffee Shop" forum at http://gwr.passenger.chat which is provided by a customer of Great Western Railway. Views expressed are those of the individual posters concerned. Visit www.gwr.com for the official Great Western Railway website. Please contact the administrators of this site if you feel that content provided contravenes our posting rules ( see http://railcustomer.info/1761 ). The forum is hosted by Well House Consultants - http://www.wellho.net |