I may just take you up on that! I hope my excitement ref travelling on the Servern Beach line is well founded - years ago when I lived in South Wales occasionally I would take the back road from the bridge to Bristol which I believe takes you near Severn Beach
To quote Robert Louis Stevenson in
El Dorado:
To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive
Many have said that the best way to see Severn Beach is in a rear view mirror. There is little by way of entertainment there, and there is a two-hour stop-over between trains as a rule. Don't let that put you off, though. The Severn Estuary is an important place for wildlife, so if that floats your boat, or if you marvel at bridges, then take the camera, and take your time.
The journey is the prize here, and has been described by Thomas Cook's as one of the most scenic in Britain. For your ^3.00 investment (yes, that's all it costs for Temple Meads to Severn Beach and back) you get a little look at urban Bristol from a different viewpoint, and if infrastructure interests you, there's some of that too. Just after Lawrence Hill are the points into what used to be Temple Meads low level station, later the waste transfer depot, now used for hiding goods wagons during the day. Stapleton Road has a muriel depicting the history of the station and the diversity of the area in which it stands, along with some evidence of Four Track, Soon! Just past there, at Narroways Junction, one turns off the main line onto the SVB line proper, passing through Montpelier tunnel into the eponymous station. Enjoy looking down onto the A38 Cheltenham Road as you cross the bridge, and into genteel Redland. A passing loop at Clifton Down means there is often another train waiting to go. You then go into the Clifton Down tunnel, emerging into the Avon Gorge. You can't quite see the suspension bridge behind you, but Leigh Woods on the opposite side of the river is a different scene every day.
At Sea Mills, after passing under the A4 Portway, the station is as pretty as it could be, supported by some of the local people. The bridge has a 5mph limit, not being in the best of order, but still tentatively crosses the River Trym. This was the site of an important Roman port, and though it looks little more than a ditch after a few hundred metres, the Trym was navigable as far as the middle of Westbury on Trym in the middle ages. A Roman road led from here to Thornbury then Gloucester - hurriedly tarmaced over to form Long Cross in Lawrence Weston. Between here and Shirehampton, the major feature is the Horseshoe Bend in the Avon. It was this that brought about the demise of Bristol as the second biggest port in England. Ships grew too big to negotiate the bend, hence the building of Avonmouth and Portbury docks - and the railway line you are travelling along. Leaving Shirehampton, you have time to see the viaduct at Pill, on the opposite side of the Avon, serving Royal Portbury Dock and soon to carry trains to Portishead, before entering the maritime and industrial heartland that is Avonmouth. The first part of the trip out of there takes you through the big boys in the dock sidings - I have never been through there without there being at least one train waiting to fill up with coal at the end of the conveyor at St Andrews Road. This transports coal under the river from Portbury, so doubling the amount the dock can shift. After the goods line branches off right towards Henbury, Filton, and the main line, you have a couple of miles of scenic views of the River Severn before hitting Severn Beach itself. On the way, you may notice the large Combined Cycle Gas Turbine Seabank power station. It has been turning natural gas into 1.1GW of electricity for 15 years, and still looks modern. (On the way, you may have noticed some wind turbines. These generate large subsidies and, on the odd occasions when they turn, enough electric to make it worth turning Seabank down slightly).
Apart from that it's quite boring.
For my five, I would head for:
Fort William
Whalley (Lancs)
Penzance
Carlisle (from Settle or Leeds, obviously)
Snaefell - I had to have one electric service.
