How I Started Walking by Rail

15 years ago, I moved from a village in the Dartmoor National Park to Bristol city centre, for several reasons; one of them was to give up the car.  I have always loved spending time in the countryside: walking, cycling, photographing, looking for wildlife.  I wondered how much of that I would still be able to do after we moved.  Like most people, I probably assumed that it would be difficult to reach the deeper, more remote, more interesting countryside without driving.  I had never seen, heard or read anything to contradict that view.

I can’t remember when I began walking between railway stations - I had walked much of the Southwest Coast Path that way - but I started doing it more regularly after we moved.  Whenever we move to a new place, I want to explore the area around it.  I generally prefer cycling with a club and walking alone, searching for that connection with nature which arrives in a flash of sunlight over a valley, or the sea, when there’s only the wind and wildlife to share the moment.

Until recently, I have always navigated using paper maps – mainly Ordnance Survey maps in Britain.  After moving to a new place, I buy some new maps and spend time looking at them, trying to find the quietest and most interesting parts of the surrounding countryside.  While doing that I started noticing the railway stations, and bus routes, and plotting routes between them.

I can’t remember any Eureka moment, where I suddenly realised I could walk almost anywhere in England, and much of Wales, that way.  It must have dawned on me gradually as I looked for new routes that it would take me years, or even decades, to exhaust all the possibilities.   During the pandemic, when public transport was off-limits, I joined a car club and discovered that I had to drive for over an hour to find places I had never walked by public transport.

When I tell other people what I’ve been doing for all these years, some are interested, others are sceptical.  Some people talk about expensive or unreliable trains – that’s for another article – but others have expressed what I probably felt before doing all this.  They look at railway stations they know and think: ‘why would anyone want to go for a walk around there?’ Or they look for somewhere they want to walk, see no public transport and assume that they’d have to drive.

I never start by asking “where do I want to walk to?”  Instead, I look for places I can start and finish, then for possible routes between them.  In between, almost by accident, I have walked through thousands of miles of remote and “inaccessible” countryside.  Some of the most beautiful and interesting walks start from nondescript places, the Wiltshire market towns, for example. I can’t imagine anyone saying: “let’s go to Westbury or Melksham for a walk” – but what fantastic starting places they can be.

Following a map through unknown territory, losing my bearings and finding them again is all part of the fun for me.  I know many people don’t like all that, which is where websites like the one we are building, with gpx files uploadable to mapping apps, can help.  If someone else has already walked this route, and you can see on your phone that you are following it, you won’t go far wrong.

Steve Melia
www.greentravelwriter.co.uk