Great British Railway Journeys Text Only. Michael Portillo
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railway. In our battered copy of Bradshaw’s guide, Yatton barely warrants a mention. Later, in 1868, a new branch line was added, feeding Cheddar into the national network, which put Yatton at the centre of a booming strawberry industry.
The London markets were already catered for by Kent’s strawberry growers. But this new branch line, nicknamed the Strawberry Line, meant that for the first time huge quantities of fresh Cheddar Valley strawberries could be whisked around the country, especially to the north. In its heyday, there were 250 growers here producing strawberries which, for those few weeks each year, were picked and transported to market every Friday. Today there are just four growers left, while the Strawberry Line itself fell victim to the Beeching axe in 1964.
Sir Richard Beeching, then known as Dr Beeching, was the chairman of the railways at a time when they were considered too costly. The railways had been losing money since the 1950s, and a decade later the government, whose transport minister Ernest Marples was the director of a road construction company, decided enough was enough. Beeching came up with a plan that he believed would save the railways from financial meltdown. It resulted in the loss of 2,128 stations, 5,000 miles of track and 67,000 jobs, with rural Britain the hardest hit. As the expected savings failed to appear on the balance sheet, Dr Beeching’s name became a by-word for ill-considered and ineffective cuts. Perhaps the move towards reducing our food miles may yet herald the rebirth of the Somerset strawberry industry.
One local industry that’s not in decline is tourism. Before the railway, Cheddar Gorge on the edge of the Mendip Hills was a destination for rich, independent travellers who came to marvel at the deepest gorge in Britain. The trains gave thousands of day-trippers the chance to enjoy it too. They flocked to see what Bradshaw describes as ‘a place of some notoriety from the discovery of two caverns in its vicinity, one called the Stalactite and the other the Bone Cave, which now attract a great number of visitors’.
Today half a million people visit each year, but few are as fortunate as my team, who got a personal tour from archaeologist and director of Cheddar Caves and Gorge, Hugh Cornwell. Hugh wanted to reveal a set of caves discovered by an eccentric sea captain and showman called Richard Gough. Gough had turned them into a tourist attraction, the first caves in Britain to be lit with electric light.
As more of the caves were opened to cater for the growing number of visitors, they revealed secrets Bradshaw would have relished. The most important of these was the 1903 discovery of Cheddar Man, the oldest complete skeleton ever found in Britain, dating back some 9,000 years. Examination suggested that as a teenager Cheddar Man had been hit on the head with an axe, but had gone on to live into his twenties. It was odd that he had been buried on his own away from the rest of his tribe. Hugh’s theory is that Cheddar Man suffered a brain injury which resulted in antisocial behaviour that doubtless ruffled feathers among fellow tribesmen. When he died, his tribe didn’t deal with him in the usual way but buried him instead in the cave, believing it to be a sort of twilight zone that would prevent Cheddar Man’s spirit from joining his ancestors in the next world.
From Yatton, the line continues west, past the resorts of Weston-super-Mare, birthplace of John Cleese, and Burnham-on-Sea, before turning inland and heading south. After Bridgwater and Taunton it swings westwards into Devon and then south again towards Exeter and the coast.
IN THE WORDS OF BRADSHAW: ‘THERE IS SCARCELY A MILE TRAVERSED WHICH DOES NOT UNFOLD SOME PECULIAR PICTURESQUE CHARM’
The section of route to our next destination, Torquay, is one of the most picturesque rail journeys in existence. Hugging the western side of the Exe estuary and then sliding its way along the coast through Dawlish and Teignmouth, it’s a route that’s barely changed in the last 170 years. In the words of Bradshaw: ‘There is scarcely a mile traversed which does not unfold some peculiar picturesque charm or new feature of its own to make the eye dazzled and drunk with its beauty.’
And the line is not only generous with exceptional vistas but remains an extraordinary feat of engineering. This was one of the most challenging sections of the GWR to construct. In fact, the Exeter Corporation wanted it to stay inland but the redoubtable Brunel insisted it follow the coastal wall, which meant boring five tunnels through the cliffs and building four miles of sea wall to protect the tracks. The result is a magnificent, memorable journey, beneath towering red cliffs, with repeated plunges into darkness as the train goes through one tunnel after another, and all within a few feet of the sea. One signal box was built so close to the waves that the signalmen used to be issued with the oilskins worn by sailors.
The line reached Torquay with its warm microclimate in 1848, and immediately the Great Western Railway started promoting the town as a perfect holiday spot. They even coined the phrase ‘The English Riviera’ to describe the resort. A few years later, Bradshaw is again comparing Torquay with the south of France, suggesting that ‘those English invalids who, in search of a more congenial temperature, hastily enter on a long journey to some foreign county and wilfully encounter all the inconveniences attending a residence there’ would do better to ‘make themselves acquainted with the bland and beautiful climates which lie within an easy jaunt’.
The English invalids seem to have listened. It wasn’t long before they were arriving by the coach-load to relax and enjoy the 19 beaches and coves spread over 22 miles of coastline. On one particular Bank Holiday, 20,000 people arrived there by train in a single day. Thanks to the railway, Torquay had become a major resort.
From nearby Paignton it’s possible to recreate the train journeys that Bradshaw and Brunel would have recognised. A steam train travels south to Kingswear, first alongside charming beaches among abundant wildlife, then through some of the most idyllic countryside of South Devon by the tranquil River Dart, and all at a sedate 25 miles per hour.
But the railway of Bradshaw’s day wasn’t only concerned with getting from A to B. It was also about what you did when you got there. Salmon fishing on the Dart became a popular sport for Victorian tourists, and recreational fishermen arriving by train could even buy their fishing permit at the station. In the early 1900s a train laden with salmon and trout from Loch Leven in Scotland would stop at several points along the river to release the exported fish. The railway also encouraged an explosion of commercial salmon fishing, allowing the catch to be swiftly transported inland.
Today salmon stocks have declined in the Dart and there are strict regulations controlling the catch. There are now only three families still licensed to fish for salmon, and all of them have to use the traditional method called seine-netting. Travelling in an oared seiner, fishermen shoot a weighted net in a semicircle back towards the shore which is then hauled in, often all but empty.
Reading our Bradshaw, it occasionally seemed as though little had changed in 170 years. The book found us hotels, told us what to see, even gave tips for our journey. It was Bradshaw who highlighted that we’d need to take the ferry to cross to Dartmouth because there was no bridge there over the Dart. For nearby Totnes, though, change has certainly come.
Bradshaw was clearly not particularly impressed with Totnes. The book gives the town scant mention. It lists the population as 4,001, suggests one hotel, The Seven Stars, and tells us that, because the town is situated on the River Dart, most people are employed in the fishery. It’s a very different place today, with double the population in the Totnes parish alone and a radical outlook.
Totnes is part of a global campaign for sustainability called Transition Towns. It was started there by Rob Hopkins in 2006 as a reaction to climate change and the challenge posed by the age of cheap oil nearing its end. Rob’s idea was to treat this as an opportunity rather than a crisis, and in Totnes it seems to be working. One of the key elements is a garden share scheme, which Rob described as being like a dating agency. To reduce the distance food is transported they have a land swap system, putting people who want to grow their own food in touch with people who have spare bits of land they could use.
Totnes also has its own local currency, which can be spent in over 80 shops there. Rob likened Totnes to a leaky bucket, with money coming in and then pouring out again. Of every £1 you spent in a supermarket, 80p was out of Totnes by the next day. But this currency, which you obtain in exchange for cash at one of the local businesses participating in the scheme, can’t go anywhere else –